Astros still No. 1 team
One win off their world championship pace.
Best pitching staff in baseball, bolstered at the recent trade deadline.
Beating Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium.
Yes, I would still take the Astros over everyone else in a seven-game series. Or five.
This season hasn’t exactly gone as expected. Then again, it was never going to.
World Series celebrations and proclamations, months after the franchise’s first world championship trophy was hoisted in the electric night in L.A. Top prospect Kyle Tucker suddenly promoted, then demoted 16 games later with an official .156 batting average attached to his name. Embattled closer Ken Giles intentionally hitting himself in the face, insulting the Astros and A.J. Hinch in public, then being traded for suspended closer Roberto Osuna in the most controversial and criticized move by Houston’s pro baseball team in a long time.
Red Sox a formidable foe
The Red Sox (77-34 record, MLB-best plus-187 run differential as of Saturday afternoon) have become this season’s version of last year’s 104-win Dodgers. Victory after victory after victory. On pace for one of the strongest regular seasons in the new millennium. Guided by first-year manager Alex Cora (former Astros bench coach) and powered by MLB home run and RBI leader J.D. Martinez, who has evolved into the sport’s top slugger five years after he played his last game as an Astro. A couple crazy stats: Martinez has 184 career homers and a .290 average.
If this was Boston, the Astros still would be getting killed for giving up on Martinez (even though he was in the organization from 2009-14 and posted a .687 OPS with 226 strikeouts in 899 MLB at-bats).
Thankfully, this is Houston, where we constantly worry about our very similar baseball team the year after they won it all, and have to be constantly reminded that they have as good of a chance as anyone to hoist the same trophy in 2018.
Justin Verlander was brilliant Friday night back at Dodger Stadium. Fourteen strikeouts and just one run in 72⁄3 winning innings. Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa weren’t even in the lineup — J.D. Davis, Martin Maldonado and Jake Marisnick were — and the Astros still downed Los Angeles 2-1 on just four hits.
The 2017 world championship team at this point in the season: 71-40.
The current club, before World Series Game 7 starter Lance McCullers Jr. returned to the Dodger Stadium mound Saturday night: 70-41.
I’ve been playing around with those numbers all year, mainly to remind myself (and all the people who regularly email me overly worrying about the “slumping,” “inconsistent” Astros) where things really stand in 2018. Only one other team in baseball has a better record than your local nine. And I believe these Astros are still better than the remade Red Sox.
Granted, Boston’s home record (40-15) sparkles and the Red Sox finally overtook the Astros for the top run differential in the sport. Mookie Betts is rivaling Martinez for American League MVP and leads MLB in batting average (.345). Chris Sale, who recently joined Altuve on the disabled list, holds the lowest ERA (2.04) among AL starters, while Craig Kimbrel ranks second in the sport in saves (33).
The Astros also lead MLB in road wins (38) and beat up on many of those same names last season. And there’s no better 1-2 starting punch in baseball than Gerrit Cole and Verlander — neither of whom were throwing fire for Hinch’s club at this point last season.
The Astros lead MLB in ERA (3.06) by almost half a run and opponents are hitting a league-low .213 against the game’s reigning champs.
Glass more than half full
If there’s a weaker area in 2018, it’s the overall lineup. But I’ll take postseason pitching over hitting any day — just think of all the proven names that Hinch can call out of the bullpen in two months — and this year’s Astros still rank fifth among all teams in OPS (.758), are tied for fifth in average (.257) and are tied for eighth in home runs (140).
Alex Bregman is a much better hitter a year after fighting off the Red Sox in the Fenway Park rain. Correa has almost two months to get ready for October, while Altuve (.329 BA, second in MLB) is receiving extended regular-season rest for the first time in his eight-year career.
A year ago, Cleveland hadn’t even started its 22-game winning streak yet. The Indians ended up with 102 wins and the best record in the AL, then fell short in the playoffs again.
The 101-win Astros were on a season-long collision course with theDodgers, who were exhausted by Game 7 and gave up the final contest of the World Series on Nov. 1 on their home field.
Baseball’s 2018 campaign is increasingly feeling Hinch’s Astros versus Cora’s Red Sox (no offense to the Yankees), with the best team in October hosting the Fall Classic.
I’d still take these Astros in every series.