Astros Hold Players-Only Meeting After Game 2 Loss vs. Nationals

The Houston Astros were the best team in baseball during the regular season, but they played nothing like it in the first two games of the World Series.

As a result, they are facing a 2-0 hole against the Washington Nationals and held a players-only meeting after dropping the first two at home, per Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. Wednesday's Game 2 was particularly rough, as the Astros allowed 10 runs in the final three innings and lost in embarrassing fashion 12-3.

The players had plenty to address.

The offense failed to come through in multiple situations with runners in scoring position against Stephen Strasburg, which allowed one of Washington's aces to settle in and allow just two earned runs in six innings. Justin Verlander couldn't match his counterpart, allowing four earned runs for the third time in his last four starts.

He wasn't the biggest culprit, though, as things went off the rails after he left the game in the seventh inning.

Washington scored six runs in that frame alone, all but one of which came when Ryan Pressly was on the mound. Alex Bregman didn't help things when he was unable to field a bases-loaded ground ball from Howie Kendrick that could have ended the inning and then committed a crucial throwing error with two runners in scoring position on Ryan Zimmerman's slow roller.

It was a stunningly poor performance from the team that won 107 games during the regular season and looked poised to win a second World Series in three years.

Houston now has to figure out a way to win two of the next three in Washington just to ensure it has another home game in the series.

The players-only meeting may help, but so will not facing Strasburg or Max Scherzer in the next couple games.