Astros: You Can’t Get Sloppy Against The Rangers
By Yoni Pollak
It’s incredible how much bad luck the Houston Astros have when they face the Texas Rangers.
Mind-boggling. I just don’t get it.
The Astros, on paper, may be the better team, but they have yet to beat them once this year in seven tries and the next two games against Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish make it unlikely they’ll have a shot again until Thursday.
Let’s talk about last night’s miscues. There were a ton of them.
The final score was a 6-5 walkoff win against the Astros, a score which should have easily been Houston – a lot, Rangers a lot less.
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Defensively, Marwin Gonzalez wasn’t exactly good at first base. In the first inning he fielded a ball he should have left for Jose Altuve, which would have resulted in a ground out. Instead, Ian Desmond is safe because no one covered the base (Gonzalez’s job) and Desmond eventually came around to score on a …wild pitch. That’s two early miscues.
A little later in the inning Rougned Odor tapped a ball to Altuve, which again Gonzalez misplayed. This time he ran to first, couldn’t find the base, and caught the ball off the base, resulting in another guy on base instead of an out. Mike Fiers wasn’t great but could have easily been out of the inning allowing just one run if not for the miscues in the first inning.
Offensively, the hot-hitting George Springer was downright terrible. He was 0-5, leaving six men on base. With the bases loaded and one out he couldn’t convert and with runners on the corner and one out he couldn’t convert. Carlos Correa wasn’t much better going 0-4 with some crucial outs.
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Speaking of Correa, his bobble in the ninth inning, which would have ended the inning with a double play, cost the Astros big time. Instead of the double play, Odor came up to bat and smacked a ball off the wall. Not to be outdone by Correa, Rasmus decided not to jump for the ball, nor play it on the hop. Instead he half went after it, then stopped and the ball ricocheted away from him, giving the Rangers the win.
You can’t play sloppy baseball against good teams. The Rangers are good, as much as I hate saying it. They’re a team that will take advantage of bad play and the Astros showed plenty of that last night.
That game was one the team should have won and won big. Instead it’s another demoralizing loss for everyone.
Are the Astros capable of playing squeaky clean baseball against the Rangers? I don’t know. We seem cursed against them. Things don’t get easier over the next few days, but if they somehow come out of this series with a split, it’d certainly put a smile on my face.
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