7 Victories Worth Singing About
The Astros took 7 of 9 against the two best teams in baseball. It's a measuring stick about how good this team is, even if it will tell us little about October.
What’s your favorite song about New York City? The most iconic is of course “New York, New York” originally sung by Liza Minelli, but always associated with Frank Sinatra.1 It’s so New York, it’s the Yankees victory song. The Mets use a different New York song—New York Groove by Ace Frehly—to celebrate their victories. The celebration song most associated with the last Yankees World Series title is “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, a song my New York City students once described as “an oldie but a classic.”2 More modern and pop fans may favor “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift, because everything she does seems pretty awesome.
As for me, my taste is music is more roots rock and alt country. So a big song in my life is “New York” by Ryan Adams, which came out in 2001 as I made big pivots in my life. My favorite Christmas song is “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues and featuring Kirstie McColl—spending Christmas in the drunk tank has never sounded so lovely. And for me, New York is where I work and where I met my wife just days after we both moved here. So we had “New York” by They Might be Giants played at our wedding. “The best thing about New York City is you and me.” True then; true now.
That’s seven songs about New York and my guess is that you will have hard time picking your favorite. Or maybe you like one of them, but one stands out for you just because you like it best.3
And you probably feel that same way about the seven victories that the Astros just won over the two New York teams. Maybe you liked one of the blowout wins over the Mets on the last two Tuesdays because there’s enough stress from the real world, and you don’t want more from your baseball team. Maybe you liked the Verlander classic on Friday at Yankee Stadium because it erased the bad mojo from the blown save in the game before. Or you preferred Verlander’s other gem on Wednesday afternoon in Queens because you like pitchers duels. Or you liked the combined no hitter on Saturday afternoon for obvious reasons. Or the win last night in the 1 game home series against the Yankees because it makes you feel good this morning.
All were fun to watch individually, and put together, it’s been one of the most fun stretches in Astros regular season play in a good while. And that comes not from the fact that these teams were from New York, but that these are the best two teams in their leagues by record.
The Mets are tied with the Dodgers for the most wins in the National League at 47, and they are on pace to win 100 games this season. The Yankees are doing even better. Their 56-21 record has brought on comparisons to the 2001 Mariners. And if they can keep up their .727 winning percentage, they would win 117 games, one better than those Mariners. And I have good news for the Yankees in their pursuit of the Ichiro-led Seattle team: they only play two more games against the Astros this season.
A Measuring Stick
Entering the nine game stretch against the New York teams, the Astros had completed a 34 game stretch against teams outside of playoff position. I wrote a Twitter thread about it at the time, which noted that the team did okay against those teams—winning 20 of the 34 games. And the good news is that the rest of the AL West had collapsed during that period, so they increased their lead in the division from 1/2 a game to 9 1/2 games.
But the win total was good, not great. And the lack of offensive performance during that stretch of games left some wondering if the Astros could compete in October against the best teams in baseball.
These nine games against the top two teams in baseball severed as a measuring stick for the Astros. Would this version of the team—the pitching and defense forward squad of 2022—be able to meet the achievements of its recent predecessors and compete in the playoffs.
From that standpoint, this nine game stretch couldn’t have gone much better. The Astros not only won seven of the nine games they played, but the never saw or threw a pitch while they were trailing on the scoreboard.
The games—especially those in Yankee Stadium—were played with a playoff intensity, or as much of it as you can find in a regular season game. Yankee hitters did not score much against the Astros pitchers—they averaged 3 runs a game in their 5 games against the Orange and Blue—but their ability to have high quality at bats, their ability to foul off pitch after pitch, and their ability to come back late kept my nerves on edge throughout the series. That the Astro pitchers—with the exception of Ryan Pressly’s blown save last Thursday in the Bronx—could withstand and defeat the quality Yankee bats is a testament to their skill.
This nine game set against New York teams pretty definitely answers the question of whether this is a team whose record is propped by playing in a bad division, or one of the best teams in baseball. As it has been for the past six seasons, this is one of the handful of best teams in baseball.
So it was a successful as a measuring stick. Maybe not. Justin Verlander addressed this issue after his eight shutout innings at CitiField on Wednesday afternoon. He and his teammates never doubted they were this good.
No Meaning for October
The high quality of play from the Astros and Yankees left many observers pining for more of the same in October. After all, these are the two best teams in baseball by record right now. They played a set of games that were both high in quality and entertainment value—the largest margin of victory in the 5 games against the Yankees was 3.
Should we just fast-forward to the ALCS?
We shouldn’t look too far ahead though. And there are two reasons for that.
First, the Astros and the Yankees may be the two best teams in the American League, but that is no guarantee that both teams, or even one of the two teams will face off in the ALCS. As always, the baseball playoffs remain a crapshoot. Think all the way back to last year, when an 88 win team that got hot at the right time took the title.
The Yankees and Astros are near locks to receive byes to the American League Division Series and to avoid the wild card round. The Astros currently stand 7 games ahead of the Twins for the #2 seed, and Baseball Reference gives them a 97.3% chance of getting that bye. But it only gives the Astros a 58.6% chance of reaching the ALCS. The five game ALDS, which the Astros will play against a high quality team (today, they’d play the winner of a 3 game Twins-Rays series), is too short a series for quality to determine the winner. Luck will play a big role. And it will as well for the Yankees, who for all their winning ways this season, will have to win 3 of 5 against a quality team (right now, it would be the Blue Jays or the Red Sox).
Both teams are favored to get to the ALCS, but there is a greater chance that one of the two doesn’t make it than that both do. And while I’d love to defeat the Mets in October to revenge the scar that the 1986 NLCS put on my 13-year old Astros fan heart, it’s low odds we get that exact World Series matchup.
The other reason this stretch tells us little about October is that what happens in the regular season and what happens in October are not well correlated. The playoff history of baseball is filled with teams that dominated a regular season series against their playoff opponent who then lost the series. Heck, in 2015 the Cubs beat the Mets in all seven regular season games, and lost all four contests in the NLCS.
The games will be different in October should the Astros and Yankees meet (or the Astros and Mets) for a number of reasons. The two teams will set up their pitching rotations to compel a matchup of aces, rather than to avoid it. The two teams will add players at the trade deadline to address their weaknesses. And both teams will pray that their big stars stay healthy as they have during the regular season (hurry back, Yordan and Pena).
And of course, each baseball game is different. What happens in one game often doesn’t carry over to the next. Think of how devastating the bullpen blowup last Thursday felt, how little that seemed to matter over the next two games as Verlander and Cristian Javier dominated on the bump, and how little it matters in the long run just a week (and 3 straight 1-2-3 innings from Ryan Pressly) later.
And another reason why the regular season series will have little carry over to October—baseball players develop confidence in themselves and their abilities. Look at the quote above from Verlander. Some Astros fans may have developed doubts about the team’s quality, or expressed worries that this or that particular weakness would be fatal in October, but the players never doubted their talent and quality.
Some of that is the difference in control between fans and players. We cannot do anything to affect the outcome of a baseball game, so it becomes more natural to worry about what could happen, especially the bad stuff. Players can actually influence the outcome, and one way they do that is by shutting out doubts and distractions, and focusing on doing their job on a baseball field.
Our veteran team, and one led by players like Verlander, Jose Altuve, and Martin Maldonado who have seen nearly every baseball situation possible, does not let anxieties and doubts overcome them. Heck, it’s hard to believe they would risen out of Old Dominion, Venezuela, or Puerto Rico if they couldn’t do that.
This was a fun stretch of baseball, made fun by the excellent performance of the Astros and their seven wins. It may not tell us much about what will happen in October, but it was a reminder of the fact that this team will get to October, and why they will get to October. The Astros have a very good baseball club. One that can measure up to the best teams in each league successfully, even if it’s just a regular season series.
But they were fun regular season series. I’m okay going back to playing lesser team like the Angels and Royals this upcoming week. The Yankees hitters make me nervous every at bat, for good reason. The Angels have two hitters like that. And the Royals—well, Bobby Witt, Jr. looks like he’ll be a good player. But we can return to the more normal atmosphere of regular season baseball.
But the wins against New York were big in the regular season. Each one was worth a song about it. Pick your favorite New York song this morning and sing it in celebration of the Astros owning New York.
It’s worth noting Sinatra’s connection to baseball. He is the second most iconic thing ever born in Hoboken, NJ…after, well baseball. The first actual game was played at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken in 1845. (Footnote on a footnote: the Abner Doubleday invented the game in Cooperstown in 1839 thing is a 100% concocted myth, btw).
Though thinking about it, the lyrics say “Cruisin’ down 8th Street, off-white Lexus/Drivin’ so slow, but BK is from Texas.” If it’s a song about the most talented member of the Knowles-Carter marriage, then it’s a song about Houston.