So #blessed to be able to recap the abomination of this baseball game that happened yesterday evening. True story, I was unable to get yesterday and tomorrow off of work, so I had to listen to the radio call was I was hanging out at work. When Osuna gave up that grand slam, people were worried about me. Somebody literally gave me candy to cheer me up. I was sad. I am still sad. And I'm gonna be honest: I'm terrified for tonight. The way I see it, if we win this game tonight with Morton on the hill, we have Verlander at home for game five and another David Price start for game six (who was bad, even though the Red Sox won that game Sunday). If we lose tonight, sure we still have that going for us, but the problem is there are absolutely no room for error down 3-1 and I can't live with that.
~Dallas Keuchel had another rocky first inning and got his 6.88 first inning ERA inflated once more. He has given up 26 earned runs in the first inning and 24 earned runs in innings 2-4.
~Y'all hated Ken Giles but Roberto Osuna is sitting at a quite unfashionable 67.50 postseason ERA.
~Meanwhile, the Red Sox bullpen that I was told was bad has only given up 3 hits and only one run over 6.1 innings in the last two games.
~One of the positives to come out of this game, however, was Tony Kemp. I love Tony Kemp.
~So, uh, FiveThirtyEight now gives the Astros a 22% chance to win the World Series and a 33% chance to win the ALCS. HOWEVER, we have a 57% chance to win Game 4 tonight.
~FANGRAPHS ON THE OTHER HAND gives us a 54.2% chance to still escape the ALCS and a 35.2% chance to win the World Series. I like this one.
Betting lines are up on OddsShark for Game 4. I have no idea what these numbers mean, but you might.
~Ah yes, and after the game finished, we found out that the Astros might have been trying to steal signs. My unimportant take that nobody cares about: sign stealing is absolutely a part of the game, everyone does it, and it's part of the mental battle of this sport. However, taking pictures of the visitors dugout before the game and snooping around to somehow gain a competitive edge, that's too far in my opinion. I really hope that this story ends up becoming nothing, because I really don't want to try or listen to people try and defend this action. But, we have no other information. For all we know, this is just the media trying to find something to talk about. Anyways, Passan had the original story here if you're interested.
~Anyways, it's Charlie tonight. He hasn't pitched in a game in 18 days and has only thrown one simulated game in that stretch. Hinch says he will be aggressive with his bullpen if need be.
~ESPN writes that players like Marwin Gonzalez give this team a championship edge.
~ESPN also writes that being down 2-1 brings up an awful lot of questions going into tonight's game.
~In the final ESPN article of the morning, Bregman is getting Bonds'ed.
~The Astros Foundation announced they had donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars towards multiple different women's shelters.
~Ryan Pressly.
~The Astros already know that they are a terrible awful baseball team so they are already making trades with the Marlins to tank the franchise and start all over again. Just unfortunate.
~Now it's the Washington Post's turn to give our bullpen some love.
~Alex Bregman does not like not-strikes.
~Mattress Mack put $150K on our Astros, because he's gotta earn that money back from all those mattresses he'll be giving away somehow :)
On This Day in Baseball History
In 1987, the first indoor World Series game was played. Dan Gladden's grand slam in the dome contributed to making the noise level crack 110 dB, the average human pain threshold in a study done by Purdue University.
In 1989, the World Series Game 3 between the A's and Giants was postponed after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake erupted in the Bay Area, killing 63 people in total.
In 2004, Carlos Beltran tied Barry Bonds' postseason home run record with his 8th home run and broke another record with his fifth consecutive postseason game with a home run.
In 2005, Albert Pujols hit The Home Run in NLCS Game 5 against Houston. Don't click this.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
