What we learned from Astros/Angels

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images

The Astros first road series was a rollercoaster of emotions, for players and fans alike. The first series away from Minute Maid Park featured multiple extra inning games, injuries, and clutch performances from both teams.

It's hard to pick only three things to take away from this series, considering just how much happened in the span of those three games, all of which were longer than four hours. Still, the Astros flashed a lot in their opening road set, which might have pointed to encouraging signs ahead.

1. Blake Taylor is for real

The young bullpen has been exceptional in light of the team's slew of injuries among the pitching staff (the team has a collective ERA of 3.49), but none have impressed more than lefty Blake Taylor. Through seven and a third innings, he's only allowed two hits and two walks, while striking out nine with an allowed batting average of .083.

He's also recorded huge outs for the Astros, holding the vaunted Dodgers to no runs in his brief two-plus innings appearance against them, and recording a huge bases-loaded out against the Angels to keep his team in a game they would eventually win.

Taylor's emergence has been huge for a team in desperate need of quality bullpen pitching. If Taylor can maintain this torrid pitching pace, he'll have himself in more clutch spots for Dusty Baker and the Astros.

2. Bregman back in the swing of things

Among the first few games of the season, Alex Bregman was one of the Astro hitters struggling the most prior to the Angels series. Before heading to Anaheim, Bregman's line was a meager .174/.495/.669, a far cry from his usual production.

Bregman's turned it on the past three games, however, specifically in the series finale against Anaheim, during which he went 2-6 with a clutch home run and an equally clutch RBI single in extra innings.

He's only managed to bring his average to above the Mendoza line (.211 to be exact), but this positive trend might point to Bregman breaking out of his slump, which would be a huge boost for an Astros team somehow managing 5.78 runs per game, good enough for second best in the league.

3. The extra inning rule isn't working

The extra inning rule, which was implemented in an effort to shorten games and quicken the pace of play in baseball, has been a colossal failure in that regard. The Astros have played in three games so far, none of which have at all gone by quickly.

As mentioned earlier, every game in Anaheim went over four hours. Though that may simply be an outlier through an early and sloppy portion of the season, it directly goes against the rule's existence in the first place What good is it to speed up a game not meant to be fast?

Naturally, other players expressed disappointment in the rule prior to the season, and despite M.L.B. writers saying otherwise, not much has been done to change that league-wide opinion.

The Astros have played the most extra inning games in the league thus far, and are 1-2 through three of them. Only one of those games that went into extras was finished in the inning right after the ninth. For a rule designed to finish games quickly, that doesn't seem ideal.

For now, the rule is only to be implemented in the 2020 season as an experiment. Given its reception, I don't see it surviving past this abbreviated season.