The Houston Astros Narrowly Escape Taking “Playing Down to Their Opponents’ Level” to a New Low with
- Stros Talk
- Sep 17, 2021
- 3 min read
The 2021 Astros have been slapped silly with humility all season. Yet, it seems like they haven’t learned. They head into Friday with the best record in baseball when facing teams that are .500 or above. From sweeping the Chicago White Sox in a four-game series to taking five of seven against the then-formidable Boston Red Sox, it seemed like no juggernaut could stop the Astros. Struggling teams-- on the other hand-- found themselves right at home against them.
The woes against sub .500 teams first began when the Astros were swept by the Detroit Tigers. After a hot start to the season where the Astros went 5-1, it appeared as if they only had one direction to go: up.
They went down.
After being swept by the Tigers, the Astros got swept in a two-game series against the Colorado Rockies and continued to struggle against bad teams all season. Their worst display of downplaying to their opponents level came in June when the Baltimore Orioles swept the Astros and none of the games were particularly close. It went to the point where utility man Robel Garcia, who is now Designated For Assignment, came into the game to eat up some innings. The Astros essentially conceded the game to the Orioles and it was the only time this season they did anything of the sort.
On Friday night the Astros almost found some way to play worse than they did back in June to the Orioles. Brandon Bielak took the mound as the Astros faced Madison Bumgarner and the Arizona DIamondbacks. Bielak looked shaky and got himself into some trouble in his 2.2 innings but impressively got out of both jams with the help of Blake Taylor who went 1.1 innings. The Astros bullpen (including Bielak as he is now normally a reliever for the big league team) went through today’s game pitching ten innings and allowing only two earned runs.
Despite that impressive pitching line, the real story was with Bumgarner. Bumgarner looked nothing like his old self since joining the Diamondbacks but tonight he brought a little bit of youth to his game. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning against the best offense in baseball and got two outs before allowing a two-run homerun to Jose Altuve. Bumgarner ended his night with seven-innings of two-run baseball. Ownage.
As the Astros led 2-1 into the eighth, Dusty Baker went to his setup man Kendall Graveman. Graveman allowed one run on two singles and a walk to get his third blown save of the season. As bad as that sounds, there’s upside. The two singles Graveman allowed had a hit probability of 31% or lower according to StatCast and despite pitching into some bad luck, he still almost got out of the inning unscathed. Almost.
In the ninth inning, the Astros threatened to walk off with the first two hitters reaching base and Alex Bregman getting ahead of the count 3-0. Bregman was on auto take and took a strike down the middle before flying out softly and failing to advance the runners. Yuli Gurriel grounded to first base and advanced both runners but he was the second out meaning Kyle Tucker in all likelihood needed a base hit to win the game and it didn’t happen. After allowing an unearned runner to score in the top of the tenth, the Astros walked off when Chas McCormick got clipped by a changeup that slipped out of the hands of Tyler Clippard and made its way to McCormick’s helmet. McCormick was fine and celebrated with his team shortly after.
Up until the bottom of the tenth, it looked as if tonight would’ve been a new low for the Astros as a team trying to avoid their 100th loss of the season somehow held the Astros to only 2 runs after nine innings and held them to no hits after five innings. Thankfully for the Astros, Clippard didn’t grip that changeup the way he wanted to. Had the Astros not walked it off in the tenth, they were in danger of resorting to Yimi Garcia and Josh James who had been used extensively recently. Baker really didn’t have a good option to choose had the game gone to the 11th inning which made McCormick’s walkoff that much more salient.
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