LOS ANGELES -- Taylor Trammell had taken his sunglasses off earlier in the game because he wasn’t seeing the ball all that well. But even then, he still wasn’t quite able to make out which direction Freddie Freeman’s line drive was going in.
“I know kind of how Freddie hits the ball,” Trammell said after the Astros’ 5-1 win over the Dodgers on Sunday afternoon. “He’s gonna backspin a lot of balls. Sometimes, he has this weird thing where he’ll side spin it, so that was the biggest thing when the ball came off the bat. I can’t tell if he back [spun] or side [spun], but he flushed it very well.”
Trammell read the ball as best he could, charged for it into shallow left-center field and put his glove up as he dove forward, snagging what would’ve likely been an RBI hit for Freeman and any hope the Dodgers had of an eighth-inning rally.
As he popped back up to his feet, Trammell flexed. Hyped that he helped his pitcher out. Hyped that he didn’t let the Dodgers get any late momentum.
“I know the work the pitchers put in and when you can make a play like that in that situation right there, it’s good,” he said. “... It was a lot of preparation put in there. Some guys see that 10-second clip or whatever. Hours are put into that.”
It was the Astros’ preparation that helped them take all three games from the Dodgers -- Houston’s first series sweep in Los Angeles since 2008. Preparation. Attention to detail. Making the big plays, but also making the routine plays. Producing from the bottom of the order. It’s all added up as the Astros have won 19 of their last 24 games.
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” manager Joe Espada said. “This team is just how they believe in one another and what it takes to win. It takes a lot of people to win games. Zack Short, Trammell with that sliding play, Ryan Gusto with a great start, [Jose] Altuve doing his thing. Everyone’s just contributing and as a team, that’s what you do.”
Offensively, Short made the biggest difference on Sunday, scoring the tying run in the top of the third after getting on base with a leadoff single. Three frames later, Short found himself down 0-2 with the bases loaded before battling back, ultimately taking a slider above the zone for ball four to drive in the go-ahead run.
Short would finish the day tied for his career high with three hits, the third time he’s done so. But beyond Short’s contributions from the nine-hole, the Astros’ 6-9 hitters combined to go 17-for-48 (.354) over a weekend in which they outscored the Dodgers by 23 runs.
“That’s our job. To get on for whoever’s leading off,” Short said. “Those guys can hit, man. And if we’re on base, it makes -- top-down -- everybody better.”
It goes beyond one weekend. The Astros now have series wins against every current National League divisional leader: in addition to the Dodgers, they swept the Phillies in three games from June 24-26 and took two out of three from the Cubs later that same week.
The Astros have lit the baseball world on fire over the past month. They like where they’re at, but they’re not satisfied by any means.
“All I care about is what we believe in that clubhouse,” Espada said. “And I think that these players, when we play these good teams, they know that we are also a good team. But for us to stay there, we have to do the little things like we are doing right now to continue to stay on top. We are doing a lot of good things on both sides of the ball.
“Our at-bats have been fabulous, our pitching has been great. We are well prepared. The little things that matter the most, we’re doing a really good job on those things.”