Like it's 1999.
Dig if U will the picture.
Think back 17 years, if your baseball experience allows it.
It was 1999, and the Texas Rangers, in what was then the most optimistic stretch in franchise history, were once again sent into a circle around the drain by the frustratingly insurmountable New York Yankees.
Back in 1996, Texas had beaten the Yankees, in New York, in its first-ever playoff game, pretty comfortably. The Rangers offense scored six times off David Cone in his six innings of work, and John Burkett went the distance in the 6-2 Texas win.
The Rangers should have won Game Two, but squandered an early 4-1 lead and lost in 12 innings.
They should have won Game Three, the Darren Oliver gem that I could write a book about (if masochistic enough).
They should have won Game Four, but Bobby Witt and seven relievers (including starter Roger Pavlik) couldn’t preserve an early 4-0 Texas lead.
Series over.
But it felt like a battle, like the Rangers’ 2009, like the Cowboys’ 1991, like the precursor to even better things.
Texas, a club that hadn’t reached the playoffs in its first 24 seasons, was back for a second time in three years in 1998.
But the Rangers spit that one up, again at the hands of the Yankees, scoring a total of one run in a three-game sweep.
Then, 1999. The Rangers were a post-season team for the third time in four years.
And the Rangers spit that one up, again at the hands of the Yankees, again scoring a total of one run in a three-game sweep.
It’s a different scale, of course, but I can imagine right now that the Rangers, right now, are to the Astros, a very good baseball team that will make noise this year and for years to come, what the late-’90s Yankees were to the Rangers.
The Astros have dropped 19 games out of their last 25 against Texas.
Ten straight in Arlington.
Eleven of 13 overall.
Last night, Houston sent its ace, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, up against a non-roster invite (coming off two years of relative inactivity) who won the competition in Rangers camp to hold down the number five starter spot for six weeks.
The one who threw the quality start, scattering two runs over six innings, was Arthur Joseph Griffin.
The one who surrendered a career-high-tying 13 base hits (six for extra bases) in 28 at-bats (.464) was Dallas Keuchel.
In what the lefthander said “was probably the best I’ve felt out of my four starts.”
On a night when his counterpart Cy Young Award winner was busy throwing a no-hitter in the other league.
Texas 7, Houston 4 completed yet another Rangers sweep over the Astros, who now share the AL’s worst record with Minnesota, not quite alone in a world that’s so cold.
Look at how Griffin and Keuchel came out of the gate.
Top of the first: Jose Altuve doubles to left. George Springer doubles to left.
Bottom of the first: Delino DeShields dribbles out to Keuchel. Nomar Mazara dribbles out to Keuchel.
Yet, when the frame ended, the Rangers’ temporary fifth starter held a 3-1 lead over the Cy Young winner, courtesy of a single-single-home run sequence that was completed when Ian Desmond hit his first homer as a Ranger — and the only homer Keuchel has surrendered this season.
And it never got closer than that.
Astros manager A.J. Hinch tipped his cap after the game, noting that Texas “did a good job of attacking Dallas [which is not to be confused with what the Houston media has tried doing this week], getting pitches up in the zone to hit.” Said Keuchel: “They’re very smart. They’re smart hitters.”
The Rangers laid off pitches out of the zone, which is Keuchel’s weapon, forced him to come back in the zone, and used the opposite field a lot. It was a great approach, and I’m really digging Anthony Iapoce in a Rangers uniform.
Keuchel gave up six runs in six innings. In his other three 2016 starts, he allowed five runs — combined.
I’m not sure whether Astros players or Astros officials or Astros fans feel snakebit, but if that’s not the right word, whatever all of us felt like at the end of 1996-1998-1999 is probably not a whole lot different.
The Astros are 5-11, with a negative-19 run differential.
There’s something to be learned there, though it’s not conclusive: Last year Houston finished the regular season with a run differential of plus-111, while Texas was at a mere plus-18. And yet the Rangers finished two games ahead.
Sometimes it snows in April, and it probably wasn’t a very happy flight home for Houston last night. The Astros are back home while the Rangers travel to Chicago for the weekend, before returning to Arlington to host the Yankees, who are no longer the kryptonite they were back in that four-year stretch ending in 1999.
Houston will need to figure out a way to turn the Rangers into something different from what they are to them right now, and while it’ll be fine with me if that takes years, you obviously can’t count on that.
From the Texas perspective, the Rangers simply handed the ball to the ref, converted the point after, and now line up for the next kickoff.
The Astros, instead, are likely happy to get away from the thieves in the Temple, and regroup, hopeful that the next time the teams meet — when Yu Darvish could be back — they might be able to put up some resistance to the avalanche that’s just not losing any strength right now.
Fun baseball is fun.