The 1994 Rockets had the 2nd best record in all of basketball, and had home court advantage throughout the playoffs once the Sonics were eliminated in the first round. In the second round, they dropped both of the first 2 at home to the Suns and were down a bunch at half of game 3 on the road...Clutch City was born thereafter. In the Finals, they left Houston tied 1-1 after dropping Game 2 to the Knicks. The 95 Rockets were a 6 seed, you're right...that's a different story. But the 94 Rockets probably had the 2nd or 3rd best odds to win the Finals heading into the playoffs that year...similar to the 2023 Astros.
Altuve is quietly (or maybe not so quiet) having another sh1tty postseason. OPS <.600 and that TOOTBLAN yesterday had Peewee League written all over it.
Absolutely feel the same way. There seemed to be zero urgency, very little intensity. On the other side, the Rangers were visibly fired up.
He had that leadoff HR in Game 1 of the ALDS, but he hasn't done much since. What's sad is that he's still ahead of last postseason's RBI total with that lone swing.
One of the local sports radio shows in Minneapolis plays a clip from Rick Pitino in their opening. "All this negativity in this town sucks." This is the way I feel a lot of the time about Clutchfans.
The Astros had 8 hard hit balls with low catch probabilities. The Rangers had 4. **** happens. Likely won’t happen over 7 games (or less).
In the words of Ted Lasso "Be a goldfish". Although a liked one of the commentators last night said "The Astros need to forget this like the goldfish you flushed down the toilet" Need good Framber but also need the Bullpen ready. Can't let this get out of hand. Most of all need to Score Score SCORE!
Sadly, they probably will hit the ball worse tonight than they did last night. Hopefully they get more to show for it however. Exit hits > exit velocity.
Before last year, the only ALCS where they haven't been 1-1 was 2017 (2-0) and 2020 (they were 0-2). And in 2017 they proceeded to drop 3 straight on the road. And the 2019 series you mentioned they were very close to dropping the first 2 (had to win a low scoring game 2 in extra innings, Correa walk-off). Last year was really the only "easy" ALCS they've ever had. All that being said, yesterday was a very winnable game that they'll probably win more than lose over a larger sample size. I'll take great pitching and hard hit balls for every game this series if offered... even though we know they may not win all of them.
You could tell from the first inning in yesterday's game that the baseball luck didn't go the Astros way. Every hard hit that could've been extra bases seemed to find their fielders (even on about 3 of them that wouldn't have been caught if it was just 6 inches higher). It just wasn't our night yesterday and I expect that to change throughout the series.
Stros lost game #1 of 2017 WS (won in 7 games) Stros lost game #1 of 2019 WS (took it to 7 games) Stros lost game #1 of 2021 WS (lost in 6 games) Stros lost game #1 of 2022 WS (won in 6 games) Even if you don't look at any other series the Stros have made a series of losing first games.
Hopefully. All that being said, they actually haven't lost a lot of games like this in the playoffs in this era. They've definitely been on the side of some clunkers (Games 2-3 2021 were AWFUL, game 3 WS last year)... and they bounce back. Closest I can remember was the 2018 ALCS where some hard hit balls were finding gloves (Benintendi), but the pitching wasn't great that series either (and the Red Sox were probably cheating... but who cares now).
Happy for the quick turnaround. Game starts in ~4 hours. I expected the series to go 2-1 at home and 2-1 on the road, similar to the WS last year. Stros in 6. Not too confident in Framber though. Thought we'd win yesterday.
"These are the saddest of possible words Tinker to Evers to Chance...." I need to write a poem like that about Astros history that would include Howie Kendrick, Jackie Bradley, Jr., Wally Backman, Walt Weiss, Kevin Brown, Sterling Hitchcock, Fred Brocklander, and the ground ball that skipped away from Correa against the Royals.
