The Houston Astros move into the San Diego bubble to take on the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 American League Championship Series. The games get underway on Sunday, Oct 11, with the Rays playing as the home team in games one, two, six, and seven. There will be no off days.

Offensively, the Rays and Astros ranked sixth and seventh in the AL in runs per game, Tampa Bay coming in at 4.82 R/G, Houston at 4.65 R/G. The Astros owned the better batting average, .240 to .238, but the Rays did a better job of getting on base (.328 to .312) and slugging (.425 to .408). The teams hit about the same number of doubles + triples, Tampa Bay hit eleven more homers. The Rays did not successfully sacrifice bunt during the season, while the Astros laid downs six SH. The Astros batters struck out a lot less, 608 K for Tampa, 440 K for Houston.

On the pitching and defense side, the Rays ranked third lowest in runs allowed per game at 3.82, while the Astros ranked eighth at 4.58 runs allowed per game. In terms of offensive averages against, it’s a mirror of the offenses. The two teams are near even in batting average allowed at .238 for Tampa Bay and .239 for Houston. The Rays, however, allow a .305 OBP and a .391 slugging percentage, while the Astros allow a .322 OBP and a .407 slugging percentage. One measure of how tough the Rays are in preventing runs is that opponents sacrificed nine time against them, the most in the American League.

Note that so far, the Astros are hitting and pitching better in the playoff than they did in the regular season. They Rays are hitting worse and pitching better, although each pitching staff is susceptible to home runs.

This is a tough series to call. Are the Astros of the playoffs the real Astros, with Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, and George Springer hitting like they should? Or did they just put together a nice six-game stretch? Did the Rays go into a slump, or did the west coast trip and a stadium different from what they are used to put them in a funk? I’m looking for some regression to the mean. My feeling is that on the pitching side, the Rays have more depth, and that depth should help in a seven-game, no days off series. I give the Rays a 52% chance of advancing to the World Series.

We will see if the Rays troll the Astros with this song:

Maybe the Astros will find something different to bang:

Of course, Houston probably can’t get away sing stealing now: