On Luck and the '98 Astros

In Moneyball, Billy Beane says to Michael Lewis something to the effect that he has no control over the playoffs. And he's right - the playoffs are so short, and the amount of luck involved in baseball so large, that even the 1998 Devil Rays could beat the 1998 Yankees in a five game series. It's not a very fun notion - we want to think that the team that reaches the World Series is the best of the best, but sometimes (cough2006Cardinalscough) even pretty poor teams make it. And they win the championship, too.

In the wake of Biggio's jersey retirement, and the resulting shitfest that was the "discussion" of his hall-of-fameness, I began to notice a running trend: people were counting Biggio's lack of a WS ring against him. So I'd like to write about the time the Astros really got fucked over by fate - the 1998 NLDS.

The 1998 season produced the 1998 Yankees - the "best Yankees evar" to paraphrase that dumbass Giuliani. Most people probably remember 1998 for the race between McGwire and Sosa. The 1998 season also produced three 100 win teams - the Yankees, the Braves, and the Astros. By that time, of course, the Yankees and Braves were perennial visitors to the playoffs. The Astros had, since 1994, established themselves as the powerhouse of the NL Central, along with St. Louis. 1997 was the Astros' first playoff visit since the epic 1986 season, but had resulted in a sweep in the NLDS, courtesy of the Braves.

The next season, the Astros had one of the most powerful lineups they ever fielded. At first and second were, of course, Bagwell and Biggio. Bagwell was having something of an off year, "only" posting an OPS+ of 158. Biggio was having a great one, posting an OPS+ of 139. Moises Alou would display his pure hitting prowress: OPS+ of 157. Bill Spiers was even league-average that year. Ausmus had his third best season: OPS+ of 91. Guys like Richard Hidalgo rounded out the bench and lineup. I'd say it was the best lineup of hitters the Astros would field until 2004.

Oddly enough, for a team that many associate with outstanding pitching talent, the late 90s Astros had little of it. But we did have solid starters. Jose Lima had the worst ERA of the starters at 5.28 - he would be a year away from "Lima Time." Mike Hampton and Shane Reynolds would have ERAs of 3.36 and 3.51, respectively - slightly under the league average. Sean Bergman posted one of 3.72; again, slightly better than league average. The Astros had one shitty pitcher and three semi-good ones.

Until Johnson was traded to the Astros. Johnson was in his contract year with the Mariners, and had apparently been in something of a malaise for most of the season. But the Astros dealt John Halama (a player to be named later, he was the Astros' other shitty fifth starter in 1998), Carlos Guillen (still in the MLB with the Tigers), and Freddy Garcia (just came out of rehab and signed a deal with the Tigers). This was back when the Astros could afford to do this sort of thing with the farm system - Draft and Follow had proven to be something that the Astros were awesome at, and all of Venezuela was essentially the Astros' territory. We could afford to lose a Major League pitcher and two top prospects for a guy who we knew would only be in Houston for a few months.

So Johnson came to Houston and promptly posted a 1.28 ERA in his 11 starts. Had he done this in Seattle for anything close to the whole season, he probably would have won his second Cy Young that year. In any case, he still came in 7th in NL Cy Young voting that year. Oh yeah, and we had some dude named Wagner as our closer. So with four average starters, one awesome starter, and one of the best bullpen aces of all time, the Astros would roll towards the playoffs with Bagwell, Biggio, and Johnson leading the way.

The NLDS pitted the Cubs (who won the wild card) against the Atlanta Braves and the Padres against the Astros. In stark contrast to what will happen this year, with three good teams making the playoffs and one bad team showing up from the NL West, the 1998 season saw remarkable parity amongst the divisons. San Diego had won 98 games, Atlanta 105, and Houston 102. Chicago, San Francisco, and New York were locked in a three-way fight for the wild card. The Giants and Cubs would play each other in a tiebreaker to determine the wild card.

A lot of people picked the 98 Astros as the NL Pennant favorite. And they were probably right. What nobody accounted for was the sudden failure of the Astros hitters.

The simple fact was that Bagwell, Biggio, Alou and the rest were atrocious in the postseason that year. It shouldn't have been even close. Other than our friend Caminiti (who had finally gotten the drugs and drinking under control and was displaying his hitting talent at full force), Tony Gwynn, and Greg Vaughn (who was having an absolutely ridiculous year, hitting 50 homers and OPS+ at 150. The guy never had anything even CLOSE to that before or after), the Padres didn't have the hitting skills of the Astros. And they certainly didn't have the raw slugging ability.

Pitching was similar, as well. The Padres had two starters with better-than-average ERAs: Ace Kevin Brown and less-than-ace Andy Ashby. They featured one of the premier closers of his time and all-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman. But again, they didn't have the talent that Houston had. Johnson was better than Brown. Hampton was better than Ashby. Wagner was better than Hoffman. Bagwell was better than Caminiti, Alou was better than Vaughn, and Biggio was better than Gwynn.

But the Astros would be defeated 3-1 in the series. What the fuck happened?

Luck happened. Brown was hot, as was Johnson. But the Padres' hitters were hot, too, while the Astros' hitters simply weren't. A lot of people like to believe that it was the Astros' lack of left-handed hitting. I don't think that's the case. Left-hand right-hand crap only matters in extreme cases.

Well, maybe it was just the pitching. Maybe Bagwell and Biggio just got blown away by Brown.

But the problem with that is our data for their career stats against Brown. Bagwell had an .870 OPS against Brown, lifetime. He could handle Brown in other circumstances (interestingly, to me anyways, is that Bagwell's #1 Pitcher Faced was Maddux. And he posted pretty good numbers against Maddux, too. Bags didn't have a problem with good pitchers).

Biggio has a less pretty career line against Brown: .188/.308/.313. But that's pretty typical for Bidge. As Bill James and others have noted, Biggio had a very extreme good pitcher/bad pitcher split. He could still hit a good pitcher (again, Mad Dog was his #1 pitcher faced. Career .723 OPS. He was plunked twice), but not like how he could hit a bad one. I don't really feel like looking up the career lines of Alou or Bell against Brown right now, but I'm sure they're fairly similar.

It was just luck of the draw. From 1997 on, the Astros faced spectacular pitchers in the postseason. They faced the ridiculously good Braves' pitching corps year after year - the one including future Hall of Famers Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine. They just didn't have the success they found in the regular season. Balls didn't fall in the right spots, pitches once called strikes were now called balls, their bats were just off by a few sixteenths of an inch. They just got unlucky.

That still leaves the "choking" explanation. I've always loved Choke City as a nickname for Houston (it's why I named the blog that, along with the Chacon-Wade incident). Houston has a fine history of choking - the 1993 Oilers come to mind, as do the 1986 Rockets, the Rockets from 2003 on, and plenty of other cases.

But people don't become big league ballplayers if they can't handle pressure. Bagwell was dealing with pitches whizzing past his head at 90+ MPH almost every day for six months. He could handle pressure. The only explanation that makes any sense is luck. And that shouldn't be held against the Stros or any other franchise.

We can wonder about "what if." What if the Astros had swept the Fightin' Fathers? We would have met up with the Atlanta Braves once again. That would have been truly epic, as always. I think that would have cemented the Astros-Braves rivalry then and there. Had the Stros won the NLCS, they would have faced the Yankees. And I think the Astros would have faced much better chances against the '98 Yankees than the '98 Padres did. We might have seen the Astros' first World Series victory in 1998, "only" 36 years after enfranchisement. It would have been a thing to behold.

As it is, we had to wait for our first postseason victory against the Braves until 2004. And I think everyone would agree that the 2005 encounter between the two teams, with Roger Clemens emerging from the bullpen as the Astros' last chance to put the game away as the greatest postseason game ever played - even greater than the 1986 NLCS Game 6.

But luck played a major factor in everything. The postseason is not a good way to determine the best team, but it is a dramatic one. And that's alright. We don't watch baseball as a lesson on probability (well, I do), we watch it for the story and drama and battle.

But the Astros still got fucked.