Major League Baseball

Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa lead deep Astros lineup into another postseason

Updated Oct. 15, 2021 11:08 p.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Editor's note: This story was originally published Sept. 22.

At this time a year ago, Houston Astros general manager James Click was in an unfamiliar position. Hired only one month before the coronavirus shutdown and operating within ongoing protocols, he didn’t know his players well enough to know what to expect.

He knew only that Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa were capable of excellence, and they were dramatically underperforming during last season's 60-game sprint. Click could not tell when they might return to form.

Just wait ’til we get to the postseason, they told him. We’ll turn it on.

This week, Click recalled nodding along but not exactly believing them.

"I don’t think it’s that easy," he thought.

Perhaps it is. The under-.500 Astros snuck into the 2020 postseason, and, after hitting .219 with five homers in 48 regular-season games, Altuve hit .375 with five home runs in 13 postseason games. After hitting .264 with five homers in 58 regular-season games, Correa hit .362 with six homers in the same 13 playoff games.

Their momentum nearly carried the Astros all the way to the World Series. Now it has carried them to the cusp of another postseason run. The American League West is all but officially theirs. In two weeks, they will likely host the Chicago White Sox in one ALDS.

Because of an unrelenting offense fronted by Altuve and Correa, Houston is as good a pick as anyone to win the American League pennant.

By Baseball-Reference measurements, the Astros’ four most valuable players this season are all position players. (And that doesn’t include Alex Bregman, who missed almost half the year to a quadriceps injury but has been exceptional since his late-August return.) That fact is promising, demonstrating that Houston's offense has been dominant.

It is also concerning, as it reveals their lack of a dominant pitcher. Only one other contending team, the Tampa Bay Rays, has had the same top-heavy assortment of offensive contributors. And the Rays this week introduced their top prospect, Shane Baz, into their rotation, hoping he can quickly become a postseason weapon.

The Astros have no such prospects waiting in the wings. They do have Click, who came up in the Rays’ organization and is, therefore, comfortable piecing together a pitching plan out of unconventional parts. And they possess several young pitchers comfortable with pitching in non-traditional roles after rising through the organization that way under former GM Jeff Luhnow.

It’s not as if the Astros lack pitching talent entirely; after all, no AL team has allowed fewer runs this season. It’s that they have a staff full of competent arms, with few dominant options. Some league evaluators question how that will play in the postseason.

Veteran Zack Greinke, Houston's Opening Day starter, has had three consecutive awful starts wrapped around a case of COVID-19. For the season, his strikeout rate is one of the sport’s lowest. Still, manager Dusty Baker said earlier this month that he worries about Greinke "less than any player I think I’ve ever had," with the possible exception of Barry Bonds.

Lance McCullers Jr., the Astros' likely No. 1, leads the American League in walks. Left-hander Framber Valdez earned Cy Young votes last season and impressed in the postseason, but he hasn’t dominated this season, except for Monday against the Angels, when he threw seven shutout innings. Rookie right-hander Luis Garcia has the elite peripherals, but his actual run-prevention statistics have been just good, not elite. Fellow right-hander José Urquidy suppresses baserunners better than anyone on the staff, but he lacks even average velocity.

Maybe all of that, plus a deep bullpen, will be enough. Come the ALDS, the Astros figure to start seven position players who have been at least 20% better than average hitters this season, in terms of OPS-plus. Only two other contending teams can say the same: the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants, baseball’s two best.

In descending order of success, the Astros' seven are: right fielder Kyle Tucker, designated hitter Yordan Álvarez, Correa, first baseman Yuli Gurriel, Altuve, Bregman, and left fielder Michael Brantley, who is nearing a return from the injured list.

It won’t escape many opposing fans’ notice that the core includes four members of the 2017 champions, the group later disgraced for sign stealing. This might be the last chance at redemption for that group, before Correa reaches free agency. To an extent, the band is back together. In a surprise, the organization recently brought back a fifth hitter from that 2017 team, utilityman Marwin González.

Baker likes to talk about "surprise guys," unexpected key pieces who tend to emerge for contending teams as they approach the postseason. The Astros have a few of those. Emerging center fielder Jake Meyers, for one, was free for the taking in the December Rule 5 draft. No one took him. September call-up Jose Siri might be another.

But some of Houston's surprise guys are gone.

Amazingly, amid their July search for relief, the Astros traded three young position players who have since been above-average performers in regular roles for their new teams: Seattle second baseman Abraham Toro, Cleveland outfielder Myles Straw and Miami outfielder Bryan De La Cruz. For those three the Astros netted Kendall Graveman, Phil Maton and Yimi García. None has been elite in Houston.

But it seems the Astros acquired them not for the stretch run but for the postseason run. If they are good next month, all, or much, will be forgiven.

"The guys that we brought in and the guys we have in the bullpen right now, we think they have the stuff to get big outs in the postseason, which is a little bit of a different animal," Click said. "The adrenaline, the quality of hitters that you’re facing, you can’t trick guys in the postseason. You really need to go in there and out-stuff them."

The front office has bet on stuff. Now the coaching staff must best deploy it, with creativity and unpredictability in mind. Consider how the Astros advanced out of the wild-card game a year ago, when Baker used Greinke for four innings followed by Valdez for five.

Early in Click’s Tampa Bay tenure, the upstart Rays met the Texas Rangers in consecutive American League Division Series, in 2010 and 2011. Both times, Tampa Bay went home early because of the likes of Texas sluggers Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Michael Young. Both times, the Rangers went on to the World Series.

Lately, Click has found himself remembering those teams. His 2021 lineup, albeit one assembled mostly by his predecessor, could pose a similar threat.

"They were so deep. There was no let-up," Click said of the Rangers. "The guys here are doing everything they can to create that sort of effect."

Since last postseason, they have succeeded.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.