FAMILIAR FALL FEELING
It was an offensive explosion. Three singles, a double, a home run, another huge Carlos Correa playoff hit — my gosh, someone is going to pay him a ton of money soon — and five runs that changed Game 2 in one inning.
You could also see the relentless attack coming from miles away.
The power. The precision, internal belief and plate discipline. The seventh-inning knockout that rocked a roaring Minute Maid Park on Friday, giving the Astros a 2-0 lead over Chicago in this American League Division Series and instantly placing the White Sox on the brink.
“They’ve been here before,” said manager Dusty Baker, after the Astros hammered the White Sox 9-4 before a sellout crowd of 41,315. “If you’ve experienced it, then belief is a big part of this game and belief will take you a long, long ways. These guys, as a unit, they believe.”
We knew what was coming in that buzzing seventh because we’ve seen it all before.
At their core, the 2021 Astros aren’t that different than their 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 versions. And when these Astros attack and attack at the plate, it’s easy to already picture another AL Championship Series, another Fall Classic and even bigger things.
The Astros’ past October experience has been an invaluable asset in this ALDS.
Baker’s Astros have also clearly been the better team through two games, which means that closing this thing out at something called Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago is a serious possibility before next Tuesday arrives.
“We preach that every single day in our clubhouse: Defense wins championships,” Correa said. “We take a lot of pride in that. From the moment we showed up in spring training, we said, ‘Hey, let’s try to be the
number one defensive team in the big leagues.’ … It’s about having that mental approach of being active on every single pitch. Make sure you get that pre-pitch movement on every single pitch, don’t take any pitches off. Especially now in the playoffs, we’re doing a great job with it.”
Tony La Russa’s White Sox are struggling to consistently play MLB-caliber defense. They also haven’t been able to handle Yordan Alvarez in the cleanup spot or contain a deep Astros lineup that pounded out 10 more hits in Game 2.
It was Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker on Friday.
It was also Yuli Gurriel, Chas McCormick and the four Astros relief arms who followed starter Framber Valdez and kept Chicago off the board after the fifth inning.
The Astros, as a collective whole and in critical moments that define postseason series, are dominating like they’ve been here before. Because they have.
“Experience plays a huge part of it. The moment is never too big for guys in the clubhouse,” Correa said. “You see at-bat through at-bat, the line moving. Everybody just has the same approach from the first guy to the ninth. … You saw that first inning, (Lucas Giolito) was unhittable.
So we had to kind of like switch our approach a little bit and make him pitch a little bit more, and we got to the bullpen. That was the key of winning that game.”
As Altuve raced around second base in a game-changing seventh, my mind was filled with past images of Altuve doing the same thing during the magic of previous playoff runs.
The same for Correa’s two-run double in the seventh that was lined to right field.
The same for the entire inning, which captured the Astros’ dominance thus far in this series and tipped a cap to all the electric home playoff victories since 2015.
“That’s our team,” Baker said. “When ( Josh) Reddick was here, he used to say all the time, ‘It happens fast.’ And it does.”
Chicago led 1-0 after the first inning Friday and 4-2 entering the bottom of the fifth. Baker’s Astros tied the game at four before the sixth arrived, then left La Russa complimenting the Astros’ many strengths after the White Sox were pushed into an 0-2 hole.
“They were really good,” La Russa said. “I thought we played really well, too, but they played better.”
That last part is the truth in the answer.
Seven-game series in October are almost always won by the better team. That’s one of the best things about baseball.
Five-game series sometimes go to the hotter team.
The Astros have been better in this ALDS. They have also scorched the field through 18 innings.
Better defense: Astros. Offense: Astros. Pitching: Astros. Managing: Astros.
“I’ve been on both sides, coming back, and I’ve seen them come back,” said Baker, sounding like a manager who has devoted the majority of his time on Earth to Major League Baseball. “We have to act like we’re going in there 0-0, because we’re going into very hostile territory.”
For everything that has changed for the remade Astros since the end of the 2019 season, it’s still Altuve, Brantley and Bregman at the top of the lineup. It’s still Correa in the middle of everything, winning games — and winning you over — with talent, belief and heart.
The Astros are one win away from their fifth consecutive ALCS.
Experience matters. Especially in October.