To keep dream season alive, Gomez must get hot for September run
The Astros came and went. Infield stretching, batting practice, autographed baseballs and photographs. A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow remained. For more than 30 minutes, the brainy manager and brainier GM quietly confided in each other in a corner of the first-base dugout. Assistant GM David Stearns eventually joined the duo, and the organization’s creative trio went inside baseball and kept digging into whatever they were privately digging into. Potential conversation pieces: When is Carlos Gomez going to come around? Is it too late to find an everyday first baseman who can actually hit?
Are the Texas Rangers for real or just being annoying like only a Dallas entity can be?
I drove to Minute Maid Park poring over a better question through the summer rain Wednesday, then kept it running through my head while Hinch, Luhnow and Stearns traded industry secrets and Carlos Correa inked his signature for a growing chorus of fans.
This is what the super-smarties should have been figuring out. It’s the only thing that matters as August burns into September for what is still baseball’s best story in 2015.
Are the Astros living at the top or just barely hanging on?
Since Luhnow pulled off the two biggest moves of his tenure — putting Scott Kazmir in Astros orange July 23 and getting Gomez in Houston seven days later — it has too often been the latter.
The dream season is still magically showing up, courtesy of thrilling walkoffs by Jose Altuve, Marwin Gonzalez and Correa in three out of four games. But for weeks, the bats have been carried by just three young men (Correa, Altuve and the increasingly everyday Gonzalez). And a slippery hold on first place in the AL West has been tied down only by the league’s premier pitching staff.
Everything else has been tight numbers and too much on-field drama. A 12-12 mark after Kazmir. Seventeen of the last 20 games decided by three or fewer runs. ‘Treading water’
What does Luhnow still see in his somewhat shaky club?
The heart of the same team that shocked the sport in April by starting 18-7. The bent limbs of a squad that has sometimes stayed alive just by covering its holes, going an even 48-48 since its initial surge while waiting for final-month reinforcements to arrive.
“It does feel like we’re treading water a little bit. … We haven’t played our best baseball over the past month,” said Luhnow prior to the Astros’ 3-2, 13-inning win over Tampa Bay. “We haven’t lost a ton of ground, fortunately. Good fortune does run out, though. You’ve got to win it. You can’t let it come to you. It’s time for this team to step up and go win it.”
There are two ways the Astros accomplish what was utterly unthinkable opening night. Worst to first isn’t happening unless both are connected through Oct. 4.
Gomez must stop kissing his bat and simply begin using it. He doesn’t have to be 2004 playoffs Carlos Beltran. He does have to hit. With first base a lost cause and the Astros’ power disappearing — Luis Valbuena, Chris Carter and Evan Gattis haven’t exactly been smoking the ball of late — Gomez has to lift a lineup that has been waiting almost three weeks for his pop.
“The way that I’ve been playing and we’re winning, it won’t work,” said Gomez, who’s hitting just .197 (17-of-66) with one home run and four RBIs and was given Wednesday off due to a minor illness.
“We’re playing good, but we can be better,” Gomez said. “When you have only a couple guys do their job, it’s hard to win games like that.” Pivotal period nears
No. 2: Survive August, then come alive again in September.
After the Astros face two big-money division leaders (Dodgers, Yankees) and the pesky Twins to close the month, the most important run of the season will be made or broken by the division they’ve owned for 112 days. Twenty-five of 28 contests from Aug. 31-Sept. 30 are against AL West foes, with a 10-game trip as a trap door in the middle.
The Astros are guaranteed to be relevant in September for the first time in nearly a decade. But five months devoted to rising, grasping and hanging on will disappear if Hinch’s club can’t lock in during its defining month.
“We know this division is going to be determined in mid-September when we all face each other,” Luhnow said. “We just have to have the team clicking at that point.”
This time a year ago, Bo Porter was barely hanging on to his job. September began with his firing. Hinch’s arrival ended a messy fallout and started the Astros’ new era.
Wednesday, it was Luhnow and his new manager keeping the fivemonth conversation going. As their team bounced into the dugout, a coach smiled on his way into the clubhouse.
There was another game that mattered in August. September was waiting. The Astros were still at the top. They were about to walk off again.
“All right,” the coach said, “the best part of the day is about to start.”