The Disaster
You saw it. We all lived through it. The Mariners starting pitchers were excellent. The Astros bats were not. It sets up an all-or-nothing final week for the final Wild Card spot.
There is only one word to describe the Astros series against the Mariners. A disaster.
In setting expectations before the series on BlueSky, I wrote that “the only disaster for the Astros is getting swept and putting their playoff spot in jeopardy.” That did not seem like to me. And yet, here we are.
The big difference in the series was starting pitching. The Mariners got two quality starts in the three games. Last night, Logan Gilbert gave up only 1 run on 3 hits and 1 walk in 6 innings pitched. On Saturday, George Kirby gave up only 5 hits with no walks while shutting out the Astros over 6 innings.
The best Mariners start was not a quality start. Bryan Woo was removed after 5 innings due to pectoral tightness, but he dominated the Astros to the point, allowing only 1 hit and 1 walk in a shutout performance.
Hunter Brown was good on Friday night, giving up only a pair of solo home runs. But Woo outdueled him. He also was the Astros only good starting pitcher this weekend. Framber Valdez continued his slump in the final third of this season by allowing 5 runs, 6 hits, 4 walks on Saturday night.
The Astros sent Jason Alexander to the mound on Sunday Night Baseball and it was the most disastrous, giving up 7 runs, including a grand slam to JP Crawford and a two-run shot to Cal Raleigh. He was removed after just 1.1 innings. Jules will have more on Alexander’s start later today. But you don’t have to be as good a pitching analyst as she is to know that’s an awful start.
Of course, the Astros starting pitching couldn’t do it all on their own. They got help—or the complete lack of a help to be more accurate—from the bats. The Astros slashed .208/.243/.327 over the three games against the Mariners. Remarkably enough, the performed even worse with runners in scoring position, with but 2 hits in 20 at bats. They managed only 3 walks while striking out 28 times.
Put it all together, and the Astros scored only 7 runs over the weekend. If you want to blame the hitters more than the starting pitchers for the sweep, I won’t disagree with you strongly. Frankly, the right answer to who is to blame for the disaster we saw this weekend is both.
As I wrote after the Astros sweep of the Rangers (and boy, does that feel like a long time ago), I wrote that “At this time of the season, it does not matter how you win. It only matters that you do win.”
If you look at this season from the Mariners perspective, you see a team that lost 15 of 21 games from mid-August to early September. They have now won 13 of their last 14. And that big losing stretch followed an eight game winning streak. It’s hard to explain such patterns, other than it is baseball. The sport make sense—sometimes—in the long run, but rarely makes sense in the short run.
As a result of this series, the Mariners hold a 3 game lead in the division as well as the tiebreaker with 6 games to play. As we have seen, the Mariners are a team capable of instantly going into a big losing stretch. But that is the only hope for the Astros to win the division. It is exceedingly unlikely to happen.
The bigger concern for the Astros right now is making the playoffs. After play yesterday, the Astros record is 84-72. That is tied with the Guardians, and one game behind both the Red Sox and Tigers, who are both 85-71.
The good news is that while their playoff spot is in jeopardy, the Astros are not out of it. If the Astros have a good week, they can still make the playoffs and one of the other teams listed in the paragraph above will have to stay home sooner.
The bad news is that the Astros lose the tiebreaker to each of those 3 teams. MLB eliminated Game 163 tiebreaker games in the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement.
To get to the playoffs, the Astros have to finish one game ahead of the Guardians, Red Sox, or Tigers. A 4-2 week gives the Astros a good chance to get to the playoffs. They definitely will if the Guardians go 3-3. But losing out on the tiebreaker means that a 3-3 final week probably is not good enough. It would require big slumps from the other contenders.
Can the Astros turn it around and win their upcoming series in Anaheim and West Sacramento? It is definitely possible. Again, the team just swept the Rangers in their previous series. Can the Astros have a bad week and miss the playoffs? Again, it is definitely possible. We all watched them get waxed by the Mariners?
The season is down to 6 games. The wonderful and terrible part of that is that anything can happen in those 6 games. It could be as good as the Rangers series and as terrible as the Mariners series.
In the end, all that matters is that they win some games this week. Fingers crossed.