Astros thrust their way back into contention

ByTIM KURKJIAN
October 25, 2014, 8:37 AM

— -- Morgan Ensberg was a mile away from the airport Sunday, headed for Lake Tahoe, when his cell phone rang. He had been named, however late, to the All-Star team. "If I had been speeding, and I never speed, I would have been on the wrong plane," Ensberg said, laughing. Instead, he went to Detroit for his first All-Star Game. As he walked through the National League clubhouse, he asked, "What am I doing here?" Ensberg's odyssey parallels that of his team the first half of the season. The Astros were headed for vacation in early June. They were going in the wrong direction very quickly, when the call came to turn it around. More than a month later, the Astros have become the NL's hottest team, making us ask, "What are they doing here?''

On June 7, the Astros were 21-35, in sixth place, 15 games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. They were averaging 3.61 runs per game, and had been shut out 10 times. Since then, they've gone 23-8, averaged 5.25 runs per game, and haven't been shut out. They're in second place in the Central, six games out in the wild-card race. "We've got that feeling again that, at home, we can't lose,'' said Houston closer Brad Lidge, one of four Astros on the All-Star team. "It feels a lot like the second half of last year.'' Only it's completely different. At this time last season, the Astros fired manager Jimy Williams after going 44-44 the first half of the season. The team was in disarray, it was old and slow, and the city was angry. Phil Garner was named interim manager, and after a slow start to the second half, the Astros went wild, made the playoffs, won the first postseason series in the club's history, and came within one game of reaching the World Series. These Astros are younger and faster, and Garner is no longer an interim. "I played with a lot of these guys coming up,'' Ensberg said. "They're naïve and ignorant enough to think we can still win. That's good. They don't know how this works because they've never been here. They don't know what they're doing. Do you know what I mean? But we still have some veterans, like [Craig] Biggio, who've been there. They can see it.'' The Astros can pitch with anyone. Roger Clemens, 42, is as good as anyone in the game; he's on a pace to break Eddie Plank's single-season record (set in 1917) for the lowest ERA (1.79) by a 40-year-old (min: 100 innings). All-Star Roy Oswalt (2.39 ERA) has been especially dazzling lately. Lidge, who might have the best slider in the game, has struck out 57 batters in 37 innings; he, Dan Wheeler and Chad Qualls give the Astros a very good bullpen. "We knew if we got a little more offense, we knew we would start to win again,'' Lidge said.

Lance Berkman has started to hit. Ensberg (24 homers) is an All-Star. Center fielder Willy Taveras (.296, 22 steals) is making a run at NL Rookie of the Year. Right fielder Jason Lane (14 homers) and Chris Burke, a rookie second baseman who has been moved to left field, have really given them hope. But they're still short a big bat, they don't have a legitimate hitter in the minor leagues above Class A and they don't have major power threats anywhere in the minor leagues. They've inquired about the Reds' Adam Dunn, but that's not going to happen. The Astros made their surge last year because they had a tremendous offense, led by Carlos Beltran, Jeff Kent and Berkman. Two of them are gone, and Berkman hasn't completely returned to the hitter he once was. The Astros are last in the NL in hitting, walks and on-base percentage, and second to last in runs scored. But, they're getting better, and they appear to believe that their terrific pitching can carry them. "We have so much confidence now,'' Lidge said. "What we did last year gives us even more confidence that we can do it this year.''

Tim Kurkjian is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and a regular contributor to Baseball Tonight.