By every meaningful objective metric and sober subjective accounting, the Houston Astros were baseball's best team this year. That guarantees nothing, of course - glory is never so linear in this crazy, beautiful, dumb sport - but these Astros, a beefed-up, more mature version of the behemoth that brought the franchise its first-ever World Series title two years ago, were good enough, it seemed, to defy baseball's inherent unfairness and hoist the Commissioner's Trophy once again.
Houston finished with 107 regular-season wins, the second-highest total by any team since the Seattle Mariners went 116-46 in 2001 and behind only last year's Boston Red Sox, whose championship felt similarly preordained. Of the 15 previous teams to win at least 107 games in a season, all but five ultimately won the World Series. Not only was precedent on the Astros' side, but their gaudy record somehow still belied how good they actually were. As October loomed, they were functionally invincible.
They had perhaps the best offense in baseball on Opening Day, after all, owing to their bevy of homegrown stars (Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa) and veteran pickups (Michael Brantley, Yuli Gurriel), and their lineup was still appreciably stronger by season's end.
On June 9, Yordan Alvarez - the precocious 22-year-old who'd tormented Triple-A pitching for the previous two months - debuted for the Astros, reaching base twice as Houston's designated hitter against the Baltimore Orioles and memorably launching a two-run home run off Dylan Bundy. From that date onward, as Alvarez emerged as the prohibitive favorite for the American League Rookie of the Year award, the Astros' offense posted a 131 wRC+. (In the simplest terms, their offense was 31 percentage points better than league average after adjusting for park effects.) For the season, Ronald Acuna Jr., the Atlanta Braves' electric young superstar, managed a 126 wRC+; the Astros, in effect, had nine of him, only better.
Their rotation, which was also damn good coming out of spring training, similarly improved as summer unfolded. Despite losing both Charlie Morton and Dallas Keuchel to free agency this past winter - and with Lance McCullers Jr. out all year following Tommy John surgery - Houston's starters, led by the incomparable duo of Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander, amassed more wins above replacement through the July 31 trade deadline than all but five other clubs. Then they got Zack Greinke. Over the final two months of the season, with the cerebral right-hander in tow, the Astros went 38-15. Greinke's arrival, moreover, ensured that former or presumptive Cy Young award winners would comprise three-fourths of their postseason rotation.
Ultimately, as they waltzed their way to their best season ever and a third straight AL West title, the Astros weren't stacked so much as perfect, distinguished even in a season that saw four teams record triple-digit wins. Envisioning them falling in the playoffs, even with the mighty New York Yankees blocking their path to a pennant and the ravenous Los Angeles Dodgers presumably waiting for them should they make it back to the World Series, felt laborious.
But, in spite of themselves, they did fall. After failing to put the World Series away with Verlander on the mound in Game 6 at Minute Maid Park, the Astros squandered a late lead in Game 7 en route to a decisive 6-2 defeat and ultimately frittered away a championship to the Washington Nationals, who are perfectly good but nevertheless inferior. And while it'd be disingenuous to characterize the Astros' season as a failure, as AJ Hinch rightly noted in the aftermath of Game 7, it's not unfair to say that they blew it; not via some grisly implosion, but rather through an insidious series of missed opportunities in Games 6 and 7 that propelled the Nationals to a title.
"This is going to sting for a really long time," Hinch admitted. "And it should."
Indeed. When the series shifted back to Houston for Game 6, after the Astros had slid into the driver's seat with three straight victories in Washington, FanGraphs pegged their chances of winning the World Series at 78.8%. In real time, though, a title seemed practically guaranteed. It certainly didn't feel, amid their miserable offensive drought, like the Nationals had even a one-in-five chance of besting the Astros, who had limited them to three runs combined over the three games in Washington. All the Astros had to do was win one of two games at home, where they'd won at a .741 clip during the regular season, with Verlander - fully rested - in Game 6, and Greinke tabbed for Game 7, if necessary. They were golden. Until they weren't.
Verlander, who took the mound for Game 6 winless in six previous World Series starts, continued his tradition of Fall Classic mediocrity, putting his club in a first-inning deficit before eventually serving up the game-tying and go-ahead home runs in the fifth to Adam Eaton and Juan Soto, respectively. Despite having thrown only 93 pitches, Verlander didn't come out for the sixth inning, with Houston down by one, having allowed three runs on five hits and three walks. That's by no means a terrible start, but the Astros' hitters were at the same time floundering against Stephen Strasburg, who was unquestionably excellent but still gave Houston opportunities. The Astros just didn't capitalize.
In the bottom of the fourth, for one, with Houston up 2-1 thanks to a first-inning homer from Bregman, Correa came to the plate with runners on first and second and two out. This, against Strasburg, constituted a major opportunity. Correa, who managed a .926 OPS during the regular season but hit .191 in October, struck out, chasing a 2-2 changeup in the dirt. Then, in the following inning, a superior contact hitter, Altuve, came up in an even better run-scoring opportunity, with runners on second and third and one out; he didn't even need a base hit to tie the game. The former American League MVP failed to put the ball in play, though, striking out on three pitches after chasing one well outside the zone. Those runners were ultimately left stranded. The Astros wouldn't get another runner in scoring position until the bottom of the ninth, long after the Nationals had pulled away.
Still, even after their 7-2 loss in Game 6, the Astros weren't in dire straits. Greinke hadn't looked close to dominant to that point in the postseason, it's true, but Houston's mighty lineup was set to face a presumably compromised version of Max Scherzer - who wasn't able to dress himself 48 hours earlier due to neck spasms - in the series finale. And he certainly looked compromised Wednesday night. Denuded of his usual command, Scherzer allowed seven hits while walking four over over five shaky innings, allowing multiple baserunners in each frame after the first. Yet, the Astros managed just two runs due to all manners of incompetence.
In the bottom of the second, after Yuli Gurriel smacked a leadoff homer to give Houston a 1-0 lead and Alvarez and Correa followed with singles, Hinch inexplicably chose to gift the Nationals an out by asking Robinson Chirinos to sacrifice the baserunners to second and third, respectively. Predictably, Chirinos, who successfully dropped down a sacrifice bunt twice in the last two years, popped it up. The Astros didn't score again that inning. In the third, they failed - as they had for much of the postseason, frankly - to collect a timely hit, with a two-on, one-out situation yielding a zero-burger thanks to successive flyouts from Gurriel and Alvarez. The same thing happened in the fifth. On and on it went.
Amazingly, though, the Astros' continued offensive woes didn't seem like they were going to matter given the way Greinke was throwing. Through six innings, the soft-throwing veteran had flummoxed the Nationals, allowing just one hit and one walk while his teammates scratched together a 2-0 lead. In the seventh, though, Greinke finally cracked, surrendering a one-out solo shot to Anthony Rendon, then walking Soto to put the tying run on base.
At that point, although Greinke had thrown only 80 pitches, Hinch had seen enough. He went to his bullpen, not to summon Cole, but to bring in Will Harris to face Howie Kendrick, who represented the go-ahead run. Was it premature? Maybe. Greinke, after all, had dominated opposing lineups when facing them for a third time during the regular season. Should he have gone to Cole instead of Harris? That's also debatable. Cole may well be the best pitcher alive at the moment, but he'd also never pitched in relief before in his professional career, and he'd thrown 110 pitches two days earlier.
No matter what you think of Hinch's tactical decisions, the point is this: The Astros had a damn good reliever on the mound for their highest-leverage at-bat of the season, to that point, and he just didn't execute. Harris, who had allowed one run in 11 postseason appearances prior to Game 7, threw a cutter that caught too much of the plate, and Kendrick barrelled it up, doinking it off the foul pole for a go-ahead - and, ultimately, series-winning - homer. From there, Houston's bullpen unraveled, and while Hinch may bear some responsibility for that - he was perhaps remiss not to use Cole in the eighth to ensure the deficit didn't extend beyond one - the Astros didn't lose Game 7, and the World Series, on his account.
Rather, with their season on the line, they just didn't play well enough. It wasn't some fundamental defect or one egregious decision that sunk them. It was a failure of opportunism. It happens in baseball, even to the best teams.
As such, the Astros don't need to go back to the proverbial drawing board this offseason. They're still going to be a juggernaut in 2020 even if they do nothing this offseason, as they're bringing back every key member of this year's club save for Cole and Chirinos. And if they do manage to re-sign Cole, who seems committed at this point to testing free agency, they'll almost certainly be baseball's best team again. They might be without him, anyway.
Not that it would guarantee them anything, of course.
Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.
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November 01, 2019 at 06:44AM
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