A view from an Astros fan of Houston's amazing season

I may be a New Yorker, but Texas holds a special place in my heart. As many of you know, I lived in Texas from 1985 until 1989, and then from 1991 to 2000. I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, worked out of state for a few years after college, and then moved back to Austin. And for eight years, I worked in state government at the environmental agency that is now known as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 

Anyhow, Chuck Epperson was one of the managers I worked for at the agency. A native Houstonian, lifelong Houston Astros fan, and all-around good guy, he lives in Austin. And we've talked a bunch during the year about the stunning ascent of the Astros. Nobody expected them to get this good this fast -- least of all, their fans! Remember, it was just last year that they were 70-92. And that looked like a great record compared to the previous three years, in which the Astros lost over 100 games. There was a reason the team is known as the Disastros.

I asked Chuck some questions about his team. Here are his thoughts:

First memories of the Astros: It is showing my age but I remember going to Astros games in the late 1960s.  I vividly remember the exploding Toy Cannon graphic whenever Jimmy Wynn hit a home run.  Also, I belonged to Astros Buddies and my Astros Buddy was Larry Dierker, our first 20-game winner.

Favorite Astros moments:  
* 1986 -- Mike Scott's no hitter to clinch the NL West on the last day of the season,
* 2005 NLCS Game 6 -- Beating the rival Cardinals to get into the World Series.
* This season - Every game that Dallas Keuchel (The Beard) pitched at home (unbelievable), Mike Fiers no hitter, the 21-5 massacre of the DBacks the last week of the season.

All-time favorite Astros: Larry Dierker, Joe Morgan, Don Wilson (very underrated), J.R. Richard, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt,  

This year's favorite Astros:  Captain Caveman/El Oso Blanco - Evan Gattis, Jose Altuve, Colby Rasmus, The Beard, mild-mannered Colin McHugh, the look-alikes (Correa/Springer), and the underrated Will Harris.

Watching games this season: For the first time in the past 5 years, I was not able to go see them play but also for the first time in that many years, all of their games were finally televised in the Austin market!

When did I think they would make it to postseason?: They were in first place for so long that I thought they were going to make it in early September, of course by the end of September, when they got behind the Angels, I thought - it's OK they still did better than expected.  Thye broke their road trip losing way on their last trip, and they were in. With continued winning on the road so far, they may just make it to the World Series.

Thoughts on the current team: This team is very different and I think is better and will be better than the really good Astros teams in the late 90's and the 2005 world series team.  Those teams seemed to be carried by a few good pitchers and a couple of decent hitters.  For those teams, we added in some late season players to get us into the playoffs - Randy Johnson, Carlos Beltran, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, but they were temporary measures at best.  

This year's team's best players are mostly homegrown and are very young.  Except for Rasmus and Kazmir (who has not really helped us much), even the other acquisitions (e.g. Valbuena, Gomez, Fiers) meshed well and seem to be in the long-term plans. It has been a weird season with the low batting averages, high strikeouts, along with the excellent pitching and great defense but they find a way to win, whether it is 1-0 or 21-5.  It feels great after so many losing seasons and I think that both the owner, Jim Crane, and the GM, Jeff Luhnow, have put together a good plan for this teams's future success.

Yankees-Astros Wild Card: Why we're calling this "The Gravy Game"

I was interviewed for my pal Paul Francis Sullivan's Sully Baseball podcast for a preview of today's New York-Houston Wild Card game. Sully, the Astros fan interviewed before me, and myself are all calling this matchup The Gravy Game. Meaning that since we never expected our teams to make it to the playoffs this year, just having one postseason game is gravy to u!

Way back in March, I couldn't foresee the Yankees making it into the postseason. Heck, I said then I didn't think they would win more than 80 games, and I figured they wouldn't finish any higher than fourth place. I've never been so happy to have been wrong! (I did correctly predict, though, that the Mets would have a better record than the Yankees. And that A-Rod would have an epic year, although even this A-Rod apologist couldn't have predicted 30+ homers!)

Most baseball prognosticators didn't even think either the Yankees or the Astros (or the Rangers or Mets, for that matter) would make it into the postseason. Check out the teams 80+ experts predicted for ESPN; the vast majority of the teams picked didn't even make it into the postseason!

Don't get me wrong. I want the Yankees to win it all. I can't tell you how many times I have run this year (I am training for a half-marathon that I'm running this weekend) when I have visualized the Yankees winning the World Series, and Alex Rodriguez winning the World Series MVP. I want a Subway Series, too. It would be good -- make that great -- for the Squawkers! I have big plans for world domination. They start with a win tonight!

All that being said, I have to remember that just being in the postseason this year, with this team, is a pretty good accomplishment. A-Rod talked some yesterday about how the Yankees are the "major underdogs" this year. He told Newsday:

"I think with everything we've done this year, we've surprised a lot of people, and that's hard to do when you wear pinstripes," he said. "But I think going into this year, if you rewind seven months and told us we'd have an opportunity to play at home and defend our home court in a wild-card game, I think we all would have signed up for that."

And Rodriguez told the Daily News this about CC Sabathia checking himself into rehab:

“It’s a very courageous thing to do,” A-Rod said. “We play for CC now. CC has gone to the mat for us many, many times. … So now we go to the mat for him. 

“CC is a friend and a great teammate; like a brother to me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have a championship ring from ’09. What he did was very courageous. It takes a very tough guy to do what he did.”

I wish CC well. He is my second-favorite current Yankee, after A-Rod. And it says a lot about the esteem Sabathia is held in that he has received such positive feedback about his decision to enter alcohol rehab at the beginning of the postseason. (That being said, I have to wonder if there is something that happened this weekend that precipitated this!)

In addition to talking about CC, and also how the Yankees won in 2000 when they slumped at the end (something Joel Sherman also covers in his column for the New York Post today), Sully and I   discussed how amazing it would be if Alex was the big hero tonight. Dare to dream!

On the podcast, I also blamed the lack of greenies for causing the older Yankees to drag towards the end of the year. Yes, I went there!

Anyhow, I'm calling for a Yankees win tonight. And I really want the house to be rocking. Bring back the home field advantage, Yankee fans!

On the hot mess that is Masahiro Tanaka, and why pitchers can't throw at A-Rod anymore

Ladies and gentlemen: the Tanaka face!

Have you ever been in one of those tumultuous relationships in which your boyfriend or girlfriend is a hot mess? You know, where you have real passion for the other person, and you think you click with them when you go out together, but they constantly let you down? Yet just when you are ready to give up on the relationship, your boyfriend or girlfriend comes sniffing around again, doing something immensely appealing and keeping you hanging on some more, until they let you down again and the cycle continues?

That's kind of what Masahiro Tanaka is like.

Ever since he tore his elbow, he has simply awful starts, then shows flashes of brilliance. Unfortunately, he is in the "awful starts" part of his repertoire now.

In his previous start, Tanaka had tanked in every way — allowing 10 hits, seven runs and three home runs over five innings in a 12-4 loss to the Tigers. The three home runs allowed, one to Victor Martinez and two to J.D. Martinez, marked a career high. Tanaka also tied a career high in runs (7) and earned runs (5) and he has never allowed more hits in a start.


Yesterday, Tanaka was staked to a 6-0 lead, and promptly gave it back over six innings. He gave up six runs, seven hits, and only had three strikeouts. He tied the 3-homer record that he established in his last start, and gave up more earned runs (6) than he ever has before. And when he melted down in the sixth, most notably when Jose Altuve hit a homer off him to tie the game, we got to see the Tanaka Face for the first time!

As Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post puts it:

Of course, the thousand-pound rhinoceros (or, in Alex Rodriguez’s preferred parlance, the pink elephant) in the room is, and will for the foreseeable future be, whatever hidden rat traps lurk within Tanaka’s elbow.

But what if it is not his elbow?

The whole situation reminds me of a joke about the Grateful Dead: A hippie runs out of drugs before a Dead show. After he listens to the concert sober, he says, "Wow, this music really stinks." (Of course, I love the Dead, and listen to them sober, but I still think this is a funny joke!)

What if it is just that Tanaka really stinks, and it is not his elbow causing this? But if it is his elbow, when is he going to get Tommy John surgery?

The Yankees did come back and win the game yesterday, 9-6. But if they are going to make the postseason, they need Tanaka to be a good boyfriend an ace again!

* * *

I missed watching the first half of the game live, although I did later on see the clip (see below) of Astros starter Brett Oberholtzer throwing inside to Alex Rodriguez after Houston hometown hero Chris Young's homer, the pitcher promptly getting ejected for doing so, and then Oberholtzer appearing to blame his glove for the bad pitching, hurling the glove in the dugout. The Houston starter was sent to the minors after the game.

The Yankee broadcasters called Oberholtzer "bush league," said the pitch was not the mark of a true competitor and said he should "take it like a man."

A few things I noticed about this:

Remember how Boston Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster threw four times in a row at A-Rod and the umps let him get away with it? Those times are over. Thought it was telling about Rodriguez' current reputation in the game that one inside pitch to him is enough to get the pitcher ejected.


It's clear that CC Sabathia is A-Rod's BFF. When A-Rod hit #3000, one of the players he hugged was CC. Then Sabathia spent big coin on "Ace of Spades" champagne for a postgame toast.  Now the pitcher was the first out of the dugout, ready to rumble after Alex got hit. Big change from the early days of A-Rod on the team! I wish I had CC in my posse! Heck, I wish I had a posse!