Playoff spot secure despite extra-inning loss
ARLINGTON — It took longer than all anticipated in a season shorter than anyone’s ever seen, but the Astros are playoff-bound for a fourth straight year. They endured a pandemic, a plethora of injuries and a month of poor play that threatened to derail their World Series aspirations, but the club can now at least have a chance to chase a championship.
Nothing came easy for this team, one loaded on paper but listless for some of this truncated season. Injuries ravaged them, and inconsistency became their most common trait. Few games felt safe, and fewer players distinguished themselves as totally reliable. A9-21road record plagued them during a travel-logged September.
They played 24 one-run games and lost 14 of them. The latest loss, a 5-4 setback against the Texas Rangers on Friday night, momentarily halted Houston’s playoff clinch celebration.
The Angels’ 9-5 loss to the Dodgers an hour later ensured the Astros a second-place finish in the American League West. In the 16-team playoff field, it’s good enough for the No. 6 seed in the American League bracket. It is the first time in franchise history the Astros have reached the postseason in four consecutive years.
Houston’s journey begins with a best-of-three series starting Tuesday at the home ballpark of a yet-tobe-determined opponent.
The Angels’ loss on Friday allows the Astros to use the final two games in Texas to align their starting pitchers for the wild card series. Zack Greinke is likely to start Game 1 on Tuesday, but manager Dusty Baker has a choice among Jose Urquidy, Framber Valdez and Lance McCullers Jr. for Games 2 and 3. All
will be on a full complement of rest.
Should the Astros win their first-round series, they’ll move into the playoff “bubble” in California, playing the American League Division Series at Dodger Stadium. The World Series will be held at Globe Life Field.
“It’s been my toughest assignment to get to the playoffs in my career,” Baker said earlier this week. “With all the COVID-19, with all the injuries, with everything. But that’s 2020. That’s the way this year has been. It would be very gratifying, but once you feel gratified, now you have to go to the next goal. You take it one goal at a time.”
Baker became the first manager in major league history to lead five different franchises to the postseason. He’s won 1,892 games during a 23-year managerial career, a Hall of Fame tenure missing only one milestone — a World Series championship.
The Astros hired Baker in February to settle tumult around the franchise amid fallout from its electronic sign-stealing scandal. Baker braced for a season unlike any in major league history: one filled with fragile psyches and venomous fans in each road city.
Instead, the 71-year-old man managed in a mask amid a global pandemic. His established hitters did not produce. His lethal lineup has a meager .720 OPS — 20 points below the league average. All his relievers either spent time hurt or ineffective. Most of them were not even on the major league radar when the season began.
The season started with World Series dreams but devolved into a secondplace slog throughout September. Houston is only 1015 this month, undone most days by their tepid offense and others by a brutally inconsistent bullpen. Faint hope for Justin Verlander’s return ended earlier this month with the announcement he’ll undergo Tommy John surgery, delivering another emotional blow to a beaten-up team.
Verlander, closer Roberto Osuna and reigning American League Rookie of the Year Yordan Alvarez appeared in a total of seven games. Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve each spent at least two weeks on the injured list, too.
Pair that with underperformance from Altuve, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel, and the Astros seemed a shell of the team that reported to West Palm Beach, Fla., in February. They could not defend their American League West title, ceding it to the Oakland Athletics last week. The A’s are among the teams Houston could face in its first-round series. The Astros lost seven of 10 games against them in the regular season.
An otherwise awful American League West allowed the Astros to be viable postseason contenders despite their doldrums. They feasted on the Rangers, one of baseball’s worst teams, and mauled the rebuilding and still raw Seattle Mariners in July. Two of their most vital wins this week in pursuit of the postseason came against those two clubs. Both are under .500.
The Astros, meanwhile, reside right at 29-29.