MLB Network [BREAKING NEWS] Houston Astros sweep Rangers in 3-game series & take Silver Boot in 2025

MLB Network [BREAKING NEWS] Houston Astros sweep Rangers in 3-game series & take Silver Boot in 2025

at how it all looks right here, right now. Of course, this is going to change a few more times over the next week and a half, but as of right now, the Astros grabbing their spot back with the way that they’ve been playing. Of course, we know what the Mariners have been doing, but this is where you want to be. The Astros controlling what they can control, winning the games that they need to, and it’s going to put them where they need to be. Finally, the Astros get a little help. The Mariners winning streak gets broken, and now the Astros are in position to where they control their own destiny. They have the Mariners coming in here where they’ll at least have a little bit of a lead if not be tied and then they control their own destiny in terms of winning that series and taking another lead. They control their own destiny in terms of winning the tiebreaker with Seattle. It was a lot of good things happening over the last three days coming into it. We think back bogey to setting up this home stand and just how big it was and the feeling that this team had. I mean, they were looking up at Seattle for the first time in a long time since June 3rd. And then they knew that they they knew that the Texas Rangers also were trying to play their way into postseason picture. We also knew the silver boot was only an option if they were going to sweep the series. But here we are three days later, three games later. And you kind of feel you got to have some more confidence. I don’t know what it is. You got to feel much better about you about where they are right now. The pressure was certainly on entering this home stand and entering this series against the Texas Rangers. You’re chasing the Mariners. You’ve got the Rangers breathing down your neck. And as much as this time of year, you like to scoreboard watch and see what’s going on throughout the rest of the league. It’s still about what you’re doing here and what’s going on with this team. And what we’ve seen for the last three days is a team that looks like they’re ready to play out these last 10 games, make a playoff push, and make a deep run. It’s probably the best baseball we’ve seen certainly in quite a while. Yeah, it was good pitching, timely offense. I mean, it seemed we saw little things, we saw good defense. It seems like this team’s kind of putting it together right now and what better time to do so. No, absolutely. And Joe Espatada has said it as we’ve moved into September and you start asking about what’s going on with the Mariners, what’s going and he says, “Hey, we’re concerned about with what we’re doing here because if this team is playing its best baseball, which we haven’t seen a ton of it this year, but if they get hot and and start clicking on all cylinders, they’re just as dangerous as anybody.” Also impressive when you think about who was getting it done as far as the pitching side. Jason Alexander getting things started. They, you know, they looked to AJ Blue Ball yesterday and then today Christian Javier getting it done. So, it has been a full team effort. We’ve seen the offense come around as well, but they are in a good position as of right now. They do have the off day tomorrow, so we’ll see how things look tomorrow, but we know as of right now, the Mariners are now looking up at the Astros. Yeah, and it gets to that time of year. You know, everybody is starting to get thinned out at this point in the season. You’re 150 games in. Teams are banged up. Bullpens are overused. you’re you’re depending on starters who haven’t pitched a ton of innings for you. But the Astros, it just it’s been the next man up mentality all throughout the course of the season. So to apply that into this type of situation, it’s really no different than what they’ve been doing all year. Nine games left for the Houston Astros, but let’s take a look back at this one because it was a good one once again for the Astros. It’s our water burger. What a play. We’re going to start with a guy who’s had so much success against the Texas Rangers. In fact, this was his 37th home run against this team and it was a two-run shot in the third inning. If you’re looking for a big hit against the Texas Rangers, Jose Altuve is the guy to look at. This was an excellent atbat for Altuve. Deg Grom’s trying to get him to chase. Earlier in the at bat, he threw him. Two good sliders down and away trying to get Jose to swing and miss. Didn’t bite on it, so he’s got to go off of that. He goes to the fast ball up. Jos Altve very dangerous on that fast ball up. Even if it’s 97 at the top, he can still get to it and he got it there. This is career against Texas. This is unreal. And this is, you know, against a division opponent, a team that knows you very well, a team that you would think if there were any flaws to find, any weaknesses to expose, they would have found it by now, there’s just nothing that you can really find on Jose Altuve. And even when he’s going through stretches of time where maybe he’s not swinging as well as he has in the past, he’s still dangerous. And he had been struggling a little bit, but coming into this series against the Rangers and certainly today, some big swings from Jose. Yeah, for sure. Jose with his 26th home run on the season. We saw him have the RBI knock yesterday, too. This is a bath that they would love to see get going because the guys around him, especially at the top of that order, are already going. Yeah, absolutely. And when you have Jeremy Pñena getting on base out of high clip, when you have the guys at the bottom of the order getting on base and turning it over with some traffic on, all of a sudden those spots become run producing spots. And if Jose can get uh swinging a hot bat with the those guys in front of him, all of a sudden he’s going to be driving in a lot of runs. Jacob Deg Grun started this game for the Texas Rangers. We knew it’d be a tough task just given the guy that was standing on the mound today, but we knew the Astros had offensively looked better. So, we’re going to look back now to see how this game started because we saw more of that out of the gate from the Astros with a great I mean, this is as good as it gets with the amount of pitches that you put on Deg Grom. It’s going to be a tough night when you’re going up against Jacob Deg Gro, but it was obvious from this first inning that the Astros were up for the task. They were going to go up there and it wasn’t going to be just a bunch of hacking and hoping you run into some pitches and and maybe get lucky and hit a home run. They were going out there and they were going to grind out at bats. Jeremy Pena got ahead 3 0 to start the game. Carlos Kareah had a long drawn out at back. A lot of foul balls to work a base hit. Victor Keratini worked a walk. So you end up in a bases loaded, two two out situation. And Yiner Diaz finally got a mistake. He got a breaking ball that stayed up in the zone a little bit and put a good swing on it. This is a swing that we’ve seen him take quite often here the last couple of weeks. Very under control, the body very quiet, head very still. And when he stays behind the ball like that, he’s got a lot of points of contact. He can hit the ball all over the field. And you can see the frustration for Deg Grom because the Astros just went out there and kind of just took it to him. A 35 pitch first inning. the third most pitches he’s ever thrown in an inning. Those have all been first innings for him. But that was that that just kind of goes to show you what the Astros were able to do. Bogey, this graphic right here is what you were talking about earlier. You saw the Astros I you know, I don’t know if it’s chipping away at him or, you know, just trying to it looked like they were starting to figure him out more and more each time. Well, what you certainly figure out when you face a guy this often is how he’s going to attack you and then you can try to counter punch and maybe take that away for Deg Grom in those first couple of starts, everything was on the glove side. Fast balls away, sliders away. The Astros, a very aggressive team, ended up swinging a lot of pitches out of the zone away from those right-handed hitters. But today especially, they were very stubborn in their approach. They didn’t chase those sliders off the edge. They forced them back into the middle of the plate, got more pitches to hit. And it wasn’t necessarily a case of more pitches to hit because Deg Grom didn’t have good command. It was more pitches to hit because they proved to him that they weren’t going to expand out the outside of the zone and they earned those pitches to hit. As good of a win, this was a series win this was for the Astros. It had to be just as tough deflating on the other side of this for the Texas Rangers. The Rangers, this was as big as it gets for them this series right here as they needed a team like the Astros to to fall out of the race in order for them to get in. And the Astros, I mean, they had other plans. And the Rangers, they’ve been kind of running on fumes, too. They’ve had a lot of injuries and this sort of comeback that they’ve had in the wild card and in the American League West has been done without some of their big bats. And for a team when you’ve got all of that momentum built and you’re kind of just doing it, nobody really knows how, but you’re just winning every day. All of a sudden, the wind gets taken out of the sales and the Astros came in and they win these three games. And not only do you make up the three games in the standings, but you also get the tiebreaker. The Mar or the Rangers have fallen behind Cleveland in the standings. So now when you’re looking at their potential path to the playoffs, it becomes a lot tougher. I I am um I I saw, you know, there were some I think Atlanta kind of set the tone to how we play this entire year. We carry some of that momentum. Um I think these guys know exactly what’s what’s at stake and and you know, we we play we play extremely well. Um I I thought, you know, offensively, I thought the first inning was the key for for our for our night. You know, having the Grum throw 30 plus pitches. Um first two guys get on, he strikes out um Altuve and Walker and he might see the end of that threat, but then Diaz big knock. I thought that we carried that momentum. We made him work. Um we got some big hits. Alua with a big two-run homer. Um and Christian Javier was tremendous. Uh it was you know his stuff just keeps getting better and better every outing. Joe, how encouraging was the approach against Deg Gro, but you didn’t expand a lot, right? Fouled also two strike pitches. Just how encouraging was the overall up and down approach? Yeah. Yeah, it was very important. I thought, you know, he started the first pitch of the game with a sliders the same way he started Pena uh in Arlington. Uh and I remember Jeremy swung on that first pitch. Jeremy took it and then from there on we just built we just built our our approach and we’re going to make him, you know, kind of close to us. We got to see him up. We have to really make this guy throw the ball over the plate. Um, he’s one of the best pitchers in the game. So, I’m proud of our effort and and and how we went about our business. Joe, what was the most impressive thing about how Javier finished his outing? You retiring 10 out of the last 11 after he had traffic on bases the first couple innings. Yeah, you know, for me it’s just more confidence. um he knows that when he’s on he’s got his fast ball and he’s he gets ahead with it, he can spin and do some things. Um but I think his level of confidence, he’s starting to feel better, stronger. Um and and and that’s the key. Uh it’s going to take some time when you come from this injury, and I’ve said that before, but I think right now he knows that, okay, I’m starting to get groove of things. I’m starting to get um strong and and I know I can finish my pitches and throw any pitch in any count. momentum. Yeah. Well, you know, it starts with, you know, the boot’s going to stay here in Houston and I think that’s, you know, we we we we care about that stuff. We we want to be the best team in the state and we care about how we kind of get ready and and all that kind of stuff and and we don’t have that many games left. So, we got to play our best now. This is it. And it’s going to be a really fun weekend. I I can’t wait. Certainly has a knack for great hits against a lot of teams. Yeah. Against the Rangers, it seems like he always comes through. He always finds a way to get the crowd going and he always finds a way to um have people talk about how good he is and uh you know he still has a little sore foot and he’s playing through it and it just show how how big his heart is and how his desire to win. You said it’s hard to not follow the scoreboard but they posted the Seattle score. Yeah, I saw the fans. I was inside of me I was cheering too. You spoke before the game about how the experiences of going down the down the wire the last few years really kept keeps your guys dialed in and stuff. Is that like is that evident like in that first inning against the Grom just how laser focused these guys are? Yeah. And confidence and how calm and poised they stay. Um there’s a level of like no panic in them. You can teach that. You develop that with experience and and and having big moments throughout their careers. They believe in one another. They could lean on one another. And um and some of the young players who come up, they see that and they follow their footsteps. And it’s just based on experiences and and and toughness and the grit of, you know, the grit on of this guys. I don’t know. counter. So, how much more confidence do you have every time you go out there since you’ve been back from your injury? [Music] Uh, I feel very good. Every time I got I go out there, my confidence grows bigger. Every time I go out there, I feel like I’m getting to the point that I want to be at. Uh, so I feel very good. Is this the best your stuff’s been? You said you feel good. You think as far as the your pitches, the execution, the shape of pitches. Is this the best game? Uh, thank God I feel very good. My body, my arm, everything feels very good. So, thank God I feel right now. I feel very good. It’s the biggest game you’ve pitched in a couple years. What was it like just to be out there for a game that big? uh feels very good. I want to thank God for uh the confidence, the the the support that everybody has given me. Uh so going out there, I feel very good. Very appreciative of God for that. Uh I feel uh very confident with the sinker. I feel very good with the sinker. Thank God. Feel like I could use it with any batter and any count. Uh so it feels very good. You finished really strong your last few innings. Retired 10 of the last 11 guys. What was the what was the key to just settling in and finishing strong like that? uh maintain my focus, attack the hitters early on, uh get a hand in the count so I can attack the hitters. After being out for so long, what does it mean to you to be a part of this team again and helping the team as they push for a playoff spot? feels very good. Uh very confident. I feel the team has been very appreciative of of my work out there. Uh so that gives me a lot of a lot of confident every time I go out there and pitch. Uh, it feels good. I mean, I feel like uh the playoffs a little bit different. It’s a little bit more adrenaline and the fans are more into it. Uh but either if it’s a regular season game, I have to get keep come with the same uh focus and the same confidence as any other

MLB Network [BREAKING NEWS] Houston Astros sweep Rangers in 3-game series & take Silver Boot in 2025

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