It hits Minute Maid like a cold, hard morning — slapping the fans who show for the first afternoon game of the season, slapping anyone who wants to believe these total rebuild Houston Astros can be interesting this season. You can bet, Bo Porter must have felt it too.
If Porter held any illusions about just how daunting the task of guiding a $20 million team through the sharks of the American League is going to be, they're certainly gone now.
The hope and fun of Opening Night already seems so long gone, buried under an unprecedented wave of strikeouts.
Game three ends with a 4-0 loss, with the Texas Rangers merrily marching on into their schedule, their pitching staff buoyed by the gift of facing the Astros' free-swinging lineup. Somehow Houston strikes out even more in this day game (15) than they did against Yu Darvish in his near perfect night (14). By the time Joe Nathan throws the last pitch in a 12-pitch, strike-out-the-side ninth, the Rangers pitchers have 43 strikeouts for the series, breaking the Major League Baseball's record for an opening series.
Still Porter insists he will not rant and rave. No locker or trash can is in danger. This is the last place you'll ever get anything close to one of Mike Rice's insane tirades. Porter will stay the course — no matter how painful it becomes.
These Astros swing and miss more often than kids playing pinata. Only, they're not supposed to be batting blind.
"You guys may not know me too well," Porter says. "But I don't believe in drastic."
Three games into the season, it's already clear that Porter is going to be the most fascinating figure of this Astros season. Unfortunately, he also currently might be their second best hitter.
These Astros swing and miss more often than kids playing with a pinata. Only, they're not supposed to be batting blind.
In the last two games, Porter's team has struck out 30 times while walking once. That's hard to do.
Chris Carter — the power bat general manager Jeff Luhnow acquired in the trade with Oakland, one of the development keys to this whole season — is now 0 for 11 with seven strikeouts. It doesn't help when he drops a fly ball in the eighth inning, allowing another run to score.
The 23-year-old Carter looks completely lost and he may be the player the Astros need to breakout most.
"I'm not really worried about it right now," Carter says. "It's early in the season."
When you're expected to lose well over 100 games, when everyone looks at your lineup and sees Swiss cheese rather than Murder's Row, it can get late awfully early though.
Astros outfielder Rick Ankiel — who's been through just about everything a baseball player can go through — talks about "not trying to dig too deep into it." He uses the phrase again and again. It's just two losses in a 162-game season. Don't dig too deep.
It sounds good, but it will be up to Porter to make sure his players do not get buried under.
He's clearly the biggest personality in this clubhouse, but you have to wonder if even he can handle the weight of what appears to be coming.
The Astros Plan
You can believe in the Astros' overall plan — it's a smart big picture plan — and still shudder at the everyday horrors. There are going to be some frightening days at Minute Maid Park this season.
The only Astro hitter who emerges from this three-game set looking good is Jose Altuve. The little man is once again swinging big, adding two more hits to push his early average to .417.
"He's a professional hitter," Porter says. "When a ball is in the zone, he gets his bat square on the baseball."
The amount of venom is surprising given how outclassed the Astros should be in this rivalry for the next several years. Why get freaked out over the little $20 million team that probably can't?
Altuve looks more out of place than ever among the rest of this lineup though. It's unfortunate too because whiny Rangers fans almost seemed determined to turn this into a rivalry after Darvish is robbed of perfection.
Bitter Rangers fans attacked two-out, single man Marwin Gonzalez's Wikipedia page within moments of his perfect-game-ruining single. Suddenly, Gonzalez was "Ugly Face" and "Jerk" and his career batting average had been downgraded to .000 in cyberspace.
Yes, this rose to the grand level of grade school insults. Or as it's known in Dallas . . . sophisticated discourse.
The amount of venom is surprising given how outclassed the Astros should be in this rivalry for the next several years. Why get freaked out over the little $20 million team that probably can't?
Maybe, because the Rangers are one of the most insecure franchises in professional sports.
The Rangers' own record of sudden heartbreak hangs over this franchise. Being one strike away from winning it all — twice — in 2011, only to see it all come crashing down around them pretty much defines these Rangers of Ron Washington. Watching Darvish come one out away on Tuesday night brings some of that back.
"If any team knows about not taking the last out for granted, it's us," Texas second baseman Ian Kinsler says.
Lance Berkman can rack up base hits against Astros pitching (he leaves Minute Maid batting .600), but he'll be hard pressed to change this expectation of doom at the end.
Of course, Porter's job is much harder, clearly the hardest in all of baseball. He must fight doom from the beginning.
Mike Rice doesn't live here. There will be no tirades, no freak outs. But will there be hope?
The Houston Astros have seen the promise of Opening Night fall apart in the last two games.
