NOW OR NEVER
Burning questions Houston Astros must answer as they approach home stretch
Aug 18, 2023, 4:26 pm
Do the Astros have a clear-cut ace? Composite Getty Image.
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You’re Astros manager Dusty Baker. It’s the last day of the 2023 baseball season and the Astros and Rangers are tied with identical 94-68 records. It’s a must-win game with the American League West title and a coveted bye in the first round of the post-season possibly at stake.
You’ve played it smart down the stretch anticipating this. All of your starters are rested and ready to take the mound.
Who are you giving the ball to?
Justin Verlander? He’s the highest paid player in baseball history, a sure Hall of Famer, the defending American League Cy Young Award winner. But he hasn’t exactly dominated since returning to the Astros and he got rocked for nine hits, two walks and five runs (four earned) over five innings in his last start.
Framber Valdez? Take away his recent no-hitter, Valdez has not been a shutdown ace in months. Since late June, his average start has gone six innings, giving up seven hits and 4.5 runs.
Cristian Javier has made it to the sixth inning only once in his last nine starts. He began the season at 7-1. Two months and 11 starts (nine no-decisions) later, he’s at 8-2. There’s talk of him going to the bullpen for the post-season.
Hunter Brown has been up and down and Jose Urquidy is coming off injury. You want to go to war in a one-game shootout with either of them?
The true ace of the 2023 Astros is rookie J.P. France who has saved this season with a hard-nosed, reliable 9-3 mark and 2.74 earned run average. Be honest, had you even heard of Jonathan Patrick France before the season started? He didn’t make his MLB debut until May 6. He’s started 16 games, won nine of them. The Astros have won all eight of his most recent starts. Looks like Clark Kent, pitches like Superman.
J.P. France is a selfie of how the entire Astros season has unfolded - unlike anything fans have seen in recent years. Used to be, you’d turn on the Astros game in the third or fourth inning (we arrive late for TV, too) and the Astros would be up 3-1 with Verlander and Valdez dealing in dominant form. This year, the score could be Astros up, Astros down, and the team is scrapping to the end. No lead is safe, no deficit fatal.
It seemed all was smooth sailing in recent years past, with Baker making all the right moves and fans appreciating their crusty, lovable, toothpick-gnawing skipper. This year, fans are pulling out their hair.
Why is Martin Maldonado batting in the eighth inning with runners on base? How much more of Jose Abreu can we take at first base? Why is Grae Kessinger in the lineup? Why is Yordan Alvarez, one of baseball’s mightiest sluggers, batting fifth? When, if ever, is Michael Brantley coming back? Now pitching for the Houston Astros, Phil Maton, oh no!
The Astros seem to be on a frustrating treadmill, and like the real treadmill you use to hang clothes at home, they appear to be going nowhere. The Astros keep winning series but can’t gain ground on the division-leading Texas Rangers. Wile E. Coyote has more success catching the Roadrunner. It’s like that Rodney Dangerfield joke. As a teenager, he borrowed $500 from a lone shark, paid him $25 a week for 30 years and still owed him $1,000.
That’s the weirdest thing of all in 2023 - the Astros are looking up at the Rangers in the standings. That’s not supposed to happen.
Still … the Astros are 70-52, 18 games over .500, and winners of eight of their last 11 games. Unless the roof falls in, they’re all but guaranteed of making the post-season. For all of this summer of discontent, there are 30 teams in baseball and only five of them have a better won-loss record than the Astros. TV ratings are up on AT&T SportsNet. Minute Maid Park is packed, averaging nearly 38,000 fans each night. That’s more than 5,000 up per game from last year when, if memory serves, they won the whole shebang.
Huge hot-ticket series against the surging Seattle Mariners, always popular Boston Red Sox, those dreaded Yankees and surprising Orioles remain on the home schedule.
Oh, there’s a little three-game set against the Rangers coming up in Arlington in early September. Astros fans might want to start planning the roadie.
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”