The Pallilog
Charlie Pallilo: Astros, Yankees and Red Sox are on historic pace
Jun 22, 2018, 6:48 am
Jose Altuve and the Astros are on a roll. Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
It should be a tremendous summer-long race among the Astros, Red Sox, and Yankees to see who winds up with the best record in Major League Baseball. The Mariners are showing that while plucky, they are just not good enough to keep up with a pace looking more and more likely to produce an unprecedented three teams in the same league with 100 or more wins in the same season. Only six times have three teams between the American and National Leagues won 100+. The Dodgers, Indians, and Astros did it last year. The Astros should again cruise to the AL West title while the Yanks and Bosox slug it out trying to avoid facing one game elimination via the Wild Card game.
Before 1995 there were no Wild Cards. 1993 was the last postseason before the Wild Card (the 1994 strike forced cancellation of the playoffs). The Giants finished 103-59 and got nothing for it, finishing one game behind the Braves in the NL West. Before 1969 there were no Divisions meaning you either won the pennant and went to the World Series, or you went home. The 1942 Dodgers finished 104-50, two games behind the Cardinals.
Little big man
On May 14 Jose Altuve was one out away from seeing his batting average dip below .300. He singled in his last at bat that day to keep his average above his personal Mendoza Line (in the 70s there was a crappy hitter named Mario Mendoza whose batting averages over five straight seasons were .180, .185, .198, .218, and .198. So .200 became a reference line for awful hitting). In 33 games played since that hit Altuve is batting .403 with an OPS of 1.078. Last year Altuve won his third American League batting title and first AL MVP award with a batting average of .346. He starts the weekend at .347. Context alert: Altuve is astoundingly good, pretty much on top of his game (still down a little overall from last season), and on a clear Hall of Fame track. His OPS this season is closer to waaaaay over the hill Albert Pujols’s than it is to Mike Trout’s.
Draft stock falling?
The NBA Draft just isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. It’s still hugely important and will produce All-Stars and probably Hall of Famers. It’s just reality that with the top selections dominated by one and done college freshmen the players are much lesser known, are more boys than NBA men, and with few exceptions are ill-equipped to enter the league and be standouts early on.
Judging it from the greatest players in the class, the 1984 NBA Draft has to be considered the best ever. How about four-fifths of a starting lineup comprised of John Stockton, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Hakeem Olajuwon. We need a small forward for that quintet so the nod goes to second round pick, the late Jerome Kersey. All of those guys played at least three years of college basketball.
Another mention-worthy draft class, especially since generously Rocket-tinted, the class of 1970. Your starting five : Nate Archibald, Pete Maravich, Rudy Tomjanovich, Dave Cowens, and Bob Lanier. For a sixth man how about Calvin Murphy? Rudy-T is the only one of those six not in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Rudy’s non-election remains an annual disgrace.
Top of the list
Picking first overall for the first time in their franchise history the Phoenix Suns hope they got a franchise center in DeAndre Ayton out of Arizona. His career production probably comes in somewhere between that of Olajuwon and Michael Olowokandi. Back in 1969 the Suns could have had the number 1 pick, but they lost a coin flip for it to the Milwaukee Bucks. At number two the Suns took center Neal Walk, who had a few solid seasons. But the grand prize the Suns lost out on was Lew Alcindor, soon to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Suns still have yet to win an NBA Championship. Kareem won six.
In 1983 the Rockets won the coin flip that got them Ralph Sampson. The second pick was Steve Stipanovich. The next year the Rockets won the flip again and took Olajuwon. Portland made Sam Bowie the second selection. Pick three, Michael Jordan. Trail Blazers fans who were alive back then, are sick about that to this day. Portland has blazed no championship trail since. Jordan won six.
The next year, the NBA ditched the coin flip system for the draft lottery.
Buzzer Beaters
1. Lame as Dwight Howard’s career arc has become, if Dikembe Mutombo was deemed Hall of Fame material, then isn’t Howard? 2. The World Cup means more globally than any other sporting event. But soccer simply has too many ties and 1-0 games to ever really breakout as a mainstream sport here. 3. Best “Summer” songs: Bronze-DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince “Summertime” Silver-Bananarama “Cruel Summer” Gold-Don Henley “Boys of Summer”
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Everyone raved about the leadership of second-year quarterback C.J. Stroud this week as the Houston Texans prepared for their wild-card playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Everyone, that is, except the man himself.
“I don’t think I’m a great (leader),” Stroud said sheepishly. “I don’t know. That’s probably a bad thing to say about yourself, but I don’t think I’m all that when it comes to leading. I just try to be myself.”
But the 23-year-old Stroud simply being himself is exactly what makes him the undisputed leader of this team.
“C.J. is authentic, he’s real,” coach DeMeco Ryans said. “It’s not only here, it’s in the locker room around the guys and that’s what leadership is to me. As you evolve as a leader, you just be authentic to yourself. You don’t have to make up anything or make up a speech or make up something to say to guys. C.J. is being C.J.”
Sixth-year offensive lineman Tytus Howard said he knew early on that Stroud would be special.
“He has that aura about him that when he speaks, everybody listens,” he said.
Stroud has helped the Texans win the AFC South and reach the playoffs for a second straight season after they had combined for just 11 wins in the three years before he was drafted second overall.
He was named AP Offensive Rookie of the Year last season, when Houston beat the Browns in the first round before falling to the Ravens in the divisional round.
His stats haven’t been as good as they were in his fabulous rookie season when he threw just five interceptions. But he has put together another strong season in Year 2 despite missing top receiver Nico Collins for five games early and losing Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell to season-ending injuries in the second half of the season. He also started every game despite being sacked a whopping 52 times.
“He’s taken some crazy shots,” Howard said. “But even if he’s getting sacked and stuff like that, he just never lets that get to him. He just continues to fight through it, and it basically uplifts the entire offense.”
He also finds ways to encourage the team off the field and works to build chemistry through team get-togethers. He often invites the guys over to his house for dinner or to watch games. Recently, he rented out a movie theater for a private screening of “Gladiator II.”
“He’s like, ‘I want the guys to come in and bond together because this thing builds off the field and on the field,’” Howard said. “So, we need to be closer.”
Another thing that makes Stroud an effective leader is that his teammates know that he truly cares about them as people and not just players. That was evident in the loss to the Chiefs when Dell was seriously injured. Stroud openly wept as Dell was tended to on the field and remained distraught after he was carted off.
“It was good for people to see me in that light and knowing that there is still a human factor to me,” he said. "And I think that was good for people to see that we’re just normal people at the end of the day.”
Stroud said some of the leaders who molded him were his father, his coaches in high school and college, and more recently Ryans.
His coach said Stroud has been able to lead the team effectively early in his career because he knows there are others he can lean on if he needs help.
“Understanding that it’s not all on him as a leader, it’s all of our guys just buying in, doing what they have to do,” Ryans said. “But also, C.J. understanding a lot of guys are looking up to him on the team and he takes that role seriously. But it’s not a heavy weight for him because we have other leaders, as well, around him.”
Stroud considers himself stubborn and though some consider that a bad quality, he thinks it’s helped him be a better leader. He's had the trait as long as he can remember.
“That kind of carried into the sport,” he said. “Even as a kid, my mom used to always say how stubborn I was and just having a standard is how I hear it. It’s stubborn (but) I just have a standard on how I like things to be done and how I hold myself is a standard.”
And, to be clear, he doesn’t consider himself a bad leader, but he did enjoy hearing that others on the team consider him a great one.
“I just don’t look at myself in that light of just I’m all-world at that,” he said. “But I try my best to lead by example and it’s cool because I don’t ask guys and to hear what they have to say about that is kind of cool.”
Though he doesn’t consider himself a great leader, Stroud does have strong feelings about what constitutes one. And he’s hoping that he’ll be able to do that for his team Saturday to help the Texans to a victory, which would make him the sixth quarterback in NFL history to start and win a playoff game in both of his first two seasons.
“That would be making everybody around you better,” he said of great leaders. “Kind of like a point guard on the offense, the quarterback on the football team, the pitcher on a baseball team — just making everybody around you better.”