Tag Archives: Houston Astros

The continuing ballad of Billy the Kid

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Billy Wagner

Billy Wagner stood 5’10” . . . but to the hitters facing him, he must have looked and felt 10’5″.

When Billy Wagner called it a career after a short tour with the Braves, he spoke like a man who wasn’t worried about whether he’d make or endure on a Hall of Fame ballot. “I’m not going to change anyone’s mind about whether I’m a Hall of Famer,” the longtime relief pitcher said. “People are either going to like me or hate me, and I can’t change their minds. Besides, life is about a lot more than this game.”

That was fifteen years ago. Tomorrow should reveal that enough voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have changed their minds. Wagner’s first Hall ballot showed him with 10.5 percent of the vote. At this writing, his final appearance on the BBWAA ballot should usher him into Cooperstown with at least 85 percent of the vote, well above the minimum needed.

Thus would Billy the Kid stand on the induction stage with outfielder Ichiro Suzuki (bank on it: he’ll become the first unanimous election among position players on their first Hall ballot), CC Sabathia (another first ballot lock, though a hair over seven points less than Ichiro), and Carlos Beltrán. (80.3 percent.*)

Almost a week ago, Wagner wasn’t sounding as sanguine as he did upon his retirement from the mound. “You’re sitting here and you can’t control [the outcome],” he told The Athletic‘s Tyler Kepner by phone. “It’s tough. I hate it. It’s just not been a very fun experience, especially when it comes down to your tenth and final ballot. It’s not going to be pleasant. It’s a grind, but in a couple of days, this will be over—one way or the other, good or bad.”

That wouldn’t necessarily be true. Wagner could and likely would make an appearance on a future ballot of the Hall’s Contemporary Baseball Era (Players) Committee, perhaps as soon as next December. But it looks as though nobody has to worry about that anymore. Wagner, especially.

Last week you’d have had to go the extra hundred miles to convince him. Last year, he waited and waited only to fall short by five votes. When Kepner asked Wagner if that compared to being spurned for a prom date with his buddies watching live and millions more watching on television, he couldn’t resist laughing. Then, he calmed down again and answered soberly.

“My gosh. You’ve got thirty kids looking at you,” he began.

I’m emotional, I don’t want to be emotional, so I’m fighting it back like, “Well, you know, it’s great.” You’re saying all the things you need to say, but it was awful. So the ballot comes out, they take all their stuff and leave—and you’re still going through practice. There’s no, “Hey guys, we’re going to take a five-minute break here.” You couldn’t do anything. That was rough. I was so embarrassed.

If the current indicators hold, and I’m not sure how you can tumble from 85 percent of the vote to falling beneath the 73 percent line without some very suspect eleventh-hour activity, the man who stood 5’10” as a human being but about 10’5″ to the batters he faced pitching for the Astros, the Phillies, the Mets, the Red Sox, and the Braves, is about to become anything but embarrassed.

Which is more than you can say for those batters over the sixteen-year career that ended in 2010. You might wish to become the proverbial fly on the wall if those batters could round up for a seminar called, “How Not to Hit Billy Wagner—Because You Can’t.” The beginning of Wagner’s Hall of Fame case, and possibly the end, too, is this: Opposing hitters could only hit .187 against him.

.187.

Not even The Mariano himself kept hitters that sharply out of luck. Wagner’s .187 batting average against him will become the lowest BAA of any Hall of Fame relief pitcher. Lower than Rivera and Trevor Hoffman (.211 each), lower than Hoyt Wilhelm (.213), lower than Dennis Eckersley (.225), lower than Goose Gossage (.228), lower than Bruce Sutter (.230), lower than Rollie Fingers (.232), lower than Lee Smith (.235).

Among that group, too, are a mere four who pitched in the most hitter friendly of times: Smith (in the final third of his career), Hoffman, Rivera, and Billy the Kid. That, I’ve written before and don’t mind repeating, should make you wonder what the record would have been if Wagner could have avoided assorted injuries including a late-career Tommy John surgery.

And before you take up carping yet again over his comparatively small number of innings pitched, try to keep these in mind: 1) It wasn’t his idea to finish with 903 innings pitched. 2)  His lifetime walks/hits per inning pitchd (WHIP) rate, as Kepner pointed out, is lower than any pitcher with 900+ innings in the century between the final game of Hall of Famer Addie Joss and Hall of Famer-to-be Wagner. Including The Mariano and Trevor Time.

If it’s numbers you still wish, how about these: The best strikeouts per nine rate (11.92) in baseball history. The best ERA (2.31) by any lefthander in the live ball era (1920 forward). The lowest opposition OPS (.558) in that same century between Joss’s and Wagner’s final games.

All of which are rather surrrealistic for a fellow whose hardscrabble childhood (and “hardscrabble” is phrasing things politely about a kid for whom peanut butter on a cracker was dinner often enough when he was growing up) including driving himself to throw lefthanded because two right elbow fractures made throwing his natural righthanded impossible.

That’s about as close to a self-made Hall of Famer as you can get.

“You’re not supposed to get too high or too low,” Wagner told Kepner about The Wait, “but you just sit with a big pit in your stomach right now, wondering where this thing’s going to go. You’re constantly fighting the buildup to that moment.” Finally, it looks as though Billy the Kid’s going to win his final fight.

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* Seemingly, Beltrán is about to be told about his Astrogate co-masterminding, “All is forgiven.” As if the writers didn’t hear, didn’t see, or chose to ignore, how Astrogate co-exposer Evan Drellich (in Winning Fixes Everything) zinged Beltrán for his post-suspension apology, the one in which he said he wished he’d asked more questions about what the 2017 Astro Intelligence Agency was doing.

Beltrán was as powerful a clubhouse presence as there was on the 2017 Astros, begging the question, what was stopping him from asking those questions? (Emphasis added.)

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This essay was first published at Sports Central.

The Angels star in “Forever Framber”

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Nolan Schanuel

Nolan Schanuel crosses the plate after starting the Angels’ fifth-inning demolition of Framber Valdez Monday.

Framber Valdez started looking a little shaky in the fourth inning Monday. The good news was his Astros supporting him with a 4-1 lead against the Angels and padding it to 6-1 in the bottom of the fourth. The bad news was the top of the fifth.

It wasn’t just that the Angels blasted seven runs in that half inning. It was Astros manager Joe Espada leaving Valdez in to take a beating like that in the first place. Especially considering Espada’s postgame valedictory after the Angels finished what they finally started, a 9-7 win for their fourth win in five games.

“He just kind of was lost,” Espada told reporters postgame. “Started leaving some pitches in the heart of the plate and they put some really good swings on them. “His stuff was really good . . . just that fifth inning he kind of lost the feel for the zone.”

Valdez didn’t look too good in the fourth, either. After more or less cruising through the first three, he threw thirteen pitches only five of which looked genuinely good. He may have been fortunate that the Angels got only two singles in the inning while otherwise grounding into a force out and whacking into an inning-ending double play.

But after Astros left fielder Mauricio Dubón hit a two-run homer off Angels starter Reid Detmers in the bottom of the fourth to set that short-lived 6-1 Astros lead, the Angels went to work almost at once in the top of the fifth, when designated hitter Willie Calhoun smacked a two-strike single to right.

They weren’t exactly looking to detonate bombs. Nobody overswung, nobody tried to turn into a B-2 pilot. But sometimes you can just swing sensibly and discover you’ve a) still got some serious munitions in your bat; and, b) a pitcher who’s throwing you cannonballs without gunpowder behind them.

Valdez walked shortstop Zach Neto on a full count and struck second baseman Kyren Paris out to follow. Up stepped first baseman Nolan Schanuel, and Valdez hung a changeup that got hung into the right field seats. With one swing the Angels cut the Astros’ lead to two.

After a ground out right back to the box, Valdez was all over the place working to left fielder Tyler Ward before Ward finally singled up the pipe. He hung another changeup, sort of, to center fielder Kevin Pillar (he whom the Angels found in the junkyard after Mike Trout went down with a knee injury), and was lucky Pillar could only turn it into a single to left.

Espada still didn’t seem to have a bullpen option at the ready. He’d pay for it with Valdez’s next two pitches. Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe saw a curve ball hanging deliciously enough to send well into the Crawford Boxes, and right fielder Jo Adell sent a hanging sinker the other way into the right field seats almost immediately to follow.

Just like that, the RBI single by Astros catcher Yainer Díaz and three-run homer by second base mainstay José Altuve in the bottom of the second to stake that early 4-1 lead became pleasant memories for Minute Maid Park fans and just a nuisance of mosquitoes agains which the Angels opened seven cans of Raid in the fifth.

“Things got out of hand there,” Valdez said postgame. “The game started off well and sometimes things happened.”

Unlike Valdez’s previous start, which came a day after the Astros practically emptied the bullpen following Ronel Blanco’s ejection (and subsequent suspension) for sticky stuff in the glove, and which saw Valdez take his team deep en route a 3-0 win, the Astro pen wasn’t exactly taxed for Monday.

But no relief was seen until the top of the sixth, with Rafael Montero taking over. He got a rude hello when Neto caught hold of a rising fastball and sent it to the Boxes. That was all the scoring for the Angels and all they really needed, despite some Astro friskiness in the ninth.

Adell may have broken the Astro spirit to stay for the game when he took off running after Díaz’s leadoff drive to right and took a flying leap to steal a homer from Díaz before he hit the fence padding. “He’s growing in front of your face,” said Angels manager Ron Washington postgame. “That was a big-time play and that play right there may have saved the game.”

It might have, considering Dubón singling to follow and Kyle Tucker driving him home with a base hit an out later. But Angels reliever Carlos Estevez held on despite walking Yordan Alvarez to get Alex Bregman—the veteran third baseman who was usually capable with first and second and two out, able to win it with one swing, until this year (.125/.125/.125 slash in this situation)—to fly out to not-too-deep center for the game.

The Angels set a new precedent at Espada’s and Valdez’s expense, too: this was the first time in the Angels’ history that four players 25 or under cleared the fences in the same game.

“I didn’t realize it until after the fact,” O’Hoppe told reporters. “None of us have said it out loud, but I feel like all of us internally had been waiting for a moment like that for a little while.”

“They’re growing up,” Washington observed. “They’re starting to figure things out. They really didn’t try to do too much and they ended up doing a lot. And that’s what it’s about.” Don’t look now, but they’re 7-6 in their past thirteen games including the four-of-five sealed Monday.

Maybe that thinking brings further unforeseen reward. Especially when the other guys’ manager doesn’t have an immediate bullpen answer for a starter who’s begun losing his stuff clearly enough. The Angels won’t get that lucky that often, but maybe continuing to think less-brings-more begins making their own luck.

The earliest no-hitter for his team’s first win

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Ronel Blanco

The Blue Jays got Blancoed for the record books on Monday . . .

You know a man of my ability
he should be smokin’ on a big cigar.
But ’till I get myself straight
I guess I’ll just have to wait
in my rubber suit rubbin’ these cars.

–Jim Croce, “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues”

I have no idea if Ronel Blanco knows who Jim Croce was, never mind if he’s heard the old troubador’s music. But the Dominican righthander who worked at a car wash in his homeland before the Astros handed him a $5,000 bonus when he was 22 can smoke all the big cigars he wants now.

You earn such spoils if you become only the fourth pitcher in Show history to throw a no-hitter for your team’s first win of the regular season, a club that includes Hall of Famer Bob Feller (who did it in 1940, on Opening Day) plus Burt Hooton (Cubs, 1972) and Hideo Nomo (Red Sox, 2001). You earn them when you break Nomo’s record for the earliest regular-season no-hitter in Show history by two days. (Nomo: 4 April; Blanco: 2 April.)

But you might care to share them with your catcher, Yanier Diaz, since he also became the first since 1901 to call a no-hit game from behind the plate and hit a pair out in the same game: solo blasts with two out in the second and one out in the seventh. And, with your left fielder Kyle Tucker, who joined Diaz going long in both innings, a solo in the second and a two-run shot in the seventh.

And pass one to your manager, Joe Espada, who’s become the first manager in Show history to be on the bridge when his first major league win comes with a no-hitter. You might have needed to wait until age 28 to get to the Show at all but Espada ground away a very long time as a minor league infielder turned minor and major league coach before becoming the Astros’ bench coach after 2017.

All that plus a changeup described politely as nasty kept the Blue Jays’s bats from hitting anything past Astro fielders when not striking out while the Astros dropped a ten-run, twelve-hit assault upon last year’s AL wild card victims. (They lost two straight to the Twins in that set.)

All the Astros wanted in Minute Maid Park was to shake off the season-opening sweep the Yankees dropped on them that included three comeback wins for the latter. They couldn’t have gotten a better shake-off if they’d hired a scriptwriter and his number-one script doctor at once.

Fairly enough, the Jays exacted a little revenge the following day. José Altuve wants to open the proceedings with a leadoff bomb against José Berríos in the top of the fourth? We’ll just see about that, said Davis Schneider, with two out in the top of the ninth and Daulton Varsho pinch-running for Justin Turner, hammering Josh Hader’s slightly hanging slider more than slightely beyond the center field fence. Thus the 2-1 Jays final.

But it wasn’t enough to dull or diminish Blanco’s blanking Monday. Nobody can take that from him.

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN THE RECORD BOOKS

Slumpbusting Thumps Dept.—Bryce Harper opened the season 0-for-11 with only a pair of walks placing him on base. Then he took it out on Reds started Graham Ashcraft on Tuesday for openers, hitting a 1-2 service over the Citizens Bank Park center field fence in the bottom of the first. He abused Ashcraft opening the bottom of the fourth, too, hitting the first pitch into the lower right field seats.

Harper wasn’t even close to finished, either. With the bases loaded, one out, and Brent Suter, the second Reds reliever of the night, on the mound, Harper unloaded on a full count and sent one two-thirds of the way up the lower right center field seats. Making the score 8-1, Phillies. They needed all that insurance plus Brandon Marsh’s solo bomb in the top of the ninth, after all, since the Reds pried three more runs out before expiring on the wrong end of a 9-4 Phillies win.

Harper became the 56th player and third Phillie to hit three home runs including a salami slice in the same game. The previous two such Phillie phloggers: Should-be Hall of Famer Dick Allen (29 September 1968) and Jayson Werth (16 May 2008). All three such games have something else in common: thirteen runs scored total, though Allen’s and Werth’s resulted in 10-3 Phillie wins.

OH, BY THE WAY . . .

Place Your Betts Dept.—Mookie Betts has now played eight regular-season games this year. He has five home runs, fifteen hits in 38 plate appearances, and eight walks. The only problem there is that four of the five times he hit them out there wasn’t a Dodger to be found on base ahead of him, and the Dodgers have been 3-2 in the games he’s dialed the Delta Quadrant so far.

But the Mookie Monster has also scored fourteen times, and other than by himself it seems Freddie Freeman has shown him the most love after he’s reached base: Freeman has sent him home five times over those first eight.

Did I mention that, as of Wednesday morning, Betts leads the National League in hits, bombs, walks, and total bases? That he leads the NL with a .605 on-base percentage thus far? That he leads the entire Show with his 1.772 OPS?

“They think you’re supposed to win running away”

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Dusty Baker

“After awhile, you just get tired of answering questions.”—Dusty Baker.

The Yardbarker headline says, “Dusty Baker blames surprising source for retirement.” Then, citing his interview with The Steam Room podcast hosts Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley, they note the “surprising source” is “bloggers and tweeters” Baker deemed unfair. Baker is not necessarily wrong.

“We had a lot of success here, Ernie and Charles, and then the last couple of months here weren’t very pleasant, because we weren’t ten games ahead,” Baker said of his Astros, whom he managed to a seventh American League Championship Series game this year and in pan-damn-ic short 2020, plus a 2021 World Series loss in six but a 2022 World Series ring—also in six.

You spoil people. They think you’re supposed to win this every year running away and it’s not like that. Every year’s different.

There was a whole bunch of criticism from 30-year-olds and bloggers and tweeters that I’m not doing this and I don’t know that, and I told my wife, ‘You know, I’m kind of tired of this and tired of the scrutiny and if I could go manage and show up at say 6:30 for a 7 o’clock game and leave 30 minutes after the game, don’t do the (pregame and postgame interviews), I could manage for another four or five years.’ You know what I mean? After a while, you just get tired of answering questions.

God and His servant Casey Stengel only know success can soil and spoil. In certain ways, the 74-year-old Baker and his Astros were actually fortunate. Their run of sustained success is comparatively recent. Astro fans actually have time to reconsider, reflect, and remind themselves that sustained success may not always live long. Their own franchise history might be a fine place to start.

They might look to those longtime American League ogres who carried slightly more than half a century worth of pennants and slightly more than a quarter century worth of World Series titles into the current century. Yankee fans are nothing if not spoiled rotten enough to believe a) the World Series is illegitimate without the Yankees in it; and, b) they are as entitled to Yankee success as the Yankees themselves.

They might look to the National League West owners, too. Those Dodgers who’ve won ten of the past eleven NL West races, including eight straight before 2021 and the past two consecutive, and who had considerable success in the second half of the 20th Century. Starting with winning six pennants (including two pair of back-to-back flags) and Brooklyn’s only World Series in eleven years; continuing with four pennants and three World Series rings within their first nine years in Los Angeles.

Dodger fans are almost as spoiled as Yankee fans these days. And, almost as frustrated. They may not yet think a World Series is illegitimate without the Dodgers in it, but they can’t fathom any more than the team itself how the Dodgers could win ten of eleven NL West titles with only one pennant and Series ring to show for it.

If Baker (once a Dodger player himself) thinks bloggers and tweeters were rough on his Astros this year, he may not have seen how rough they were on the Yankees and the Dodgers. That roughness almost makes any hammerings on the Astros for not running away with the AL West this year seem like love taps.

Baker also may not have seen how much rougher than that were lots of blogging and tweeting fans of other teams upon whom atomic expectations fell at the season’s beginning but upon whom atomic deflations fell almost as fast. Met fans of the past several years have come to believe a season lost upon one bad inning—in April, never mind when big moves became big falls.

Don’t get me started on Cub and Red Sox fans, even if the former finally broke its long World Series drought almost eight years ago and the latter have more World Series rings this century (four) than anyone else. Or Cardinal fans, priding themselves as the best in the game but guilty of unnecessary roughness when the Redbirds finished at the bottom of the weak-enough NL Central this year after a decade of nine first or second place finishes in eleven seasons. Or Braves fans, respoiled by recent success after the comparative drought following that protracted NL East ownership of the 1990s-early Aughts.

Baseball is about rooting and caring, but too many fans take protracted defeat and failed high expectations personally. There may never again be the Yankees’ 20th Century dominance. God willing, the Yankees today won’t succumb to the temptation too many of their fans still ask: What would George do? More fan bases than just the Yankees’ base see lack of success and wish their teams had that kind of owner. Not so fast, folks.

There may take several if not many years before the next small dynasty comes out to play. Nobody guarantees that a solid club of Rangers who just won the World Series in five thrilling games can do it again, and again, and again, consecutively or at least consistently. Nobody guarantees the Astros’ success run will continue indefinitely.

The advent of the blogosphere and social media makes fan frustration seem about a thousand times more intense than when all we had was the morning paper, the evening news sports reports, and assorted retrospective books by which to go. Interviewers asking foolish or even stupid questions didn’t begin with Xtwitter.

Brutal fan attacks didn’t end with the letters to the editor sections. Death threats, even, didn’t end when Roger Maris (single season) and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron (career) finished knocking the Sacred Babe to one side in the arguable two most hallowed pages of the record books.

Baker’s hardly the only manager who ever got fed up with the witless who come forth worse than whatever mis-step they’re criticising. He may be the first to retire over it. Some of us think we should consider ourselves fortunate if certain players don’t retire when the social media universe attacks them without knowing the possible wherefores behind what they’re attacking.

Questioning mediocrity is one thing. But when once-glittering star players decline when they’re not exactly old men just yet, the social mediaverse seems to prefer hammering first and asking questions later. Even when it sees those players among the walking wounded on the injured list, the social mediaverse is only too prepared to dismiss them as fragile goldbricks still.

Go ahead and say Baker finally couldn’t stand the heat so he walked out of the kitchen at last, if it makes you feel good. But ask yourselves, honestly, how many of you would really be willing to go to work when it’s before five-figure audiences in a ballpark and seven figure audiences watching television, listening to radio, watching online, Xtweeting as they watch, or all the above.

That’s what I thought.

ALCS Game Seven: Seriously!

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Adolis García

García after scoring in the first after his own long RBI single. It was the prelude to a two-bomb, five-hit, five-steak night and nailing the ALCS MVP.

They may yet call the now-concluded American League Championship Series The Adolis García Show. And all it took was getting enraged over being hit by a Game Five pitch to kick the usually exuberant Rangers right fielder into overdrive that went to warp speed in Game Six then ludicrous speed in Game Seven. Seriously?

There are plenty who say the two sweetest words in a baseball fan’s vocabulary are “Game Seven.” They certainly were for the Rangers Monday night, blowing the Astros away from the ALCS, 11-4, taking all four games played in Houston while they were at it, and hoisting García as the ALCS Most Valuable Player while they were at it.

How do you possibly follow a dramatic late-Game Six grand slam after spending the earlier parts of that game striking out four times? García made the answer too easy in Game Seven: A first-inning RBI single for the second of three Ranger runs in the frame. A leadoff home run in the top of the third. A two-run single in the top of a four-run fifth. A one-out homer in the top of the eighth.

And, more than a little egg on the face of Astros relief pitcher Bryan Abreu, who’d drilled García so noisily in Game Five but came into Game Seven with the Astros already on life support. With one and all mindful that his two-game suspension wouldn’t be served until next season, after all, Abreu drilled the Rangers’ designated hitter Mitch Garver with one out in the top of the sixth, the out being (of all people) García popping out to Astros first baseman José Abreu.

One out later, Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe hit a two-run homer to make things 10-2. García’s eighth-inning bomb might not have been absolutely necessary given the final outcome, but had to be as delicious an exclamation point to slam onto this set as anything else the Rangers might have found in making sure the Astros’ chances to become repeat World Series winners disappeared.

Seriously!

The Astros hardly helped themselves in the end. Bedeviled by injuries during the season and, almost inexplicably, playing below .500 at home while being a road powerhouse, manager Dusty Baker had to juggle and struggle to keep them in the races as well as take advantage of the Rangers’ September struggles to win the American League West by dint of having won the season series against the Rangers.

They knew the Rangers wouldn’t be pushovers. They had to know the Rangers made themselves more formidable with the five-game winning streak by which they opened their postseason. They simply didn’t bargain for how formidable the Rangers would prove in the ALCS despite the Astros winning all three games of the Arlington leg of the set.

In those three, the Astros out-scored the Rangers, 23-12 in Globe Life Field. But in Minute Maid Park, the Rangers out-scored them, 27-10, including back-to-back blowouts in Games Six and Seven. Any Astro fans thinking the road-warrior nature of the set would turn after Astros second baseman José Altuve’s dramatic three-run homer in the top of the Game Five ninth had that thinking yanked inside-out several times over.

The Astros only looked as though they seized the ALCS momentum there, and when DH Yordan Alvarez opened Game Six’s scoring with an RBI single in the top of the second. But Garver answered with a solo homer in the bottom of that inning, Rangers catcher Jonah Heim parked a two-run homer in the third, and—after another Houston run in the sixth—Garver whacked an RBI double in the eighth and García dropped his three-run bomb in the ninth.

And that bomb turned out to be just a prelude to García’s Game Seven destruction. On a night now-ancient Max Scherzer could have been had, but with only three runs to offer including veteran third baseman Alex Bregman’s third-inning, one-out solo homer, the Astros were had, instead.

They got nothing off Jordan Montgomery, usually a Rangers starter but coming out of the bullpen on an all-hands-on-deck night for both sides, over two innings despite pushing to first and second in the fourth. They could pry only one run out of Aroldis Chapman with Alvarez’s RBI single in the seventh; they could yank only one run out of Rangers finisher José Leclerc when Altuve hit Leclerc’s first pitch of the ninth down the line and over the right field fence.

This time Altuve’s eleventh-hour demolition went to no avail.

The Rangers jumped all over Astros starter Cristian Javier after Marcus Semien opened with an infield ground out. Corey Seager batted next and fired the opening salvo with a drive over the right center field fence. A walk and a theft of second later, García sent one flying toward the left field wall and stood a moment or two admiring it before it clanged off the wall and he was held to a single.

Before anyone had a chance to roast him for the moment’s admiration, García atoned for the extra base he didn’t take on that hit by stealing second himself, enabling Garver to send him home. By the time the evening ended, almost nobody was liable to remember that that first-inning drive might have just missed being a homer.

“He was hot,” Baker said postgame, “and he’s been hot the whole series. We did strike him out quite a few times. But he got us. There’s a whole bunch of stuff you can point to in that ballgame. And so we just got beat. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes you lose and sometimes you get beat. There’s a difference. We got beat.”

This time, no Astro pitcher even thought of letting García have it with a pitch his next time up after that long single. If anything, Astroworld and elsewhere was more likely to question why Baker didn’t elect to pitch around him the rest of the way. And, why Baker didn’t get one of his higher-leverage relief arms, Hector Neris, up and ready before Rangers left fielder Evan Carter’s two-run double started the Ranger runaway in the fourth.

First, they may have to finish questioning why he clung stubbornly to weak-hitting veteran catcher Martín Maldonado instead of reaching for better-hitting Yainer Díaz (whose season included 45 extra base hits) later in games.

They may also revisit questioning why owner Jim Crane and his front office pulled in no pitching depth last winter, letting Baker lean heavily on inconsistent Javier and Framber Valdez, and rookies Hunter Brown and J.P. France, while dealing with early-season injuries to Altuve and Alvarez. That’s where Crane felt enough of a pistol to his head that he gave the go signal when future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander was made available for trading by the Mets who’d signed him as a free agent last winter.

The Rangers didn’t make it easy for themselves to get here, starting September 1-6 and finishing it 2-4 to fall into a tie with the Astros after they were up in the AL West by as many as 6.5 games at one point in June. Keeping the proverbial eyes on the prize wasn’t exactly simple after that.

“When you get the right group of guys with the right leader in the dugout,” said general manager Chris Young, himself a former major league pitcher including for the Rangers his first two years, “you never underestimate a group’s talent and the way they come together and the way they pull for each other. It’s not always about the team with the most talent. It’s the team with the right talent.”

None more right, it turned out, than a guy on whom the Cardinals gave up and the Rangers almost did. García—who defected from Cuba on a flight layover in Paris following a not-so-successful stint in Japan—was signed by the Cardinals but designated for assignment by them. The Rangers signed him, designated him, but had to keep him when he found no takers.

Lucky they. García became a two-time All-Star including this season. Then, the Rangers came to this postseason and he turned it into his coming-out party. Especially Games Six and Seven. Especially setting a new postseason record with fifteen ALCS runs batted in, thirteen of which came in the set’s final four games.

But the Rangers and people around the team point to things that might have been obscured during his Game Five explosion over getting drilled his next time up after a three-run homer. They talk about his exuberance, yes, but they also use words and terms like “work ethic,” “a good leader,” and “empathy.” They’re not words just thrown around the way the Rangers threw the Astros around in the end.

“The ones who really dig in and lean in to the moment and enjoy it,” said Michael Young, a longtime favourite as a Rangers player who now works in their front office, “are the ones who have the most success. These last two games, there is nobody who had more fun than Adolis did. He enjoyed every last pitch. And it was obvious.”

The Rangers await whomever comes out on top between the Phillies and the Diamondbacks in National League Championship Series Game Seven Wednesday night in Philadelphia. The Astros go home to a few questions and few simple answers.

Their success in recent years, including six division titles in seven years, four pennants, and two World Series titles (the first of which will remain tainted forever, alas), may have spoiled them a little. Even to the point where they’ve started talking the way you expect out of the Yankees.

“Not a success,” Maldonado said of the year as a whole. “Of course not. I think for us a success is winning the World Series.”

“No,” Bregman said. “I think winning the World Series is a success.”

But now Baker has spoken of retiring at last. Altuve and Bregman enter the final season of their contracts. Veteran outfielder Michael Brantley—who missed most of the season recovering from shoulder surgery, then hit for a modest .653 OPS this postseason despite a home run helping the Astros nail their division series triumph—is thought to be considering retirement. There could be a few other changes coming.

Right now, the Rangers wouldn’t change a bloody thing. And their manager Bruce Bochy—who came out of retirement to take the bridge thinking a shot at the World Series was worth it, and who’s now managed thirteen postseason elimination games to wins as well as five pennants plus having three World Series rings managing the 2010s Giants—wouldn’t change a thing.

“So much heart and determination,” Bochy said of his Rangers as the champagne sprayed the clubhouse Tuesday night. Maybe none bigger than the outfielder who’d led the Rangers’ blast furnace all the way to a World Series engagement.

Seriously!