Astros Need More from Their Big Stars After Falling in 2-0 World Series Hole

All of a sudden, the Houston Astros don't look anything like the ballclub that won 107 regular-season games and generally forced its way into the "greatest team ever" conversation.

The Washington Nationals have seen to that in the first two games of the World Series. Juan Soto captained an upset of American League Cy Young Award favorite Gerrit Cole in Game 1 on Tuesday, and just about everyone in a Nationals uniform had a hand in the club's 12-3 romp in Wednesday's Game 2.

For the most part, it was yet another showcase for Stephen Strasburg. The ace right-hander gave up two runs on seven hits, a walk and seven strikeouts in six innings. He's now rocking a 1.93 ERA, 40 strikeouts and only two walks through five playoff appearances.

Veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki, meanwhile, turned Game 2's momentum decidedly in Washington's favor with a go-ahead solo home run against Justin Verlander while leading off in the top of the seventh inning:

The Nationals scored five more runs in the seventh by way of timely hits by their batters and costly misplays by Houston defenders. They picked up four more in the eighth and ninth innings, including three on long balls by Adam Eaton and Michael A. Taylor.

"The Nats have outplayed us. Bottom line," Astros manager AJ Hinch said, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com.

The Nationals have now won eight games in a row, and their 2-0 series lead is all the more commanding because they earned it away from home at Minute Maid Park. Per MLB.com's Richard Justice, 22 of the 25 road teams that have gone up 2-0 in the World Series under the 2-3-2 format have gone on to win it.

The Nats have the Astros in a hole precisely because they've benefited from good starting pitching and clutch hits in the series' first two games. Such things also drove their success (see here and here) during their 93-win regular season, and it's been more of the same throughout October.

They're getting a 2.23 ERA out of their starters—namely Strasburg, Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin and Anibal Sanchez—and an .887 OPS from their offense with runners in scoring position. Add a "with two outs" stipulation and the latter figure jumped to .943.

Houston, on the other hand, is all sorts of out of sorts right now.

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Beyond simply winning 107 games, the Astros also scored 280 more runs than they allowed in the regular season. Their offense, defense and pitching were all varying degrees of elite.

Yet the Astros needed all five games of the American League Division Series to knock off the Tampa Bay Rays, and it took them six games and an epic home run by Jose Altuve for them to outlast the New York Yankees in the Championship Series.

Their World Series deficit, therefore, hasn't come out of nowhere. It's merely the latest dose of humility they've been dealt since the calendar flipped from September to October.

Above all, their supposedly stupendous offense, which led Major League Baseball in adjusted OPS+ in the regular season, has lost its ability to produce hits when they're needed most. Houston's hitters are 8-for-63 with runners in scoring position since the start of the ALCS.

Altuve and George Springer have been doing their bit, and Alex Bregman got off the schneid with a two-run homer off Strasburg in the first inning on Wednesday. But on the whole, Bregman, Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel and Yordan Alvarez have been heard from all too infrequently this month.

For their part, Cole, Verlander and Zack Greinke haven't quite lived up to their billing as the best rotation trio in MLB.

Greinke, who'll start opposite Sanchez in Game 3 at Nationals Park on Friday, has put up a 6.43 ERA in three playoff starts. And after combining for a 2.54 ERA and 12.9 strikeouts per nine innings in the regular season, Cole and Verlander have both hit an October wall.

The former walked five in Game 3 of the ALCS and gave up five runs in Game 1 of the World Series. The latter has allowed 14 runs in four starts dating back to Game 4 of the ALDS.

There are other Astros players who share fault in the club's overall slowdown, but there's no point in scapegoating any of them. If the team is going to climb out of its 2-0 hole, it needs its biggest stars to be better. No ifs, ands, buts or whatever elses about it.

If that doesn't happen, Houston's extraordinary season will be little more than a footnote in the story of a better team's historic triumph.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant and ESPN.com.

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