THE PALLILOG
Here's the lowdown on the Houston Astros’ potential Wild Card foes
Sep 25, 2024, 6:46 pm
The playoffs are right around the corner! Composite Getty Image.
Let’s cover this at the top. Momentum is a zero factor going into the postseason. It’s an even sillier concept with the Astros having to deal with a best-of-three Wild Card Series just to get to the Divisional Series before ideally getting a crack at an eighth consecutive American League Championship Series. It wouldn’t matter if the Astros (or any other team) rode a 20 game winning streak or 20 game losing streak to the end of the regular season. Either streak would be quite a pre-series storyline, but would be utterly immaterial. Momentum is something a team has until it doesn’t. It merely describes the status of the moment. It can turn on a dime, it can end in a heartbeat. Game-by-game, inning-by-inning, or on a single pitch/swing.
Health on the other hand, is a huge factor. Yordan Alvarez’s status is very much up in the air because of his right knee sprain. Silly folks might say that without Yordan the Astros would be doomed. That’s absurd. It’s not how baseball works. How did the Astros fare over three months without their best player this season (Kyle Tucker)? Slack can be picked up, even more so within a shorter stretch of games. Of course a sidelined Yordan would weaken the Astros’ lineup significantly and make them less likely to advance, but that his absence couldn’t be overcome is preposterous. The Astros also could be eliminated in a hurry at full strength. On the plus side of the health spectrum, Alex Bregman’s elbow seems to have settled down. Though having the worst full season of his career Bregman is still a good player and a vital cog. He’s swinging the bat pretty well (three home runs in the last seven games) and his defense is stellar.
You never know where the biggest difference making performances will come from in a postseason series or postseason overall. You count on the biggest stars shining. Sometimes they do sometimes they don’t. Jeremy Pena has been an absolutely mediocre offensive player over his three seasons in the big leagues. But in the 2022 postseason he was a superstar. Last season Adolis Garcia was very good for the Texas Rangers. In the ALCS against the Astros he morphed into Hank Aaron.
Whether swinging a tired bat or merely slumping, Jose Altuve needs some rejuvenation before Tuesday gets here. Over his last 12 games Altuve is nine for 51. That’s a .177 batting average. Just one double, one home run, and three walks over those 12 games makes for a .491 OPS. Altuve has had a fine season, but decline in his game at 34 years old is clear. Altuve’s 117 strikeouts obliterate his previous career worst total of 91. In Cleveland this weekend Altuve needs to go six for seven or better, seven for ten or better, or eight for 13 or better to finish with the eighth .300 or better batting average of his sensational career.
Consider if at the end of spring training I presented the following to you as facts-to-be ahead of the final weekend of the regular season: Excepting the short-COVID 2020 season Altuve will have his worst season since 2013. Bregman will post the worst full-season stats of his career. Kyle Tucker will miss almost half the season to a broken leg. Chas McCormick’s quality play will disintegrate into a near season-long slump. Justin Verlander will win four games. Those four will be one more than Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia, and Lance McCullers win combined. The Astros will be 17-27 in one-run games. In games tied after seven innings their record will be 5-13. In games tied after eight they will be 8-14. In extra-inning games they will be 6-10. Not one time all season will they win a game they trail after eight innings, they will be 0-56 in them.
Those are ALL facts about the 2024 Astros. And here they are prepping for yet another postseason. Being in a crummy AL West was a boon to the cause, but it’s still remarkable.
So which team is showing up to take its shot at the Astros in the lightning round best-of-three Wild Card Series? Outcomes are never a certainty, but the Detroit Tigers finishing their schedule with three games at home against the worst team in MLB history post-1900 (Chicago White Sox) gives A.J. Hinch’s club a clear path to the Tigers’ first postseason appearance since 2014. If the Tigers clinch before Sunday they don’t have to use sure-fire AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal that day, and would have him good to go in game one of the Wild Card series. That would make the Tigers the least preferable of the possible Astros’ opponents. If Skubal has to pitch Sunday, the only way he’d be available against the Astros would be on three days’ rest in a decisive game three (if necessary). If the Tigers and Kansas City Royals finish tied for the last two Wild Card berths the Astros play the Tigers.
That is not saying the Astros getting the Royals would be anything approaching a bye. For openers the Royals would have the best player on the field in presumptive AL Most Valuable Player Award runner-up Bobby Witt Jr. The Royals snapped a seven-game losing streak Tuesday. They face a tough closing series in Atlanta with the Braves still alive for an NL Wild Card. If they get to Houston, the Royals have excellent starting pitching. Their bad bullpen would be boosted by moving two starters to that pen. The Minnesota Twins are staggering, but close at home against the Baltimore Orioles who have basically nothing to play for in that series. If the Twins climb into a tie with either or both Detroit and K.C., the Twins win all tiebreakers.
Seattle is mathematically alive but the Mariners lose tiebreakers to everybody and essentially need a miracle to return to Houston next week.
*Catch our weekly Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast. Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and I discuss varied Astros topics. The first post for the week generally goes up Monday afternoon (second part released Tuesday). There will be extra editions during the postseason. Find all via The SportsMap HOU YouTube channel or listen to episodes in their entirety at Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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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.”