SHOW US THE LIE
As each game passes, here are the undeniable truths about the Houston Astros
Sep 5, 2023, 3:11 pm
Will Dusty Baker change his stance on Martin Maldonado? Composite Getty Image.
dusty madly
The NFL season starts this week and you know what that means here in Houston.
Are you ready for some … baseball!
The Astros are in the thick of the stickiest pennant race in MLB, a mad scramble in the American League West. At the moment, the Astros sit in a virtual tie with the Seattle Mariners for the top spot with the Texas Rangers only one game back.
The Astros 13-6, five-homer bulldozing of the Rangers Monday night in Arlington surely sent a chilling warning to other World Series hopefuls. The Astros are coming and they’re coming hard.
Things couldn’t have broke better Monday night. The Astros won. The Rangers lost. The Mariners lost. Jose Altuve and Mauricio Dubon walloped back-to-back homers – twice. Altuve and Alex Bregman had four hits each. Michael Brantley is back, seemingly without missing a beat. It would help if he were in the lineup. The Astros have Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander set for the next two against the Rangers. All is good is AstrosWorld.
The Nature Boy Ric Flair knows, if you want to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man. And good luck beating the Astros the rest of the way.
Not only did the Astros send five balls over the outfield fence, they clinched the coveted (I kid) Silver Boot series against the Rangers for the seventh consecutive year. More important, should the Astros and Rangers tie at the end of the season, the Astros hold the tiebreaker.
The Astros have 23 games left in the 2023 regular season, including two more against the Rangers and three with the Mariners. Meanwhile the Rangers and Mariners will meet seven times to beat each other up. Knock yourselves out, literally, Rangers and Mariners.
After leaving Arlington, the Astros will sprint to the finish line with three games against the San Diego Padres, three vs. the Oakland A’s, six against the Kansas City Royals, three with the Baltimore Orioles, three showdown clashes with the Mariners, and they close out against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Astros opponents have a combined 389-459 record.
And now if you’ll permit me to beat my head against the wall.
As each game passes and the post-season draws closer, it should be clear to everybody (except one person), that Yanier Diaz must be the Astros everyday catcher regardless of who’s pitching. Let Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez throw a temper tantrum, too bad, Diaz is the Astros catcher of the future and the future started yesterday.
You don’t have to look any farther than Monday night’s biggest game of the year (until tonight’s biggest game of the year, etc.) to see the value Diaz brings to the lineup. It’s the little things and the big things.
Little thing: in the fifth inning with one out, the Astros trailing 3-0, Diaz hit a grounder that easily could have been an inning-ending, rally-squashing double play. Except Diaz has surprising speed for a catcher and beat the throw to first. That kept the Astros alive, and they scored three runs to tie the game. Another catcher, to be fair most catchers, would have been out at first by 10 feet.
Big thing: in the seventh inning Diaz blasted a 453-foot home run into the upper deck that made the score 11-5 and crushed any Rangers hope of a comeback.
Yanier Diaz is a superstar in waiting, and he may be the best hitting catcher in baseball already. In the super tight AL West, Diaz’s bat could be the difference between the Astros winning the AL West, settling for a wild card, or please no, finishing out of the money.
Now my head hurts.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”