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Jerry Dipoto continues to put his stamp on the Seattle Mariners organization, as the new general manager is reportedly set to hire Scott Servais to succeed Lloyd McClendon as manager.  

Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times was the first to report Dipoto’s decision to bring in the longtime catcher, who played 11 years in the majors with the Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies. Joel Sherman of the New York Post confirmed the report.

The 48-year-old Servais has no managerial experience, but he served as Dipoto’s assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Angels from 2011 until Dipoto departed during the 2015 regular season. Servais previously was the senior director of player development for the Texas Rangers.

Dipoto and Servais were teammates with the Rockies in 2000.

Dipoto resigned from his post as Angels GM due in part to a reported power struggle with manager Mike Scioscia, per DiGiovanna. As Dipoto’s right-hand man, most expected Servais to leave the organization this offseason as well, per DiGiovanna.

The M’s hired Dipoto as their general manager in September after firing longtime GM Jack Zduriencik in August.

It didn’t take long for Dipoto to make an impact, as he fired McClendon shortly after accepting his spot in Seattle’s front office.

Former major league infielder Tim Bogar, who also served as an assistant to Dipoto with the Angels, immediately surfaced as the top managerial candidate for the Mariners, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

While Dipoto ultimately decided to hire Servais for the head position, Bogar will still be on Seattle’s staff as the bench coach, per DiGiovanna.

The hiring of Servais as manager may raise some eyebrows due to his recent front-office role, but it certainly isn’t surprising Dipoto chose someone he is on the same page with after what happened with Scioscia.

Seattle hasn’t made the playoffs since 2001, and it was in desperate need of a shakeup. Dipoto has undoubtedly provided that by making a bold move at manager.

The Mariners certainly have the talent to compete for a playoff spot in 2016 and beyond due to the likes of Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz and Felix Hernandez, but it is now up to Servais to make the pieces fit together.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

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A year removed from winning an AL West title, the Los Angeles Angels are making changes to their coaching staff. 

According to the Los Angeles Times‘ Bill Shaikin, the team announced late Tuesday night it has fired pitching coach Mike Butcher and hitting coach Don Baylor. 

MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez relayed a statement from general manager Billy Eppler on the shakeup: 

Eppler said manager Mike Scioscia was involved in the decision, noting “It feels very much like we’re in lock step,” according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. 

Butcher has been a staple of Mike Scioscia’s staff since getting hired prior to the 2007 season, while Baylor was brought aboard after the 2013 season ended. 

The Angels competed for a playoff spot in a heated AL West race with the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, but Scioscia’s squad ultimately fell three games short and missed out on back-to-back postseason appearances. 

As a team, the Angels ranked 27th in MLB in batting average (.246) while pushing just 621 runs across the plate. The team’s average also ranked as as the worst in the AL. By comparison, L.A. graded out as the A.L.’s third-most efficient team at the plate (.259 average) en route to winning an AL West crown in 2014. 

L.A.’s pitching staff finished a respectable No. 6 overall in the AL with a 3.94 ERA, but some late-season struggles ultimately doomed Butcher. Following the All-Star break, Los Angeles posted a cumulative ERA of 4.29, which would have ranked as the third-worst mark in the AL had it spanned the entirety of the regular season. 

Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller offered his take on the firings within the context of a disappointing campaign: 

Baylor and Butcher are out of the picture, but the Angels have a tremendous amount of talent on a roster that includes Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver, Erick Aybar and Huston Street. 

The coaches Scioscia brings aboard will have plenty of pieces to work with, but it will be up to the new faces to maximize those players’ abilities as the Angels seek to make recent disappointments a distant memory. 

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Once you’ve won a League Championship Series MVP and a World Series MVP, as Cole Hamels did in 2008 with the Philadelphia Phillies, that pretty much seals your postseason legacy. On Wednesday in Toronto, however, the Texas Rangers southpaw will have a chance to gild his October lily.

It won’t be easy. He’ll face the big-bashing Blue Jays and their gauntlet of right-handed power bats, a group that throttled left-handers in the regular season. And he’ll be performing in front of a raucous Rogers Centre crowd that hadn’t soaked up postseason baseball in 22 years prior to Game 1.

If he succeeds, though, Hamels will cement his status as an unquestioned October stud—and propel Texas into the American League Championship Series.

Few imagined the Rangers would find themselves here when they acquired Hamels at the trade deadline. At the time, Texas was mired under .500 and sitting in third place in the AL West. Getting Hamels, who is signed through 2018 with a team option for 2019, felt like a move for the future.

Texas, however, surged past the Houston Astros—who will play a Game 5 of their own Wednesday, setting up the possibility of an all-Lone Star State ALCS—and on to the division crown.

Coming into the ALDS, the Jays were heavy favorites. Undaunted, the Rangers took the first two games in Canada. Toronto, however, struck back in Arlington, plating a combined 13 runs in Games 3 and 4 to force Wednesday’s winner-take-all showdown.

Now, the Rangers will hand the ball to Hamels, secure in the knowledge that he’s on familiar ground.

“I think what separates him from a lot of people is that he’s been there, done that, and he knows what it takes to be successful,” Texas pitching coach Mike Maddux said, per Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News. “He knows what the finish line smells like, what it tastes like.”

Rangers skipper Jeff Banister made the same point, per the team’s official Twitter feed:

Hamels has logged 88.2 innings over six postseasons, five with the Phillies. He’s racked up 83 strikeouts and posted a 3.05 ERA during that span and taken the hill in four potential series clinchers.

The good news for Texas? Hamels’ team won all four. Like Maddux said, he knows the taste of victory (which, incidentally, is very close to the taste of champagne). 

But Wednesday might present Hamels’ toughest postseason test. The Blue Jays led all of baseball in runs scored, home runs launched and a host of other statistical categories in the regular season. And they punished southpaws to the tune of an MLB-best .818 OPS.

Several Jays hitters have good career numbers against Hamels: Jose Bautista (3-for-9 with a double), Edwin Encarnacion (5-for-14 with a home run) and Troy Tulowitzki (5-for-15 with two home runs, a triple and four RBI).

In fact, the entire Toronto lineup is swinging easier after appearing to press in Games 1 and 2.

“I think the jitters are gone from this team now,” said Bautista, per Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun. “We’re having better at-bats.”

Here’s an interesting wrinkle to add to this story: When Hamels won his NLCS and World Series MVPs with Philadelphia in 2008, the Phils defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in the Fall Classic. And that Tampa Bay team featured a rookie pitcher by the name of David Price.

Price, of course, is now in the Blue Jays’ dugout, but he won’t start opposite Hamels in Game 5 after making a three-inning relief appearance in Game 4. Instead, the Jays will turn to 24-year-old right-hander Marcus Stroman.

Hamels was 24 in 2008. Now he’s 31, the wizened veteran. 

He’s also not the only option the Rangers and Banister have for a Game 5 starter. Yovani Gallardo is rested and ready. And you can make a case for him over Hamels, as TSN.ca did:

Going to Gallardo seems like the obvious play. The 29-year-old Mexican went five innings in the Game 1 win, allowing two runs on four hits. Those runs were the first surrendered by Gallardo against the Jays this season in three starts. In two regular season starts against the Jays, Gallardo threw 13.2 innings of scoreless baseball, allowing just six hits and holding the Jays to an average of just [.136].

Hamels, however, has the pedigree. Yes, some of the Jays’ best hitters have knocked him around in the past. Yes, he looked mortal in Game 2, surrendering four runs and six hits in seven frames and taking a no-decision as the Rangers prevailed in 14 innings.

Ultimately, though, Texas is wisely leaning on Hamels’ sterling October resume and the fact that the team has won his last 11 starts dating back to Aug. 17.

If the Rangers make it an even dozen Wednesday, they’ll be ALCS-bound. They will have pulled a David on Toronto’s mighty Goliath. And Cole Hamels’ postseason legacy will be sealed even tighter.

All statistics current as of Oct. 13 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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For a few minutes, it looked like the Houston Astros were going to win Game 4 of the American League Division Series in a romp, which would’ve pushed them one step closer to the World Series.

But it really was only for a few minutes. The situation took a hard left turn, and now the Astros find themselves in the same place they were a week ago: Reeling from a missed opportunity and needing to win a do-or-die game to extend their season.

The Astros entered the eighth inning Monday with a 6-2 lead over the Kansas City Royals. They had scored three runs in the bottom of the seventh on a two-run homer by rookie sensation Carlos Correa, his second long ball of the day, and a solo shot by red-hot left fielder Colby Rasmus.

With the Astros holding a 2-1 series lead, it looked like it was going to be curtains for the Royals, much to the delight of the 40,000 fans packed into Minute Maid Park. When the top of the eighth inning ended, however, the Astros were down 7-6. A short while later, they had lost 9-6.

And, just like that, a Game 5 back at Kauffman Stadium on Wednesday went from unnecessary to very necessary.

What happened, exactly? As Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports recounted, the top of the seventh was basically a dream for the visitors and a nightmare for the home team:

Of the events listed above, the most damaging was the E-6.

That happened on a funky ground ball that deflected off Tony Sipp’s glove and the mound before clanking off Correa’s glove and into center field. What might have been a crucial double play instead tied the game, punched the crowd in the gut and seemed to take the wind out of the Astros’ sails. And when Eric Hosmer scored the go-ahead run on a fielder’s choice, the game was all but over. That was doubly true when Hosmer padded Kansas City’s lead with a two-run homer in the top of the ninth.

So, the Astros’ four-run lead in Game 4 went the way of their two-run lead in Game 2. Cue Houston manager A.J. Hinch, who summed things up after the game, via Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle:

To be sure, the reality that a tough loss for Houston was also a brilliant win for Kansas City should not be lost on anyone. 

The Royals may have put themselves in a 6-2 hole, but they deserved to climb out of it. Correa’s error helped, but Kansas City kept the line moving by putting together beautiful at-bats. The inning showed off the team’s gritty, contact-happy offense.

So, never mind either/or. Game 4 of the ALDS was both a choke job on the part of the Astros and a well-won comeback on the part of the Royals. In time, maybe we’ll look back and view it as a classic.

For now, though, what matters is that the events of Game 4 set up a question that only one team can answer in the affirmative: Who gets the last laugh?

If the Astros want to take heart in something, they can remember this is a road they’ve been down before.

They went from leading the AL West to barely making the playoffs in a matter of weeks and didn’t even get to host the Wild Card Game. Rather than a team that deserved to be there, you could mosey out into the Twittersphere and get a sense that the Astros were lucky to be there.

But things ended up working out. Behind an excellent performance on short rest by Dallas Keuchel and a couple pinches of their offense’s special ingredient—dingers, of course—the Astros blanked the New York Yankees in the one-gamer. They didn’t even look like they were facing elimination.

Pulling that off again, however, won’t be so easy. 

In Game 5, the Astros won’t be taking on an older team with a broken offense at a bandbox venue like they did in the Wild Card Game. They’ll be taking on a 95-win team at a venue that, per ESPN.com, suppresses power like few others. Make no mistake: This could be when the Astros’ habit of making things interesting finally does them in.

Where the Royals are concerned, finishing this series could be as simple as using their home-field advantage against the Astros and continuing to grind out at-bats and punish mistakes like they did in the later innings of Game 4. The series may be tied, but they have the Astros right where they want them.

There is one potential roadblock for the Royals, though. As much as it seems like they have all the momentum, it’s true what they say about momentum only being as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. And these days, the goodness of Kansas City’s Game 5 starter is very much in question.

It’s hard to believe we can say as much about Johnny Cueto, given that his ERA was only 2.62 at the time the Royals acquired him from the Cincinnati Reds in late July. But he proceeded to post a 4.76 ERA in 13 starts down the stretch for Kansas City, and he wasn’t very good in allowing four runs in six innings in Game 2 of this series.

What’s wrong with Cueto is as good a question as any. It’s possible to blame bad luck for his struggles, as his opponents’ BABIP was .234 in Cincinnati but .343 in Kansas City. But he’s also been striking out two fewer batters per nine innings, even though his velocity has barely changed. Heck, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs even looked into Cueto’s critiques of Salvador Perez’s target-setting and didn’t find much to speak of.

Which is to say: Who really knows what the Royals are going to get out of Cueto in Game 5? His recent struggles say it could be another poor performance. His talent says it might actually be a good performance. 

If the bad Cueto shows up, it will be Kansas City’s turn to have the wind taken out of its sails, and the Astros could yet again emerge victorious after missing a major opportunity.

If the good Cueto shows up, the Astros will have to take care of business the hard way. They’ll need a clutch performance from the underrated Collin McHugh and will have to hope their bats have enough thunder in them to overcome Kauffman Stadium’s daunting dimensions.

This series is going to end one of two ways. Either the Royals will retain their status as the alpha dogs of the American League by putting the Astros out of their misery following their Game 4 collapse, or the Astros are going to show once again they’re not the same team that lost 100-plus games in three straight seasons from 2011 to 2013.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Josh Hamilton avoided history on Sunday, and he’ll sleep better because of it.

With a base hit in the fifth inning of the Texas Rangers‘ 5-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series, Hamilton snapped a 31-at-bat postseason hitless streak that dated back to 2011.

Before Sunday’s knock, Hamilton was threatening the all-time record for playoff futility, set by the Seattle Mariners‘ Dan Wilson, who came up empty in 42 consecutive postseason at-bats between 1995 and 2000, as MLB.com’s Jason Beck noted:

Hamilton added another hit in the seventh, part of a rally that plated the Rangers’ only run.

In the end, Texas, which won the first two games of this ALDS north of the border, missed a chance to step on the favored Blue Jays’ throats. Now, Monday’s Game 4—the final game of the series that will be played in Arlington—becomes huge for the Rangers.

In a different way, it’s huge for Hamilton, who is still struggling to resurrect his career in the place where it all began. He could go a long way toward doing exactly that with one signature playoff moment.

Backing up a bit: Yes, technically Hamilton made his big league debut with the Cincinnati Reds in 2007, but his best years came in a Rangers uniform. 

Texas is where he made five straight All-Star appearances, won an American League MVP Award in 2010 and powered the Rangers to two consecutive World Series appearances.

Hamilton parlayed his Lone Star State output into a five-year, $125 million contract with the Angels prior to the 2013 season. And he tossed a match on the bridge as he made his exit, dubbing Arlington “not a true baseball town,” per Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

So a Rangers reunion seemed borderline absurd, especially as Hamilton’s production dipped in 2013 and cratered in 2014, when the now 34-year-old missed nearly half of the season to injury and went hitless in a division series defeat against the Kansas City Royals.

In early February, Hamilton underwent shoulder surgery. Then, a few weeks later, he admitted he’d “suffered a relapse in his battle with substance abuse,” as Mike DiGiovanna and Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times put it. 

Two months later, Texas reacquired its wayward son in a surprising deal that mostly involved cash (flowing from L.A. to Texas) and a lot of hastily mended fences.

Hamilton made his Rangers return on May 25, and on May 29, he teased the faithful with a two-home run game. Overall, however, he posted a sluggish .253/.291/.441 slash line and looked more like a faded has-been than a viable reclamation project.

Meanwhile, the Rangers, who were sitting under .500 at the trade deadline, went out and acquired ace Cole Hamels and streaked to an AL West title behind a resurgent veteran core that includes comeback kids Prince Fielder, Mitch Moreland and Shin-Soo Choo.

Hamilton described his own poignant version of the club’s clinch to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal:

The day after we won, or clinched the division, [we] had the ginger-ale celebration on the field [and] came in. And when you come in the clubhouse, you take a left you go to the clubhouse, you take a right you go to the training room. And I took a right and went towards the training room. And Jamie Reed, the longtime trainer who’s been with me for a long, long time, he just gave me a hug and told me, ‘Good job.’ … And at that moment I started crying, because it kind of hit me, everything that has transpired from February until this point.

Really, this Texas team—which was hosed by injuries in 2014 and lost ace Yu Darvish to Tommy John surgery in the spring—is defined by nothing if not rebirth.

Why not Hamilton? Why not now, on baseball’s brightest stage?

Well, for starters, there’s reason to question his presence in the Rangers’ starting lineup, as NBC Sports’ Matthew Pouliot did prior to Game 3:

At this point, it’s worth wondering whether the Rangers should be playing Hamilton at all. He hit two homers in an 11-10 loss to the Angels last Saturday, but those were his only two homers since he came off the DL when rosters expanded last month. He’s 7-for-38 (.184) with one additional extra-base hit, four RBI and a 16/1 K/BB ratio during that span.

The Rangers also realize that Hamilton is not their best defensive left fielder, which is why he’s typically pulled in favor of Will Venable when the team has a lead.

Hamilton didn’t magically undo any of that with his two hits on Sunday. Imagine, though, he comes up in a big spot in Game 4, or Game 5 if necessary.

And let’s say he gets a fastball, the pitch against which he broke his postseason hitless streak and that he’s hit better than any other this year, per FanGraphs.

Finally, let’s really extend the hypothetical and pretend his hit leaves the yard at a pivotal juncture, or drives in a go-ahead run. Heck, why not take it all the way and suggest a walk-off knock that sends Texas to the championship series?

As Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News opined, “Especially without [injured third baseman Adrian] Beltre, you need all the potential for power you can get, especially against the Jays. Hamilton can change a game with one swing.”

What would that do for the troubled veteran’s confidence? Would it propel him toward the comeback Texas dreamed of when it took a flier and brought Hamilton back? Might it even launch the Rangers on a deep October run?

The answers will come starting Monday, when he’ll have a chance to make the good kind of history.

For now, the proposition seems as tantalizing, far-fetched and ultimately possible as anything else in Hamilton’s rocky, still-unfinished career.

All statistics current as of Oct. 11 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Two starts into his first postseason, it’s safe to say Dallas Keuchel likes October. And October likes him back.

After twirling six shutout innings in the Houston Astros‘ 3-0 Wild Card Game win at Yankee Stadium, Keuchel offered a heck of an encore in front of a raucous, beard-wearing sellout crowd at Minute Maid Park on Sunday.

The hirsute southpaw allowed just a single run through seven strong frames, striking out seven and scattering five hits as the Astros cruised to a 4-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals.

Houston now holds a 2-1 edge in the best-of-five division series and can send the defending AL champs packing with a win in Game 4 on Monday.

For now, the ‘Stros and their fans can sit back and appreciate Keuchel, who is emerging as a difference-maker and elevating Houston above the rest of the Junior Circuit playoff pack.

Talented as they are, the Royals’ lack of a true ace has been exposed in this series, with Yordano Ventura, Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez vacillating between mediocre and passable in Games 1-3.  

The Toronto Blue Jays, whose season is on the brink heading into Sunday evening’s must-win Game 3, have David Price. But he dropped Game 1 of that series, yielding five earned runs.

The Texas Rangers have Cole Hamels, but he, too, looked hittable in his only playoff start so far, coughing up four runs in a Game 2 no-decision.

Of the AL studs, only Keuchel has been genuinely transcendent. He’s pitching like a man capable of carrying his club to the Fall Classic finish line, as MLB.com’s Richard Justice highlighted:

There’s a dusting of hyperbole in Justice’s analysis. After all, we just watched a fella named Madison Bumgarner take a team on his back last October. Really, it happens to some degree almost every year.

But the point is, Keuchel has performed well enough to inspire that brand of overstatement. After a Cy Young-caliber regular season, he has transferred his dominance into MLB’s annual autumn tournament. And suddenly the Astros, a surprise contender who nearly melted down before sneaking in as the second wild card, are legitimate World Series hopefuls.

Keuchel, whose fastball tops out in the low 90s, succeeded on Sunday with the blueprint he followed all season: changing speeds, using his wicked breaking pitches and getting hitters to chase out of the zone.

“Obviously he’s not going to blow the doors off anybody on the radar gun, but he doesn’t need to,” Astros catcher Jason Castro said prior to Game 3, per Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com. “Guys look out there and see numbers right around 90, and it almost lulls them into a false sense of security. And then he takes advantage with his incredible late movement. Hitters face guys like Dallas and say, ‘Man, I thought I saw the ball pretty well.’ But they don’t get hits off him.'”

Keuchel was touched for a run in the fourth inning, when Lorenzo Cain launched one into Minute Maid’s short left field porch, giving the Royals a 1-0 lead. Houston, however, answered with two in the fifth and insurance runs in the sixth and seventh.

Keuchel even got the last laugh on Cain, striking him out with a runner at third to end the seventh.

If there’s any knock on Keuchel so far, it’s that he hasn’t pitched impressively deep into either playoff start. In the Wild Card Game, he was going on three days’ rest for the first time all season, so the decision to pull him after six made sense.

On Sunday, he threw a season-high 124 pitches and once again handed the ball to the pen. There’s no shame in that; no one’s going to throw a complete game every time out.

But Houston’s bullpen was exposed down the stretch, posting a 5.61 ERA in September and October. And closer Luke Gregerson yielded a solo shot to Alex Gordon in the ninth on Sunday before nailing down the save.

If Keuchel can keep his pitch count down and go eight or even nine in his next outing—which would come in the American League Championship Series—that’s about all he could do to improve.

We’re quibbling, though, nitpicking near-perfection. Keuchel pitched the Astros into the Wild Card Game, then he pitched them into the division series. On Sunday, he pitched them to the brink of the ALCS.

Almost no one thought the Astros would be in this position coming into spring. Yet here they are. And while the offense has done its job with dingers and timely knocks, they’ve largely got their ace—currently the ace of the AL—to thank.

Welcome to October, Dallas Keuchel. Pull up a seat and stay a while.

All statistics current as of Oct. 11 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Home runs are supposed to be left in September. Those things are not supposed to transition into the fall, when the weather gets crisp, the leaves get brown and the pitching depth gets dense.

Pitching and small ball win in the Major League Baseball playoffs, or so the saying goes. If you are a team reliant on home runs, that reliance will be the death of you. That is what the myth tells us.

That is not entirely true, though. While pitching wins no matter what month of the year the game is played in, teams that rely on home runs are actually less susceptible to their offense suffering than clubs that don’t rely on the long ball.

The Houston Astros rely on the home run. They finished second in the majors with 230 during the regular season, and through their first two postseason games this year, the franchise’s first since 2005 when it reached the World Series, they have used good pitching and multiple home runs to win.

The Kansas City Royals got Houston’s latest dose in Game 1 of the American League Division Series on Thursday, a 5-2 Astros win at Kauffman Stadium to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series. George Springer and Colby Rasmus both homered.

Underrated playoff tradition: Announcers saying “it’s bad to be too reliant on homers” as game after game after game is decided by homers.

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) October 9, 2015

The Astros were the second-most home run-reliant team in the majors during the regular season, using that weapon to score 47.6 percent of their 729 runs, according to Baseball Prospectus‘ Guillen Number, a stat that tracks the percentage of runs teams score via home runs.

In games when the Astros hit more than one home run, they were a major league-best 57-11. The usual narrative says that trend won’t continue in the postseason, and while that is sometimes true, it is no more so than for teams that rely on other ways of scoring.

Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh looked into those trends last year and found that between 1995 and 2013, teams that relied on the homer—ones that scored around 40 percent of their runs that way—saw their offensive production drop in the playoffs by 22.4 percent. Teams that did not rely on home runs—ones that scored around 33 percent of their runs through home runs—saw their offensive production drop by 26.5 percent.

Myth busted. The Astros, a team that wins with pitching, home runs and defense, might not see their offense suffer in October as much as people like to think.

While pitching should be credited first and foremost for Houston’s wild-card and ALDS wins—Dallas Keuchel threw six shutout innings in the Wild Card Game, and Collin McHugh allowed two runs in six innings Thursday—the Astros have continued to hit for power. The team hit two home runs against the New York Yankees to help in that 3-0 victory, and it used two more against the Royals to keep its trends alive.

“They’re having fun,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow told reporters before Game 1. When you’re having fun, even on this big stage, you’re able to perform the way you do all summer. That’s what they did in New York, and hopefully that’s what they’re going to keep doing.”

There is another trend that has become part of the Astros’ identity: This team strikes out with the best of them. Their 1,392 strikeouts were the second most in the majors and the most in the AL, and that total is also good for ninth highest in the game’s history.

However, this is how the Astros have won all season. So too the Chicago Cubs. So too the Pittsburgh Pirates. Those teams finished in the top seven in the majors in total strikeouts, and they also made the playoffs.

For the Astros, on Thursday they became the sixth team in postseason history to win a nine-inning game despite striking out at least 14 times.

Astros strike out 14 times, win Game 1. Sounds about right.

— Jane Lee (@JaneMLB) October 9, 2015

Houston’s first home run against the Royals came in the fifth inning, moments after Jose Altuve was thrown out trying to steal. George Springer, who had 16 regular-season homers despite missing about nine weeks with an injury, followed that downer by unloading on a mistake fastball from Chris Young, putting it over the wall in left-center field for a 4-2 lead.

“When he’s healthy and he’s right, he can be one of the best players in the game,” former major leaguer Eric Byrnes said on MLB Network after the game. “Yeah, one of the best.”

This postseason could be his coming-out party.

“He’s obviously announcing his presence,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch told reporters in his postgame press conference.

George Springer’s HR projected to land 422 feet away and leave the bat at 109 mph, according to #Statcast. pic.twitter.com/1PELPEgv7y

— MLB (@MLB) October 9, 2015

Colby Rasmus provided more insurance in the eighth inning when he smoked his second postseason home run of the week. That shot made him the fifth player in major league history to have at least one extra-base hit in each of his first five postseason games.

“This is a [bleeping] blast, man,” Rasmus told reporters after the game.

Colby Rasmus’ 8th-inning HR was calculated at 439 feet (longest of 2015 postseason). pic.twitter.com/340TpnFTiw

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) October 9, 2015

Baseball is full of myths—things we believe to be true. But because of piles upon piles of data now available, they have proved to be false or at least not as true as we once thought. That home runs completely disappear in October is one of those.

The Astros, a team that swings for the fences and does not apologize when it misses, are already doing their best to discredit that belief. And they are certainly talented enough to keep that trend going.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter, @awitrado, and talk baseball here.

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The Texas Rangers may have suffered a serious loss early in Game 1 of the American League Division Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday, as star third baseman Adrian Beltre was taken out after suffering a back injury following an at-bat in the third inning. 

He was not in the Rangers’ lineup for Game 2, but manager Jeff Banister hadn’t ruled the third baseman out of potentially pinch-hitting, per Jason Beck of MLB.com.

Continue for updates.   

Beltre Could ‘Barely Move’ During Game 1

Thursday, Oct. 8

Beltre was diagnosed with a back strain, per Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who added there was no structural damage.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports noted the Rangers were astonished he was able to swing a bat and drive in a run, given his state. “Assistant GM Thad Levine guessed Beltre had one swing in him. And we saw it,” Rosenthal reported.

According to Jason Beck of MLB.com, Beltre could “barely move” as he was standing behind second base between innings at the Rogers Centre. Gordon Edes of ESPN.com noted the All-Star third baseman was emotional after he came out of the contest. Also from Edes, who cited Texas Rangers public relations man John Blake, Beltre was initially injured following a first-inning slide into second base. 

Beltre lined an RBI single to center field in the third inning off Toronto starter David Price to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead, but he essentially waddled to first base because of the injury. 

How Beltre’s Injury Would Impact Rangers

The Rangers have battled their way into the postseason despite injuries all year, but Beltre’s absence could be devastating if he has to miss extended time. The 36-year-old finished the season on fire, hitting 10 of his 18 home runs between August and October. 

Texas does have solid depth with Shin-Soo Choo and Prince Fielder surrounding Beltre in the lineup, but it will be impossible to replace his value offensively and defensively. Hanser Alberto stepped in for Beltre during Game 1.

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The 2015 postseason, it’s now obvious, will be a coming-out party for the Houston Astros. They are the “it” team, poised on the precipice of something special.

Regardless of what happens in their American League Division Series matchup with the Kansas City Royals—last year’s surprise October darlings—this is the year the ‘Stros go from small-budget, also-ran obscurity to the MLB big time.

Narrowing the lens a bit more, there are two Astros in particular who are ready to make the leap to national notoriety and full-blown superstardom: shortstop Carlos Correa and second baseman Jose Altuve.

It’s not that Houston’s keystone combo has labored in anonymity. Correa is in the mix for American League Rookie of the Year honors, and Altuve is a three-time All-Star. But for the past several seasons, playing for the Astros meant you were unnoticed by default. Casual observers and even some media types are still catching up to the franchise’s newfound relevance. 

In 2011, Altuve‘s first big league campaign, the Astros lost 106 games. The next year, they lost 107. Then they topped themselves (and bottomed out) with 111 losses. 

Last season, they enjoyed a 90-loss “rebound.” And while discerning fans and baseball analysts understood this was a young, talented squad on the rise, they were still relegated to back-burner status hype-wise.

None of ESPN’s prognosticators tapped Houston to make the playoffs, and Sports Illustrated ranked it the No. 25 team in baseball (out of 30) prior to the season, one slot behind the Texas Rangers.

So much for that. After an extended ride atop the AL West, the ‘Stros ceded first place to, yep, the Rangers and settled for the second wild-card slot. Then they went to New York and shut out the Yankees, cruising to a never-in-doubt 3-0 victory behind ace Dallas Keuchel and a date with Kansas City.

Fittingly, the final out of the AL Wild Card Game was a chopper up the middle, which Correa gloved and slung to first to seal the Astros’ first postseason victory in a decade.

Correa has been in the midst of many big moments since his June call-up. 

“Our team could use the spark right now,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said at the time, per MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart. Boy, did they get one.

Correa shot out of the gate with five hits, including two home runs and a double, in his first 16 at-bats. On June 17, he was hitting .359 with a 1.016 OPS.

In a post-Jeter MLB starved for top-shelf shortstops, the 21-year-old former No. 1 overall pick looked like a bona fide savior. (Add Francisco Lindor of the Cleveland Indians, Correa‘s chief competition for AL ROY, and you’ve got the makings of a shortstop renaissance.)

Yes, Correa‘s production tailed off a tad as the summer wore on. But his final .279/.345/.512 slash line with 22 home runs and 14 stolen bases bespeaks a well-rounded offensive force.

Correa had at least one booster in the Astros clubhouse before he even arrived, as Sports Illustrated‘s Ben Reiter revealed:

Early this season, while Correa was still in Triple A, Jose Altuve, the team’s veteran second baseman, wrote Correa‘s name on a piece of athletic tape and affixed it over the empty locker next to his, as a faux nameplate. “I wanted him here,” Altuve says. “I was saving his locker.”

Later in the same piece, Reiter quotes Altuve as saying Correa is “the best player…on the team.”

That’s high praise, but that honor might belong to Altuve himself.

While small in stature—he’s listed at 5’6″, and that could be in his cleats—Altuve has been a huge part of the Astros’ resurgence.

Last year, he paced baseball with 225 hits and a .341 batting average. He swiped 56 bags. And yet, somehow, he remained one of the game’s most underrated players, as Bleacher Report’s Zachary D. Rymer argued last July.

This year, as the ‘Stros rose to unexpected prominence, Altuve‘s stock also soared. Most notably, fans voted him into the Midsummer Classic starting lineup after he was relegated to a reserve role in 2014.

Now, along with his middle infield cohort—who checks in at 6’4″—he has a chance to stand tall (ahem) on the sport’s biggest stage.

The pair went a combined 1-for-8 in the Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium, with Altuve collecting the only hit, a single.

As for their ALDS opponent, Altuve fared well against the Royals this year, going 8-for-24 with a double and a home run, while Correa went 2-for-17.

This is the playoffs, though, a new chapter. We can look at regular-season stats and parse the matchups. Ultimately, however, this time of year is about moments and which players rise to meet them.

There’s no guarantee that either Altuve or Correa will do that. History is littered with supreme talents, sometimes future Hall of Famers, who fizzled in October.

But it feels like if one of them goes nuts, he’ll pull the other guy with him. That’s how it’s been all season, as manager A.J. Hinch explained, per Richard Justice of MLB.com.

“I’m not sure which one pushes the other more,” Hinch said, per Justice. “I think Altuve is introducing Carlos to the big leagues and pushing him to get acclimated quickly. I think Correa is pushing Altuve to be even better than he’s been.”

Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle aptly compared the dynamic duo to Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, two of the “Killer Bees” who keyed the Astros’ success in the late ’90s and early ’00s. 

In fact, as Ortiz points out, the last (and only) time Houston made it to the World Series was with Biggio and Bagwell in 2005.

“On the field, we’re always talking, always having fun,” Correa said of Altuve, per Ortiz. “That’s the most important thing. Because at the end of the day, we expect to play many years together.” 

Now, we wait to see how far that bond—and the production it’s fostered—can carry the Astros this year. And concurrently, how high Correa and Altuve can fly.

It’s their party—we’re all just lucky to be invited.

All statistics current as of Oct. 7 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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NEW YORK — They made it through April, and they made it through May, and as September wore down, the Houston Astros were still hanging on.

All of a sudden it was October, and the Astros were still playing. And even on a Tuesday night when Yankee Stadium finally got loud again, the young Astros were up for it.

Even in an inning and a moment guaranteed to scare, the young Astros didn’t scare.

They proved their worth as their ace Dallas Keuchel proved his, and maybe those two things are even more connected than we could have guessed. He was ready for the postseason and so were they. When their 3-0 win over the New York Yankees in the American League Wild Card Game was over, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow was sipping champagne and talking about how well his team has played against the Kansas City Royals the last two years.

“We’re going there to have fun, but we’re coming for business,” Luhnow said, and while you still have to make the Royals the favorites, the Astros are no longer an easy team to dismiss.

The Royals showed 12 months ago how a young team could succeed and how a Wild Card Game win could get a team going. The Astros’ win over the Yankees was nowhere near as dramatic as the Royals’ win last year over the Oakland A’s, but it could turn out just as meaningful.

Their own manager spoke this week about the challenge of playing in New York, but it turned out his players embraced it. It turned out Keuchel embraced it most of all, and when the stadium got the craziest, he reacted the best.

It was the sixth inning, and it was 2-0 Astros, as a result of home runs from Colby Rasmus and Carlos Gomez. But the Yankees had two on with two out and Alex Rodriguez at the plate, and for the first time (and what turned out to be the only time) all night, the Yankees and their fans really began to believe.

Keuchel had thrown 86 pitches to that point, and manager A.J. Hinch went to the mound still unsure of what to do. He spoke later about “checking the heartbeat,” about looking in Keuchel’s eyes and about “gauging the room temperature a little bit.”

He trusted in his ace—the 27-year-old left-hander who was standing out there just taking it all in.

“The stadium was rocking; that’s for sure,” Keuchel would say later. “A-Rod’s coming up. Doesn’t get any more exciting than that.”

He had pitched Rodriguez well in the past (1-for-7, four strikeouts) and in two earlier at-bats Tuesday. He saw something in one of his swings during the second at-bat and decided a first-pitch cutter would work.

“I knew if I could elevate it or get it middle in, I had a good shot to just have him pop it up,” Keuchel said.

Yeah, in the biggest at-bat of his season, and his team’s season, one of the most extreme ground-ball pitchers in baseball went looking for a pop-up. And he got it.

“I was playing Blackjack, and it paid off,” he said.

It always has for Keuchel against the Yankees. Tuesday’s game was his third against them this season, and in 22 innings they never did score a run.

The cutter to A-Rod was the last pitch Keuchel threw Tuesday, but the Yankees would never bring the tying run to the plate again. Not this year, anyway.

The Astros moved on, with Keuchel vowing the Astros are “going to have as much fun as we can in Kansas City.”

They’re a fun team—the way young teams often are, the way teams that haven’t won in years often are. The Yankees were in the postseason for the first time in three years, but so much of their season seemed like drudgery.

Even if the Yankees had won Tuesday, they never looked like a team that could go far this postseason. They were too thin on the pitching staff, too vulnerable against left-handed pitchers, too old and too beat-up.

The Astros have their faults, too. The failure to win a division they led for 139 days means Keuchel won’t be able to pitch in the first two games against the Royals. They strike out too much. Their bullpen is shaky, although the new Tony Sipp-to-Will Harris-to-Luke Gregerson combo worked again Tuesday.

But the one thing that no longer is a question is whether they’re ready for all this—whether they can handle it.

“You saw a lot of what’s right about Astros baseball,” Hinch said. “We homered, we stole a few bases…we got a two-out hit from [Jose] Altuve, we got some gutsy pitching out of Keuchel and our bullpen and we had some big plays on defense.

“I think that’s what we do when we’re at our best. And as I’ve said before, our best is good enough.”

Good enough in April and good enough in May. And good enough Tuesday night…on the big October stage.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

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