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History will remember these Houston Astros as the ones that got unlucky.
Jose Altuve hit the wall in Game 4, the extraordinary leap Mookie Betts made for it, and the way that after the ball had landed in the stands, uncaught, it was declared an out. It will be remembered that the debate over what constitutes interference the flukily blocked camera Altuve's home run and the Astros' season. The future will have no trouble remembering that all, from Houston's perspective, bad luck.
Most luck in baseball, though, is not the deus ex machina of Joe West running headlong into a play and flipping it to its opposite. Most luck is incredibly unsatisfying to identify, for both the winning team and the losing team, and because of the fact that it has been bad luck to get away with a pitch. We struggle for the word because we struggle with what we're talking about, which is something embedded in almost every baseball play. It's this:
Baseball does not give partial credit.
When umpire Joe West called Astros DH Jose Altuve out in Game 4 of the ALCS, the fans closest to the near-home run were aghast. Here's how they say it went down.
While Alex Bregman says the Astros know they should have been back-to-back champions, he says losing the American League Championship Series to the Red Sox will motivate his team in 2019.
From the wild-card round the World Series, we'll have the 2018 postseason covered.
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In baseball, the point is to win the World Series and the tactic involved – the skill involved – "avoiding outs" and "getting outs." But we do not declare the World Series winner based on who is the most outs (i.e. That would be one kind of sport – golf is that kind of sport, and the discus throw, and the 1,500 freestyle, where every stroke, inch or second counts towards the final outcome – baseball is the kind that has added layers on suspense and variety: Outstanding make rallies; rallies make runs; runs make wins; wins make standings; standings make postseason series; and postseason series make the World Series winner. And, indeed, they are made up of layers and strikes, strikes and balls, batted balls chased and caught and thrown and tagged. You might even say the point is to win the World Series but the tactics are "throw good strikes" and "hit the ball hard." The layers in between give it all texture.
That's why it's fun. And the result is that, along the way from "control the count" to "win the World Series," only some hits count. A rally does not produce a rally which is not better than an out, a rally . We measure skill based on those hits, rallies and runs.
This is true to virtually every level of play, and it's almost always what we're talking about when we talk about luck. A team that has vastly underperformed its run-offs, but it is not partial credit for a close loss. A pitcher that has allowed an unsustainably low BABIP – gives up lots of hard contact, but there is no partial credit on a diving catch.
On Thursday, in the third inning, the game scoreless, the series still very much undecided, Justin Verlander got two strikes on J.D. Martinez. He threw a perfect 1-2 slider, right on the outside black, just above the knees. It was a pitch that umpires across baseball call a strike 84 percent of the time, according to ESPN Stats & Info. It was a pitch that, had it worse – i.e., slightly more hittable – Martinez would probably have swung at, or would have hit, or hit meekly to the shortstop, or maybe hit for a single. But Martinez took it, umpire Chris Guccione called it a ball, and on the next pitch Verlander threw a hanging curveball – this one, ironically, probably not in the strike zone – and Martinez crushed it for what would be the game- winning, series-winning home run.
Verlander threw two good strikes, because he's a great pitcher and that's the skill. But baseball does not give partial credit for two strikes – only the third "counts." And then Verlander threw a pitch that is often called strike three. Goal baseball does not play all the simulations, but only one, and the 84 percent do not "count."
This is true of the ball Alex Bregman hit the bottom of the night Wednesday, with two outs and the basics loaded. Statcast says it's a hit 79 percent of the time. Bregman did not go to the point of doing something losing an entire baseball game. The luck is not arguing with Andrew Benintendi catches or does not catch it; that's the sport. The luck is in how we keep score. Bregman gets nothing.
The Astros came into this season playing for legacy. They'd just won a World Series, which is the ultimate goal in sports. But the great teams in history won a couple or a few World Series, and the Astros had a chance to be one of the great teams in history.
If you mean "great" in terms of skill – how well do you know? The website Baseball Prospectus publishes what it calls third-order standings, which estimate what each team's record should be based on, their performance, more or less, avoiding outs and getting outs. The Astros not only had the best third-order record in this year's base, but they had the eighth-best since 1950, truly elite. They had the best ERA + in baseball this year and the second-best OPS +. They won 103 games – the fourth-most by any team this century – and the evidence suggests that they actually played better than that, depending on what you think the words "played" and "better."
Then they got run over by the Boston Red Sox in the ALCS. But what do we mean by run over? Outhit? Outpitched? On the most basic, tactical level, the Astros outhit the Red Sox this series: They had the best on-base percentage (by 10 points) and the better slugging percentage (by one point). Which, of course, they also outpitched the Red Sox, on that level. Their pitchers also threw more strikes than the Red Sox pitchers did. Their pitchers also got more swinging strikes than the Red Sox pitchers did. The Astros are so, so good at baseball, and in five games they showed it.
And they got smoked. A lot of good things get out of the box, and a lot of hits get out of the box. They do not count. By what counts, the Astros got smoked. They got outscored, and they lost 80 percent of their games, and the world will never get really discerned from the Astros actually got unlucky or just came up when they mattered most – those two explanations, unluckily, looking very similar to each other other.
They also arguably ran into the most basic form of bad luck – a good opponent. They did not draw the 2014 Orioles in the ALCS, but the 2018 Red Sox, also one of the great teams in history. Benintendi caught that ball. Martinez hit that homer. Betts was in position to make that play. The Red Sox are playing for the World Series, but they're also good at playing for legacy.
So if you mean "great" by skill, yes, the Astros are probably there with the greatest teams in history. If you mean "great" by outcomes, they've still got work to do. Unluckily for the Astros, the train is just something we talk about. The latter is what pretty much all of us – including you, me, and the Astros themselves – actually care about. History will remember these Astros as the ones that got unlucky, and lost.
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