Much to the baseball worlds dismay the Astros made the playoffs this year. In wake of the cheating scandal that engulfed the club and the reporting done attacking them it was the world against Houston. During the regular season it was rough and even though they finished 2 games under .500 they qualified for the postseason due to the expanded playoff format.
In the first series they were tasked with facing the Minnisota Twins. The Twins with the better record was the home team for the best out of 3 series. Further staked against the Astros was how good the Twins were at home. Houston though..... they did not care at all sweeping the series, winning the first two games.
Immediately calls were made that the Astros couldn’t hit well enough to put up a fight in the next round. They did not hit well at all against the Twins series but with the Twins unable to score it did not matter now bad the offense was. During the regular season the Oakland A’s the next opponent was 1 the division rival and 2 had heated the Astros in 7 of the 10 games they played this year. Analysts were quick to predict a sweep or if the Astros were lucky they would win 1 game.
Two blinks later the Astros were up 2-0 in the best of 5 series and the offense was white hot. Much to the internet’s dismay the games were not even close after the 5th inning. Today was game 3 and I won’t lie I was pretty sure the A’s would win this one even as a die heart Astros fan. While Houston is a crazy stacked team regardless of the 2017 scandal people figured they were just garbage even though they made it to the World Series just last year!
Houston and the A’s went back and forth till the Astros took a “commanding” 7-4 lead. Wanting to give the bullpen rest the decision was made to run out a pitcher named Josh James who as a Houston fan..... he just needs to go he throw 98-100 mph but the fastball doesn’t move it’s flat.
After getting though the first inning without giving up a run (which shocked me) good ol James went back to his old ways. After putting guys on 1st and 2nd he did the most Josh James thing ever..... gave up a beautiful 3 run bomb to right field to tie the game.
The Astros attempted to take the lead at the bottom half of the inning however they failed to score after putting Correa and Tucker on 1st and 2nd with no outs. When this happened momentum rapidly shifted to the A’s and before long it was 9-7 A’s and they won forcing a game 4 tomorrow. However some vital things occurred this game people probably easily overlooked.
1) They used their closer the best pitcher in their bullpen for the final 3 innings running up a pitch count that will put him out of action for tomorrow game
2) Their second best pitcher was run out their for the second day and threw two innings effectively removing him from tomorrow’s game to.
3) The Astros did not use any of their important arms from the bullpen and the one guy they might use tomorrow pitched less than 20 pitches in one inning of work.
4) Houston still dropped a 7 run game which is bad news for Oakland.
5) Oakland still had to use 5 pitchers as their starter did not get out of the 5th inning.
These reasons do not help Oakland when it comes to game 4 tomorrow. A depleted pitching staff is a killer for any team and Houston’s offense is firing on all cylinders. I can’t wait to see this game tomorrow as Houston continues its march to prove the haters wrong and drive the internet trolls crazy with their winning ways. This loss was a minor setback and might have been a good thing to give the team a quick reality check.
Lests go Stros! Houston vs Everybody!
