Another swing, miss
Astros limited to three hits in second straight loss.
Iapparently wasn’t the only one who noticed how different Minute Maid Park felt and looked Friday, when the best team in baseball returned to town. • Two years ago, the Astros were the sport’s biggest early-season surprise, 10 games above .500 in mid-May and blasting out of the gate. But only 21,653 fans showed up to watch Dallas Keuchel own the mound on a Friday, and A.J. Hinch’s club had to spend the 2015 season convincing nonbelievers the reborn Astros were for real.
Two years later, 36,446 packed the park to see everyone from Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman to George Springer, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann up close. The aisles buzzed. The concourses were stacked. Kids, Carlos Correa Tshirts and Astros hats were everywhere. Downtown Houston on a Friday evening was literally the place to be.
After a spring filled with October promise and a few years blending hope with patience, the Astros’ blistering start in 2017 had clearly become impossible to ignore. Heck, even Hinch found himself cautiously praising the best team in baseball.
“It’s a little later than it was … but it’s still pretty early in the context of the season,” he said, before the Astros dropped two consecutive games to Cleveland. “I do love the way that we’ve gone about our business and continued to methodically win some series, and win in different ways and just play good baseball.”
Not bad for a team that finished third in the American League West last season, lost its No. 3 starter this spring in West Palm Beach, Fla., has questions about the back end of the rotation and placed Keuchel — again one of the best starters in the game — on the 10-day disabled list Saturday.
Statistics back up the hype
Entering the day, the Astros were third in MLB in hits (390) and batting average (.271), fifth in OPS (.784) and sixth in runs (214). Lance McCullers Jr. and Keuchel led a staff that was first in batting average against (.228) and second in ERA (3.45), while a franchise that has never won a World Series was off to its best start in team history.
During Hinch’s first year in Houston, the Astros began the 2015 campaign 2715, then gradually gave up the division to the Texas Rangers and had to wait until Game 162 to clinch the club’s first playoff spot in a decade.
This season feels more real. And if these Astros (29-14) finish what they’ve started, one word will define April through October: depth.
“It’s really the fact that you get contributions from different sources every single night,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “A.J. has done an incredible job of giving them all playing time and doing it at the right time when they can impact a game.”
Luhnow name-dropped the usual crew (Altuve, Springer) but also pointed to Marwin Gonzalez, Yuli Gurriel, Chris Devenski and more.
Nori Aoki and Beltran have yet to lock in inside the box. Nos. 3-5 starters Charlie Morton, Mike Fiers and Joe Musgrove have been too unpredictable on the mound. But the Astros’ 1-9 daily lineup is by far the deepest it has been since Luhnow was hired in December 2011, and no player is being asked to consistently carry the team at the plate.
“You can give Altuve, Springer and Correa days off now to keep them fresh,” radio announcer Steve Sparks said. “I saw Altuve give a little fist bump to A.J. the day after he made him sit, and Altuve hates to sit. But he gave him a fist bump because he had a great game and he’s just saying, ‘Thanks, I did need that. I didn’t realize it. But I needed a day off.’ ”
The home run-or-nothing lineups from 2013-16? The frustrating lack of flexibility and creativity when baserunners were waiting to be driven in? This team knows how to hit. And when it does, it doesn’t let up.
“The one thing I’ve noticed more than anything else, when they’re having big innings — compared to what it was a few years ago — they become more patient,” Sparks said. “In years past, they expanded the zone, they got anxious. They don’t do that anymore.”
Last year’s Astros talked big in the spring, ended up in a 17-28 hole and ultimately ran out of juice after spending a couple of months playing like they were supposed to. This season’s club began 4-4 and wasn’t hitting. The Astros won eight of their next nine games and haven’t looked back.
Depth has defined this team. Beltran, 40, and McCann, 33, have guided Hinch’s club outside the lines. They have 33 combined seasons in the majors and their experience has been priceless.
“We have leadership this year, and we have great team chemistry,” Correa said. “We don’t have a guy that’s going to mess with that team chemistry. Last year, the chemistry was not that great. We didn’t have a leader to lead us on the right path. This year we have two. We have Beltran and we have McCann leading us on the right path.”
Good mix of youth and veterans
Hinch and Luhnow went deeper. Even though Correa’s 22, he’s in his third pro year. Altuve’s gone from a 56-106 team during his 2011 rookie season to the best team in baseball during his seventh year. The 2017 Astros are fun and have the boxing/wrestling belts to prove it. But they’re also more professional than ever and take pride in not letting each other down.
“In ’15, we had guys that were there for the first time, and a different mix of veterans and young guys,” Luhnow said. “This mix is better than the mix in ’15 from my perspective, because our young players are now two, three, four years in; our veterans are exactly the right type of veterans for this clubhouse.”
The Rockets wasted a 55-win season with an insulting and humiliating Game 6 collapse. The Texans finally drafted a quarterback but are months away from firing up.
If this keeps up, the summer of 2017 in Houston will become the summer of the Astros. And Minute Maid Park will only become more packed.
“It still feels like just a start because we are in May,” Hinch said. “I’ll take this start over any other one that I’ve been around.”