After last season’s collapse, this is no October surprise
WASHINGTON — Alex Bregman, the Astros’ best hitter, guaranteed a playoff victory that became a defeat.
Justin Verlander, the club’s best regular-season pitcher, is 1-3 with a 4.15 ERA and has allowed six home runs this postseason.
The team with the top home record in MLB during the long 162 just dropped back-to-back World Series games at Minute Maid Park.
And if you didn’t know any better during the humiliating 12-3 blowout that was Game 2, you would have immediately thought that the Astros were the wild-card squad that needed three runs in the eighth inning just to advance to the Division Series, while the Washington Nationals
were the 107-win team that exited July as the World Series favorite.
The Astros’ 2017 championship is starting to feel like a long time ago.
Brian McCann has retired. Evan Gattis is out of baseball. Charlie Morton is an ace for Tampa Bay. Dallas Keuchel pitches for Atlanta. Lance McCullers Jr. isn’t playing.
After the Nats outscored the Astros 17-7 in the initial two games of the 2019 Fall Classic, it’s time to acknowledge that these Astros currently have more in common with an ’18 team that fell apart at Minute Maid Park and was knocked out of the American League Championship Series 4-1 by the eventual champion Boston Red Sox.
Remember when the Astros owned the crushing wave that was October pressure?
Remember when the baseball world would bet on the opposition, and the Astros’ inner swagger and self-belief would proudly break that bet in two?
These Astros are 7-6 in the playoffs. They dropped both games at Tropicana Field during the ALDS — including a Game 4 that Bregman guaranteed would be a win — and were outscored 14-4 by the Rays in the defeats.
And while the Astros have whiffed with runners in scoring position at a depressing rate, these weak playoff batting averages also capture the weight that is dragging down A.J. Hinch’s club: Josh Reddick .111, Carlos Correa .160, George Springer .167, Yordan Alvarez .213, Yuli Gurriel .231, Bregman .233.
As a team, the Astros are hitting .216, while their opponents are batting .238.
Inside their ballpark and on televisions across the world, the once super-cool Astros have stagnated and cracked.
So Hinch dug in Thursday night.
“Break On Through (To The Other Side)” blared through the speakers at Nationals Park. The Astros’ manager searched for the calm, even middle of a club that is obviously talented enough to magically turn this series around.
Are his Astros pressing? “Dramatic pause: zero,” said Hinch, breaking down the fourth wall and again sounding like the skipper who guided his team to the 2017 world title in Game 7 at Dodger Stadium.
What was he feeling from his team when it boarded a plane to America’s capital?
“We’re ready. We’re ready to play,” Hinch said. “This is a group of guys that have won a lot of games. I understand that everybody wants the pressure put on us. That’s great.
“We’ve responded great to pressure. I understand they have a 2-0 lead. Their view of the finish line is a little closer than ours. But I wonder what everybody will feel like if we can win Game 3? And all of a sudden it flips a little bit, and all of a sudden we put up a few runs, and all of a sudden you can write that we’re back in it.”
The Astros must win twice just to send the Nationals back to Houston.
If Hinch’s club can pull that off, the pressure in this series will really change.
Until then, the Astros will look like the team again falling short on the biggest stages in October.