Astros win game 3-1 and series 2-0. Who’d a thunk?
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The playoffs are a whole new season!
Query: should the Astros go on to win the World Series…would it be the first instance in MLB history of a team with a sub-.500 regular season record winning it all?
I need to look that up!
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The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals had the worst regular season record of 83-79 to win the World Series.
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Interesting personal note on the 2006 Astros and Cardinals schedule and the pennant race. Cardinals had a large lead in the division over the Astos heading into late September, somewhere around 9 games.
I spent 7 nights at my sister’s house in Los Angeles from Sept. 20-26. In that time, the Astros won all seven of their games. And just as remarkable, the Cardinals also played 7 straight games from Sept. 20-26 and they lost all 7 of their games.
The Astros made up 7 games on the first place team in 7 days. Amazing. That couldn’t have happen too many times.
If I didn’t have to come back to work I would have continued to stay at my sister’s house. Somehow I feel personally responsible for the Astros finishing 1 1/2 games behind the Cards and failing to reach the playoffs.
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As a casual Stros fan…honest opinion, is the pitching good enough to win it all this year?
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No, but let’s see how far they can get!
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Too many hurt players. I am surprised we won anything.
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The pitching in the last several games has been outstanding. But you can’t win if you don’t score and the bats let the pitchers down. Earlier in the year, the pitching let the batting down. Things may be coming together at the right time.
I don’t think you could ask for more out of Valdez, Urquidy, Javier, and Pressly. Conversely, Greinke has not been as good as his salary would dictate he should be.
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I’m not even sure that the offense is good enough. In order to beat the Yankees or Rays or Dodgers, I think they will need guys like Altuve and Bregman and Springer to really turn it on. As far as pitching goes, without Verlander it’s going to be awfully tough. Sure, they were able to win a quick three game series with mostly starters, but in a seven game series (if they advance that far), they will have to stretch out some of those guys back into the rotation. So, potentially, Greinke, McCullers, Urquidy and Valdez with perhaps Javier sticking in the bullpen. My concern is that when getting deeper into a seven game series, the bullpen will probably need to be relied upon more. With guys like Osuna, Smith, Devenski, Peacock all having been injured this season, they had to rely on several rookies and it was a weak spot on the roster. Hopefully they’re able to “catch lighting in a bottle.” Not mention that as good as Valdez and Javier have been, can they replicate that in primetime in a very high stakes situation? Those guys are still getting their feet wet in postseason action.
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The great pitching against the Twins was a very nice surprise. So anything else they win going forward is just gravy.
Now if they can get their bats going in this next series, then anything is possible.
GO STROS!!!
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