The Astros didn’t need any surprise heroes to take home an ALCS Game 1 win

Watching the Astros beat the Yankees, the first thing that came to mind was how smoothly it was going for Houston. Everybody locked in, everything in it’s place, and happening according to plan.

My second thought was “please please don’t let the Yankees tie this because I really need to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight,” but that’s beside the point for this particular post.

The Astros almost let the Yankees pull even in the ninth inning, but until that point the Astros looked like a team that had it all figured out and everything was going exactly as they expected it to. That could change in the next three-to-six games, naturally, but for Game 1 all the puzzle pieces fell into place without issue.

They needed Dallas Keuchel to pitch lights out deep into the game? Check. Say hello to a seven-inning, four-hit, and 10-strikeout gem that kept the Yankees off the board. They needed Jose Altuve to look like the AL MVP candidate he is this season? He made an incredible diving stop on a ground ball to get an out and went 3-for-4 with a steal to put himself in scoring position.

Need Marwin Gonzalez to continue the role he took as a prime supporting character in the ALDS? Good thing he stretched his shoulders out well before the game so he could make throws to home plate like he did in the fifth inning. Need your lineup to come through when it counts? Sorry Masahiro Tanaka, we’re taking some runs off of you even though you pitched well.

There were no surprise heroes in this game. No obscure bullpen arm getting them out of a jam, no bench player stepping in to pinch hit because of injury and getting the only runs in the game. No player misguidedly attempting to steal a base and making it there safely anyway. Because they didn’t need that to happen.

Everybody was at the top of their game, put an important win at home in the books early in the ALCS, and gave the Yankees as few chances to win the game as possible.

It was a textbook win, which might have slid to the other side of the scale and tilted into boring territory if it wasn’t so darn fun.

A win doesn’t make a series, and since the Yankees proved they’re not complete pushovers in the postseason with their win over the Indians, it shouldn’t be treated as one in this case. Anything can happen from here on out, and every piece of their game that went perfectly in Game 1 could go off the rails in Game 4.

But if a team is looking for a pitch-perfect start to a crucial series in front of a home crowd, it couldn’t do much better than to do just what the Astros did in Houston to get themselves within three games of a World Series berth.