It’s too early to say with certainty that the Astros have eliminated the offensive malaise that has plagued them for much of 2020. If the first four games of this season are any indication, Houston’s supercharged offense should terrify opposing pitchers.
Astros managed to win the impressive championship of the western division of the American League, A, with four victories on Sunday at Oakland Coliseum, behind the homers of Kyle Tucker, Jason Castro and the debutant Chas McCormick. Astros beat A, 35-9, in four games.
“Honestly, I just crushed them from step one to the last step of the entire series,” said McCormick, who hit a three-run homer in the sixth inning in his first career start as a replacement for the injured. Michael Brantley. “We are a great team – defense, offense. We were all just clicking through to the four games and it was great to watch and cool to be a part of. I hope we continue this. ”
The Astros, who are 4-0 for the first time since 2001, are the fourth team in Major League history to score at least eight games in the first four games, joining the 2003 Yankees, the 1995 Red Sox and the 1978 Brewers. It is the first time in the club’s history, Astros started 4-0 on the road.
“We are proud of our boys because they fought a good team,” said Alex Bregman, a third baseman who went 2-for-4. “We have to keep our heads down, grind and move on.”
The fact that the offensive explosion came against an A team, which many chose to win the division for the second year in a row, provided an early shot at the start of the season for Astros, who finished seven games behind A last year. and then defeated them in the American League Division Series.
“We don’t feel good about it,” said manager A, Bob Melvin. “It simply came to our notice then. I played very badly and they played great. Looking ahead, we need to look at it as just four games in 162. But obviously we need to play a little better. Another hard team came (Dodgers) and then we go to Houston. We need to turn things around. It won’t just happen to us. We have to play better baseball, and that wasn’t good for us. ”
After scoring eight rounds in Thursday’s opening game of the season, the Astros suspended nine rounds on A for three straight games (8.75 on average). Last year, in 10 games of the regular season against A, Astros managed only 25 races (2.5 per game), but this was a snapshot of the problems they had during the season.
“The boys worked hard in Spring Training and hit the cage and the field tirelessly,” said Astros manager Dusty Baker. “They played a lot of games on the field [in Spring Training] to try to gather their stroke and they really didn’t like how they started last year. ”
As a team, Astros dropped .320 / .398 / .565 from the series with eight home runs and 20 extra-based hits. Alvarez, the 2019 American League debutant of the year who missed most of last season after knee surgery, was 5-for-17 with six RBI; Jose Altuve was 6 years old for 16; Brantley was 6-for-9 with four doubles in three games, and Bregman was 6-for-12 with two homers.
“You can’t do much better than the beginning we had,” Baker said. “You realize it’s a long season and every series won’t be like that, but you have to enjoy it for as long as it takes and build it and move on. Our goal was to come here and have some high-octane and offensive games that we did. And we also have some well-defined games. ”