Wrecking ball.
Wins come in all kinds of different forms, as therefore do losses, and if I were blogging the Astros season I don’t know that I’d have the will to write this one up.
Though, really, as new as the story line might have been Monday night, it was true to the formula, and I’m not sure I’d even have the strength to watch games against Texas if Houston were my team.
(Speaking of which, I know that when Nolan Ryan was with Rangers management, he insisted on attendance numbers reflecting actual bodies in seats rather than tickets sold. There’s just no way that’s the measure in Houston, which announced 22,147 on hand for last night’s game, which would be more than 52 percent capacity. As sparse as the crowd looked for this game against the Astros’ chief rival with the club hanging desperately onto playoff hopes, if this were “Price Is Right,” that first digit is the one I’d submit was false.)
There’s a lot I could comment about as far as Texas 4, Houston 3 (12) is concerned, but I could just as easily start and finish this report the way Heidi Watney opened the Texas-Houston highlights package overnight on MLB Network’s “Quick Pitch”:
“So . . . yeah.”
Probably today’s entry if I were writing with Astros-tint glasses on.
The game started with Carlos Gomez showered (don’t let that term exaggerate the numbers on hand) with boos, just as he was the last time he’d been in that ballpark, then wearing the home white-and-orange.
And, because of course, after watching Doug Fister’s first pitch for a strike, Gomez worked a walk.
More boos.
Gomez’s final 25 Houston plate appearances were all at-bats. Not a single base on balls.
Included in that stretch were four hitless trips to the plate on August 5 against Texas: a groundout, foul popout, and strikeout facing Martin Perez, and a flyout to right off of Tony Barnette. Gomez only pinch-ran in the remainder of that three-game series.
Meanwhile, Gomez has started all but one game in his three weeks with Texas. His walk rate (14.5 percent of his plate appearances) is more than double what it was this year with Houston (6.5 percent). He has cut his strikeout-to-walk rate in half (4.76 vs. 2.40). In a little more than a fifth of the plate appearances, he has four home runs with the Rangers, compared to five with the Astros. He’s been more reliable defensively.
In his first moment in Minute Maid Park since being released, and in the first moment of this series, far more critical for one team than the other, Gomez walked, and that was just about perfect.
And the final moment of Texas 4, Houston 3 featured Jared Hoying, whom Jeff Banister, prioritizing defense, stuck with through two extra-inning at-bats (nearly rewarded with a two-run home run to pad the 12th-inning lead Rougned Odor’s blast had built), charging in on George Springer’s flare down the right field line, intercepting the ball’s path to the grass just as Odor was arriving as well, and leaping on the run not only to avoid a collision with Odor but to glove the ball in a pocket of air space that Odor’s glove couldn’t reach or spoil.
That catch, sealing Jake Diekman’s fourth save and the Rangers’ 14th win over the Astros this season in 17 opportunities, went the Rangers’ way, sort of epitomizing Texas vs. Houston in 2016.
Sam Dyson blew the save when Evan Gattis destroyed an inside 1-1 fastball, tying things at 3-3 with one out in the ninth, and while it was Dyson’s first run allowed in three weeks (seven straight scoreless efforts), in a way that was also emblematic of Texas-Houston there was some residual benefit.
One, it gave Keone Kela an opportunity to right himself after bad outings Tuesday and Saturday in Seattle and Anaheim. He faced eight Astros in the 10th and 11th, issuing one walk and permitting one hit (an infield single that might have been a 4-3 putout had he not stuck his pitching hand out and deflected the ball) while fanning the insanely hot Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa.
Two, it gave Diekman the chance to reverse a two-week trend of uncharacteristic ineffectiveness (four games, nine of 12 batters reaching safely — four on extra-base hits and four on walks, .625/.750/1.375 slash, 45 percent strike rate).
Diekman saw three batters, starting each with strike one.
Flyout to left.
Flyout to center.
Flyout to right, with Hoying grabbing it over Odor as if he were finishing off a posterizing Lob City dime.
Three, after Fister gave Houston only five frames, A.J. Hinch entrusted an inning to each of his winning bullpen pieces (Chris Devenski, Michael Feliz, Luke Gregerson, Will Harris) before handing the ball to Ken Giles in the 10th, a sound baseball move in what was a 3-3 game since the home team can’t record a save in extra innings.
Having already expended Devenski, Feliz, Gregerson, and Harris — and not going to Pat Neshek for what would have been his first back-to-back-nights assignment since June 2 — Hinch sent Giles back out for the 11th after his 11-pitch 10th.
Giles retired the Rangers in order, as he’d done in his first frame, but it put 26 pitches of mileage on his arm, and now Giles may not be available tonight (or, theoretically, not at his sharpest if used).
Potentially being without your best pitcher in the second game of this huge series, having used him for two innings in a loss . . . .
So . . . yeah.
Whether Giles is out tonight or not, the possibility that Diekman and Kela might have turned a corner with their extra-inning work last night is super-encouraging, as this club marches toward 162+.
(Hey: Post-season T-shirts!)
Buster Olney tweeted this morning: “When HOU/TEX haven’t played each other in ’16, HOU 72-55, TEX 72-56. But Texas [is] 14-3 vs. [the] Astros and has singlehandedly wrecked their season.”
Those final four words scream hyperbolic cliché, but they’re right on in this case and, basically, inescapably true.
Texas, alone, and in all kinds of ways, has wrecked Houston’s 2016 season.
I haven’t even made mention of what Martin Perez and Jonathan Lucroy did last night, and both were arguably as big a part of the story as anyone.
I could have said a lot more about Odor’s night, which featured three more hits (run-scoring double, run-scoring single, flyout, walk, and the decisive homer — his third extra-inning game-winner this year) and padded his .333/.348/.697 season line against Houston in 69 plate appearances.
I could have spent time examining the 0-for-18 (with six strikeouts) to which the Texas staff held Houston’s formidable 1 through 4 hitters — Springer, Bregman, Jose Altuve, and Correa — on a night when even a little bit of production from those four could have changed the result.
There’s much more I could have written about Texas 4, Houston 3 from the Rangers’ standpoint.
If I were writing it from an Astros perspective, I’m afraid I’ve had said a whole lot less.