D4 EZ SU T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T.S A T U R D A Y, O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 1 9
— meaning their production was
at least 25 percent above league
average.
And we mean that literally
about the all-star lineups. The
nine starters for the NL in the
2014 All-Star Game, which
included a designated hitter, had
an average OPS that season of
.879. The nine Astros starters
Friday had an average OPS of .907
— led by the 1.067 of phenom DH
Yordan Alvarez, the runaway
front-runner for AL rookie of the
year, and 1.015 of third baseman
Alex Bregman, a leading
candidate for MVP.
It doesn’t mean the Astros
can’t lose the next three games
and get sent home shockingly
early — they somehow lost seven
straight at one point in June. But
the way their rotation sets up, it is
almost impossible to envision.
After the Rays faced Verlander
in Game 1, their task gets no
easier. In Saturday’s Game 2, the
Astros will send to the mound the
second of their twin aces — right-
hander Gerrit Cole, who is also
the only pitcher in the same
discussion with Verlander for the
AL Cy Young Award, which, when
it is announced next month, will
either be Verlander’s second or
Cole’s first. Oh, and Game 3 will
be started by Zack Greinke, who
also owns a Cy Young and who
went 8-1 with a 3.02 ERA after
being acquired from Arizona at
the trade deadline.
As an organization, the Astros
are known throughout the sport
as the most ruthlessly devoted to
analytics and technology — a trait
that can make them appear from
the outside as cold and robotic.
But sometimes it is best to
forget all that and simply admire
the collection of players the
Astros have assembled — who
come in all shapes and sizes but
almost uniformly share one trait:
They are very good at baseball.
[email protected]difference-maker, the Astros
became the first team in history to
lead the majors from both sides:
Their pitchers struck out the most
hitters, while their hitters struck
out the fewest times.
There have been all-star
lineups that weren’t as potent as
the Astros’, which on Friday
featured seven hitters with an on-
base-plus-slugging percentage
above .875 and an OPS+ (adjusted
for park and league effects) of 125greatest teams in a generation.
Their run differential of plus-280,
for example, is the most by any
team since the 116-win Seattle
Mariners of 2001. Their 288
homers would have been a major
league record — except the
Minnesota Twins and New York
Yankees also broke the old mark
and hit 307 and 306, respectively.
At a time when the strikeout
reigns supreme across the
industry as the ultimateabilities of players such as Altuve
and Verlander, we should also
take a moment to gaze in wonder
at the Astros. Even in the
turbocharged atmosphere of 2019
baseball, with its stratified
standings and an outrageous
home run pace, they stood out.
If the Astros were to win
10 more games this month and
thus claim their second World
Series title in three years, they
may be remembered as one of theA critical mistake came in the
fifth, four batters after Altuve’s
homer, when Astros first
baseman Yuli Gurriel hit a popup
into the area near the foul line in
shallow right. Three Rays
defenders converged, but the ball
glanced off the glove of second
baseman Brandon Lowe — a play
ruled an error, with two runs
crossing the plate.
Just as we need to step back
sometimes and admire theas he has done 137 times, regular
and postseason combined, in his
career — could not otherwise be
physically possible. That 97.5-
mph fastball wasn’t even the
hardest gas Altuve has gone deep
against this year; last month, he
turned around a 99-mph heater.
Jose Altuve, we remind
ourselves again, you are
remarkable.
For that matter, so are you,
Justin Verlander.
On Friday, the Astros’ 36-year-
old ace — the oldest player on
either team — carried a no-hitter
into the fifth inning and settled
for seven scoreless innings, a
representative performance at
the end of a Cy Young-caliber
regular season. Verlander struck
out eight, never allowed a runner
past first base and departed with
a six-run lead.
Only after Verlander left did
things get interesting, with the
Rays scoring twice off Astros
reliever Ryan Pressly in the
eighth and bringing the tying run
to the on-deck circle before setup
man Will Harris entered and
retired Ji-Man Choi on a
grounder to third.
And so the AL West champion
Astros, who led the majors with
107 wins, made an emphatic
opening statement to their 2019
postseason, which they entered
as the consensus pick to win it all.
Days such as Friday remind us of
why that is so.
Locked in a scoreless tie for
41 / 2 innings against an excellent
team — the Rays won 96 games in
the cutthroat AL East and beat
Oakland in the wild-card game
Wednesday night — and facing
one of the hardest-throwing
starters in the game in Glasnow,
the Astros simply outlasted their
opponent, waiting for them to
make a couple of mistakes, then
pouncing when they did.
ON BASEBALL FROM D 1
ON BASEBALL
Welcome to Houston: Land of all-stars and no weaknesses as far as the eye can see
BOB LEVEY/GETTY IMAGES
Justin Verlander walked off the field for the final time after striking out the side. He held the Rays to one hit over seven scoreless innings.N 0984 3x12Sign up for Must Reads,
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