They hit. After two straight nights of not hitting and scoring only two runs, the Astro bats returned on Sunday night. They recorded 12 hits, including 3 doubles, drew 6 walks, and scored 9 runs. They came back twice, from a 4-0 deficit in the first and a 5-4 deficit in the third to beat the Braves 9-5.
The Astros bats woke up from their slumber of Games 3 and 4, and not a moment too soon.
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| Hand shakes and high fives after Game 5 |
Throughout the regular season, I always maintained the position the occasional hitting slumps that the team would go through were not very interesting to discuss. The Astros have a good offense and if you just wait a few games, the bats will regress to the mean, and that mean is having one of the handful of best offenses in baseball. And over the long run, that proved correct. The Astros led major league baseball in runs scored in 2021.
In the long run, the Astros bats will score runs. But the playoffs are a bunch of short series, and an offensive slump can be fatal. The slump in Games 3 and 4 was nearly fatal, and the Astros will be on the brink of elimination in Game 6 and a Game 7 should it come to that. But the bats came alive just in time.
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The Astros will need the bats to stay alive in Games 6 and 7. One reason for that is that it is always easier to win a baseball game when you score a lot of runs. And the other is that with the Astros pitching staff compromised going into Game 6, it is likely they will give up runs.
The Astros are down Lance McCullers, who is off the ALCS roster due to a forearm strain. Dusty Baker used Jose Urquidy in relief in Game 5 to get his team through the middle innings. It worked--Urquidy was the winning pitcher in Game 5--but since Urquidy was the scheduled starter in Game 6, the Astros will need to find another starter for Game 6.
In his postgame press conference last night, Dusty said that Luis Garcia would start Game 6 on 3 days rest. Garcia started Game 3, throwing 72 pitches in 3.2 innings. Urquidy is presumably unavailable, and Zack Greinke went for 4 innings in Game 4 on Saturday, so he's not available. The only other option would be Jake Odorizzi, and by throwing Urquidy last night rather than Odorizzi in middle relief, Baker and pitching coach Brent Strom showed their clear preference to stay away from Odorizzi unless absolutely necessary.
Throwing Garcia on short rest means it is likely that he will not go long, possibly only for 2 innings. With a rest day today, it is likely that Baker and Strom fell confident in going to the top 3 of the bullpen (Pressly, Graveman, and Stanek) for the final 3 innings of Game 6.
Once again, that will make the innings between the starter and the back end of the bullpen critical. Much of that burden has been taken up by Phil Maton and Cristian Javier, who have collectively pitched 20.1 innings in the playoffs, and have a combined ERA of 1.32. They are both possibilities to work the in-between innings.
Another possibility is Jose Urquidy, who was called upon in that role in Game 4, and would have gone multiple innings had the 5th inning rally not brought up the pitchers spot, where Marwin Gonzalez woke up the echoes of 2017 and delivered a go-ahead 2 run single.
But Urquidy is the most likely starter in Game 7. So if they use him in Game 6, they return to the same dilemma of who to start in Game 7, and how to bridge the gap to the big arms at the back of the bullpen.
Of course, facing the problem of how to manage the innings of Game 7 is the definition of a good problem to have, because it means the Astros won Game 6.
How do they win Game 6? It is very clear to me that they will need to score a lot of runs to do so. Let's hope the bats continue to hit in Game 6 like they did in Game 5.
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