KPRC 2 Sports Director Randy McIlvoy spoke with Astros TV Analyst Geoff Blum about the American League Championship Series, which will resume Monday at Fenway Park.
Blum offered his take on the first two ALCS games -- The Astros won the opener of the best-of-seven series while Boston won Game 2 when it hit two grand slams early on.
“That was one of the things I expected in this series,” Blum said. “I expect the Astros to have a similar game against the Boston Red Sox that we just saw the Red Sox have against the Houston Astros.
Blum also spoke of Astros pitcher José Urquidy, who will make his first start this postseason in Game 3 Monday night.
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“I think that the pitching, once you get past Game 1, Game 2, it starts to become a little bit of a patchwork for both of these teams but if Urquidy can come out and establish that strike zone early and work quickly and keep the Boston Red Sox hitters off-balance, I would like to see that but I would also like to see him try to pitch in a little bit,” Blum said. “Some of these Boston Red Sox hitters look a little too comfortable -- Kike” Hernández is definitely one of them. If he can get them to move their feet a little bit it might open up an outside part of the play to his stay off that barrel.”
McIlvoy and Blum went on to discuss the one-two punch Astros suffered early on with the absence of Lance McCullers Jr., followed closely by the exit of Luis García’s in Game 2.
“It’s pretty deflating and we know that Lance McCullers has done a great job of stepping up at becoming that ace of the staff and really becoming that guy who is willing to put the team on his back and give them a great start,” Blum said, “So I think losing him was a big blow but at the same time we know that there’s some depth there and I think that losing Luis García, depending on how long it is for him, might be a little more demonstrative just because he’s a big body, he’s a guy that can go out there and heat up some innings and so now you’re going to have to thrust maybe a Zack Greinke into the rotation . . .Jake Odorizzi is going to have work his way back. He ate up some big innings to give that bullpen some rest and allow them to maybe recoup over this day off to go out there and try to beat the Red Sox, but it’s going to be a tough road. These guys are going to have to come together but that’s beauty of great ball clubs is that when you do have these injuries, you’ve got to come together and maybe you get some of those guys that overachieve.”
“And don’t forget about the Astros offense,” Blum continued. “They have a great way of compensating for maybe some runs scored against them too.”
View the full interview in the video player at the top of the page.
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