Here in a few weeks, Astros County Dot Com will be 12 years old. In late 2008 my wife told me I could either play video games or do Astros County, and I obviously chose the latter. Earlier on Friday this cursed blog/website hit seven million total pageviews. That's probably not a lot in the Grand Scheme of Things, and for other baseball/sports websites, but it's pretty damned impressive to me. Thank you for continuing to come here, even when I sprinkle some social commentary in which I try to radicalize you. I have a little something coming on Monday in the Chronicle on George Springer and the Astros payroll, and that's going to be somewhat temporarily it for my association with the Houston Chronicle, through no fault of theirs or mine. And if it doesn't come out on Monday, I'll put it here. Again, thank you for being a witness for my descent into delirium and madness.
*Brian McTaggart: Five key questions facing the Astros this offseason.
*The two candidates running to be the governor of Utah made an ad...together.
*Texas Monthly: How one state history textbook erases the stories of Black and Hispanic Texans. Textbooks are for slack-ass teachers. This is my seventh year as a public school history teacher (had a bit of a career change in my early-30s) and I have never used the textbook other than for a mapping activity. Because you really do need to know Where Things Are.
*Aston Villa 0 - Leeds United 3. Hat Trick Patrick Bamford scored all three goals. You can check the highlights here, but it very easily could have been 5-1 Leeds (pay particular attention to Luke Ayling recovering from losing the ball to saving a certain goal.) I never thought I would have said this after 2003 but holy Hannah, Leeds United are responsible for bringing me the greatest soccer joy I have ever experienced.
*Really looking forward to The Queen's Gambit, on Netflix.
*This run of exhibition games at Choad Life Park saw an empty stadium last night, as though "taking a day off" is something that happens in baseball in 2020. It's 1-1 and the off-season barnstorming tour continues tonight.
*Brent Strom talked to Mark Berman about coming back in 2021, Correa, and Dusty, and the stable of pitchers the Astros have. It's a really good interview.
*Took a little longer than I expected, but there's a response to Luhnow's Monday Night Interview. The Athletic's Evan Drellich:
People with knowledge of the investigation said that 'there was direct testimony that Luhnow was aware of the sign-stealing scheme.' The league's department of investigations, headed by former federal prosecutors, gathered a combination of direct evidence, circumstantial evidence and testimony that a source said would hold up in a legal forum, despite Luhnow's suggestion to the contrary. 'Luhnow received emails that put him on notice of the activity, but claims he only read parts of the emails even though he responded to the emails,' the person said. 'One witness clearly stated and provided evidence that Luhnow know, and others identified facts indicating that Luhnow knew. The best interpretation of the evidence is that Luhnow either knew exactly what the video room was doing, or knew generally what they were doing and willfully chose to keep himself in the dark.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that you could find someone in MLB's New York office who has committed themselves to burying Luhnow and the Astros at every opportunity. It's also not out of the realm of possibility that the Astros did something wrong and answered MLB's questions far more whole-heartedly than any other team had/has answered them, and they have paid more dearly than any of them. [Ed. Note: I have downloaded Ben Reiter's podcast The Edge, but have not yet listened to it, something I plan on remedying today. Ben Reiter wrote Astroball, so there's reason to believe that what he has to say is worthwhile.]
Whether he exactly knew what was going on or not is really beside the point. I wrote to all the GMs. I put them on notice that it was their obligation to make sure that their organizations were not violating any of the sign-stealing rules...He damaged the game, and as a result, he was disciplined.
This is utterly exhausting. And I'm just a fan. It's a fair question to ask, Why did the Red Sox do the Apple Watch stuff AND the video room stuff and only the film room guy get re-assigned for a year, while the Astros got the worst penalty in sports since SMU? Because MLB likes to do their killin' before breakfast, they're keeping a not-small amount of the findings of their investigation private. Other teams saw what happened to the Astros and shut the hell up. I've just sort of come to terms with the idea that this is/was a league-wide problem, and Manfred decided to let everyone think that it was an Astros-only problem (in the same way that the Mitchell Report scapegoated teams on the coasts). The noisiest opponents have been the Yankees, Dodgers, and Indians, for what it's worth.
*Rob Manfred, an empty ghoul shell wrapped in a pretty nice suit, hopes MLB keeps the larger postseason field and the runner on 2nd to start extra innings going forward.
*I wrote about the 1916 Black Tom Munitions Explosion in Jersey City. It was a lot of fun for me because there were just a ton of "wait WHAT?" moments in the research.
*The Guardian: Chess' cheating crisis - paranoia is now the culture.
*Eamon Duffy: Four centuries of trying to decode, decipher, or translate this medieval text have left people baffled.
*The presidential election is less than two weeks away. I did some research and put together a list of 244 counties whose results I'll be watching closely on Election Night...and, likely, the days following. If the county name is in Bold, it means it flipped - either way - from the 2012 to 2016 presidential elections.
*After two days of reflection, this is where I am:
1. Absolutely amazing the Astros got as far as they did without Verlander, Yordan, and Osuna.
2. Absolutely infuriating that the largely-intact lineup couldn't come up with a few more hits in Games 1-3.
3. The emergence of Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Enoli Paredes, Blake Taylor, and Andre Scrubb makes 2020 a success no matter the ALCS outcome.
4. I still love Charlie Morton.
5. I told you I was terrified of the Rays.
6. I do not care who wins the World Series, despite my text to my cousins on Saturday night that "I would rather the world end than see the Dodgers win a World Series." I was acting out.
*At a press conference, GM James Click said that Altuve's struggles in 2020, and his sudden difficulty throwing the ball to first base, were but a blip:
I was really impressed by the fact that he didn't take that with him to the plate and he didn't let that affect the rest of his game. We are 100 percent confident that those blips are behind him. He is going to come back next year, I'm sure, as the elite offensive and defensive player that we know he is.
We had a long conversation. It was great. It was a very healthy conversation. He expressed his views and why he made the comments and I mostly listened. My job in that situation was I think just to listen to a Hall of Famer and find out why he would be frustrated by those kind of things.
*According to Mark Berman, Jeff Luhnow and [squints] A-Rod approached the Dynamo about purchasing the franchise, but nothing came of it.
*Luhnow spoke to KPRC about the sign-stealing scandal, because what is another early postseason exit without getting a chance to experience pain, past or present? I have many thoughts, and I'm going to work through them, and we'll convene tomorrow, yeah?
*I voted last Tuesday. It took 45 minutes, longer than I've ever waited to vote. Pro Publica: Why do non-white voters in Georgia have to wait for hours?
And in the end the Astros lost their last game of the season, something that has happened in 58 of their 59 seasons. Despite out-hitting Tampa 59-44, Houston lost a seven-game series getting outscored by a total of three runs. The Rays simply took advantage of more mistakes than the Astros. That said, coming back from an 0-3 deficit to force a Game 7 for a 3rd Pennant in four years, in a "season" in which you got six innings from Justin Verlander, nine PAs from Yordan Alvarez, 4.1IP from Roberto Osuna, is extremely impressive. I'm mad as hell, but I appreciate what this team did since the end of July. Super-appreciative of the ride they gave us, but I'm going to need some space from this team.
The legacy of this group is that these guys are ballpayers. These guys are men; they have been through a whole bunch other than on the ballfield. Now these guys can forget the problems they had that it out there and come together as a group and be forever friends.
This is painful when you're one game away from going to the World Series. I'm proud of these guys, because nobody expected us to even be in the position or even to be here....One thing's for sure: We'll be back in this position again next year.
*MLB: Anatomy of the Astros' comeback, and near-miss.
*Houston, as a team, was 11x46 with runners in scoring position. The 2020 ALCS, w/RISP:
Saturday's loss lived as a microcosm of Houston's 73-game run, one riddled with ineffectiveness, injury and invective from the outside following the sign-stealing scandal. The lineup disappeared, as it so often did during a 29-31 regular season. A clutch hit never came.
*Carlos Correa drove in the only two runs of Game 7. He hit .362/.455/.766 in the 2020 Postseason, with 17 RBI. Correa:
We didn't fold. We kept battling. We got to the playoffs and no one gave us a chance in Minnesota. We won three games against Oakland. They beat us in the regular season and we came up huge and won that series. Down, 0-3, everybody was talking about the Astros getting swept and this and that. We came back and forced Game 7. It wasn't the finale we wanted, but I'm just proud of this team, man. It's been unbelievable.
*I have no idea, and will never understand, why the Astros continued to challenge Randy Arozarena. Arozarena hit a 2-run home run.
Arozarena: .321/.367/.786 in the ALCS
Ji-Man Choi: .385/.529/.615 in the ALCS
Nobody else in that lineup had an average over .278. Six of the Rays' Game 7 lineup had an ALCS average under .167. Sixteen of the 25 runs the Rays scored - yes, they only scored 25 runs in seven games - came on home runs. Kevin Cash:
We are lucky to have Charlie Morton. For a group that doesn't have a wealth of experience in these roles, Charlie does. He has been there, done that. It lined up really, really well for us.
*Charlie Morton in Game 7s, career: 14.2IP, 6H/1ER, 15K:3BB. Beginning with the 2017 ALCS Game 7, Morton has recorded seven straight Wins in the postseason.
It sucks, man. It really does. But congrats to the Rays. They're a damn good team. They've been the best team in the AL all season. They went through the Yankees and they went through us. You have to tip your cap to them, as well. It sucks because it just feels like we were right there.
We got down 3-0 and we fought and we showed the kind of team and kind of grit that makes up this team. We weren't on a revenge tour. That's not what this was. This was a bunch of guys that came together, wanted to play damn good baseball and win a World Series. And we fell short of our goal.
*Bregman, 2020 Postseason: .220/.316/.300. After recording three straight two-hit games from ALDS Game 3-ALCS Game 1, Bregman went .083/.154/.083 in 26 PAs. And we still don't know why Bregman was pulled late in Game 7.
Bregman, 2020 until the hamstring injury: .272/.374/.500, 13 extra-base hits, 15K:14BB.
Bregman, 2020 after the hamstring injury: .187 (I'm bad at calculating OBP and SLG)
I'm extremely proud of this team for fighting every single day, battling every pitch and going out there and playing hard and playing for one another. But like I said before, our goal is always to win the last game of the season, so it's time to work extremely hard in the offseason and get better.
*Gurriel, 2020 Postseason: .114/.245/.114.
*Jayson Stark: The Weird and the Wild of ALCS Game 7.
*Of course now the focus of the front office turns to free agency. Is this the end of the Astros era? George Springer, Michael Brantley, and Josh Reddick are all free agents once the World Series ends. Correa, on Springer:
Some guys that we love very much and we've been playing with forever, and hopefully they come back, but if they don't, we're going to miss them for sure. We've got George Springer. He's been my teammate since I got to the big leagues and been a great leader and role model.
Springer:
I haven't really thought about that yet. Our season just ended. I'm more focused on kind of what's happening now, what happened tonight, and I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
*Jerome Solomon: There is plenty for the Astros to look forward to.
*Jake Kaplan: All the looming off-season questions for the Astros.
*Now, I guess we just wait. Read for pleasure. Go to bed early. Drink some herbal tea. Hot Links will continue throughout the off-season with or without Astros news. Thank you for reading along.
