Best Prospects: Houston Astros Have Impeccable Postseason So Far (New York, 10/23/2022)
Anything is possible in baseball. Small things often decide whether a hard-hit line drive flies across the field into the crowd and leads to a home run, or whether the ball lands in a field player’s glove and sends the batsman back to the bench. Ultimately, for all the numbers, stats, and values, baseball is pretty unpredictable. Underdogs can definitely tear something, as the Washington Nationals impressively demonstrated in 2019 against the Houston Astros, who were also highly favored at the time.
In the “Best-of-Seven” series of the “World Series”, the 118th edition of the finals in North American professional baseball, which begins this Friday evening (local time), a “wild card” team in Philadelphia meets the clear favorite Houston. The Astros finished last regular season with 106 wins and 56 losses and easily clinched their fifth division title and fourth pennant in six years — so will the American League (AL) and national championships League (NL), which together form Major League Baseball (MLB). The Astros’ pitchers in particular dominated their opponents with a 2.80 ERA (earned run average; permitted opposing runs per nine innings) and provided the second-best pitching staff in the MLB overall. The Phillies, on the other hand, qualified as the last team for the »postseason« after a poor start to the season with a record of 87:75 wins. Their pitching is significantly worse than the Astros at 3.97 ERA and is even below the MLB average. Offensively, the Phillies are only marginally better with a batting average (BA) of .253 (1,000 equals 100 percent) than the Astros, who have a surprisingly low .248 BA for their offensive lineup. So much for the numbers.
With their outstanding season record, the Astros qualified directly for the American League Division Series (ALDS), the quarterfinal series on the way to the World Series, so to speak, where they beat the Seattle Mariners 3-0 in a best-of-five series hit. They then smashed the New York Yankees 99-63 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS; semi-finals). The Bronx Bombers, who were still on course for a season of the century with a projected 119 wins as of early July and were touted by many as the future champions, never posed a threat to the Astros. Outnumbered in every respect, the lost Team from the “Big Apple” the series 0:4. The Astros have been flawless so far in the postseason. The chances of winning another World Series after 2017 are good.
The Phillies’ season, on the other hand, was anything but title-worthy. After starting the season with 22 wins and 29 losses, the club fired team manager Joe Gerardi in early June. The move to Rob Thomson paid off, with the Phillies winning 14 of their next 16 games. In the end, they only just qualified as the last team for the playoffs. There, the ensemble around star outfielder Bryce Harper has been hot as frying pan fat: First they smashed the highly favored Saint Louis Cardinals in the “Wild Card” series with 2-0 victories, then they finished last year’s champion Atlanta Braves 3-1 without humor.
A close and sometimes high-class National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the San Diego Padres (89:73) followed. They had surprisingly beaten the MLB-Primus Los Angeles Dodgers (111:51) with 3:1 victories. The series for the NL pennant turned out to be balanced, even if the Phillies were able to prevail with 4:1 victories. Key moment of the series: In the 8th inning of game five, the Padres were up 3-2 and seemed to be winning even as Harper made his big entrance. Although the “power hitter” had already hit seven hits in the series, including a home run, Padres’ team manager Bob Melvin decided not to bring in his “closer” Josh Hader in order to defend the narrow lead with a fresh and nerve-racking pitcher. What should take revenge: Harper hammered a moderately placed 160 km/h fastball from Robert Suárez into the stands. With teammate JT Realmuto already on first base, that made two runs. The Phillies didn’t give up the 4:3 lead and stormed into their first “World Series” participation since 2009.
