The Launch Angle

Earlier this week, I called ahead and bought some flowers for my wife from a florist in our neighborhood.

“I’d like a dozen roses.”

“Sure, when would you like them? Delivery?”

“No, I can pick them up. Sunday morning, thanks”

“Is Saturday okay? We’re closed on Sundays.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because it would be highly unusual for a flower shop to be closed on Mother’s Day.”

“Let me check with my manager. . . okay, apparently we are open this Sunday.”

Of course they are. It’s Mother’s Day. That trumps all, even a “We aren’t open on Sundays” policy.

Regular readers have probably picked up that my previews are usually just whatever topic I want to write about that day. Ideally it’s loosely related to an aspect of the scheduled game that day, but not always.

The main talking point for today isn’t really the rubber match between the Astros and Reds. It’s that it’s Mother’s Day, and that trumps all here at the Launch Angle too.

In 2017, my pregnant wife and I, having bought season tickets for the following season, also got tickets to every home playoff game in the 2017 postseason. The Astros went 2-0 at home in the ALDS, 4-0 at home in the ALCS. By the time the World Series came around, my wife was a good eight and a half months along. The Astros won Game 3 at home, but we didn’t go to Game 4, the only home postseason game that year they lost, because of a baby shower. When we returned for Game 5, everyone in the seats around us asked us where we were.

“We thought you must have went in to labor.”

“We lost because we didn’t have our pregnant Astros fan!”

“Okay, now we can win again, now we have our mom-to-be power again!”

The mom power was real. The Astros won Game 5 in epic 13-12 extra innings fashion. My wife would pop out our second of three kids a week after Game 7.

So I’ll add “helping the Astros win their first ever World Series” to the already amazing list of things she has done.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. That’s all I have for this morning. My kids are gonna help me go pick up those flowers, and then they’ll help me cook their mom an omelette and some pancakes. She deserves it.

Astros @ Reds Game Information and Gamethread Details

Kai Wei Teng starts for the Astros for the second time this season. He served as an opener in his last start on April 28, but went deeper than you’d expect most openers to go. Teng pitched 3 innings against Baltimore, allowing 2 runs, finishing with a pitch count of 42, and faced the top 4 in the order twice, even though he’s had difficulty facing batters a second time in game in the past. Since then he’s had two more scoreless relief appearances, but he’s not pitched since Monday, May 4, so he should be well rested.

The Reds start alphabetically advantaged Andrew Abbott (seriously, alphabetical order is the bias ubiquitous in society that nobody really talks about, but I’ll save that rant for another day), who is 1-2 on the season with a 5.13 ERA over 8 starts. with 28 K and 19 BB in 40.1 innings. His walk rate is nearly double that of last year when he picked up some down-ballot Cy Young votes.

This post will be updated with starting lineups as they become available.

The game will be broadcast at 12:40 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

We hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game! The turnout has been fantastic on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads.

Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .

For more detailed instructions, please see the Guide to the Launch Angle.

If you’ve participated in game threads on other Astros sites in the past, you will probably see a lot of familiar names. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)

Feature photo from @astros on X, Source Link