The Launch Angle

Remembering 9/11

Over the long weekend, I took a trip with my 8 year-old daughter to the West Coast. We had a lot of fun, but the morning we had to fly back, she was understandably a little grumpy being forced to wake up at a quarter to five, so that we could make our early morning flight.

She did it though, and we made it to the airport on time.

“Let’s eat and drink our breakfast here before we head to security. We can’t bring drinks through security.”

“Flying takes so looooooong…” she complained.

“Well, it would take a lot longer if we couldn’t fly,” I answered.

“No,” she said, “I mean it takes so long at the airport. We always have to get to here so early and then we have to do security and then we have to wait until we can board the plane.” I rolled my eyes at what she probably thinks is a tough life.

“You know, it didn’t used to be like this. Going to the airport and flying on an airplane used to be much simpler,” I said, “until about 25 years ago.”

“You’re talking about September 11.”

“Yeah. You know what September 11 is, right?”

“It’s when some bad people hit the Twin Towers with airplanes.”

“A lot of people died. It was very sad,” I said. I wasn’t really sure how much detail I wanted to get into with an 8 year old about this. To be honest, I somewhat regretted even bringing it up. “That’s why there’s so much security now.”

“Our teacher told us about it in school.”

Things like September 11 are little more than textbook history to my kids. I don’t blame them for it. When you’re 8, something that happened 25 years ago may as well have happened in Ancient Greece. It’s was that way when I was a kid. People would talk about Pearl Harbor or when JFK was shot or the Moon Landing. Those are things I was aware happened, but eons ago; certainly not anything relevant to me in the 1980s.

We have a handful of events in our lifetimes that live in the memory of everyone in a generation, that influence and shape our world for better or for worse. For me, it was probably the 1986 Challenger tragedy, the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995, and largest of all, September 11, 2001.

I debated whether to even mention 9/11 in today’s preview. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the Astros or the Rays, except for the fact that today’s starting pitcher, Miguel Ullola, probably thinks of 9/11 the same way my daughter does, since he is one of 3 Astros on the 28-man roster born after the event (Ethan Pecko and Cam Smith are the others). I didn’t want to go in any political direction on a division race game preview either.

But it seemed like the 25th anniversary of 9/11 was too large a thing to just omit. We should reflect on it and remember it. If you’re too young to recall it, you should learn about it and ask friends and family how they remember it.

I was in a graduate school computer class when it happened. A classmate had Yahoo! News open and told everyone, “Hey! A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” I assumed it must have been some idiot in a single engine small plane that smacked into the side of a skyscraper, like a bird that flying into a closed window. The teacher came by his computer, closed his browser window, and kindly reminded the class that we should only be working within the assigned program.

A few minutes passed; I returned my attention to the assignment.

“It happened again!” my classmate shouted, clearly ignoring the teacher’s directive to stay off Internet Explorer (or was it Netscape back then?), “Another plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers!”

Everyone sat up. The teacher wasn’t dismissive this time. He wasn’t just disrupting the class with some random thing he found on the internet. This seemed important. Before long, an overhead announcement informed us classes were canceled for the day and everyone was to report to the auditorium, and that’s where we got more details. Or at least as much as was available.

My brother worked in New York City at the time. He didn’t work in the World Trade Center, but I knew he worked on Wall Street, and my knowledge of Manhattan geography was not good. Were the towers on Wall Street. They were “trade centers”, weren’t they? It wouldn’t be surprising if they were on Wall Street. (They were not.)

I remember the panic as I tried to call my brother (with my very first ever cellphone I had only gotten one month ago) and I couldn’t get through. “He’s okay,” my sister called to tell me, “I couldn’t get through either, but he managed to call me. They are evacuating Manhattan, and he said he was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.”

That day was defined by memories of fear. The weeks after though, those were defined by memories of pride and unity. It was uplifting to see everyone come together in the aftermath of such a tragedy. I’d never seen America so united, and the good and admirable qualities of Americans, or humans in general, were on display for everyone to see. That spirit of unity didn’t last as long as I would have liked, but it was there if only for a few weeks. The important thing was you could see that it existed. There were no internal divisions, there were just Americans hurting and people helping and supporting those who were hurting. It’s really easy to be cynical, to bank on the worst of people. This was evidence that it’s not just a pipe dream that people could be this good to each other.

My kids and younger people like Pecko and Smith never had to live through something like 9/11, and I wouldn’t wish them to have to, but I do wish today’s younger generation could have seen America, the best of America, after it happened and how the country came together.

The closest I’ve seen to it is the way Houston came together after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Today is September 11,2026, the 25th anniversary of America in fear. Wait a week though. Then it will be the 25th anniversary of America being awesome.

That’s what I remember.

The Playoff Picture

I meant to only write a couple paragraphs about 9/11 to acknowledge the importance of the anniversary, but I just kept on typing and suddenly it was 1000 words. Go figure.

After such a heavy subject, it feels weird to switch to talking about the AL playoff picture, but I’ll give it a shot.

Yesterday went about as well as Astros fans could have hoped. They beat the Phillies, taking 2 of the 3 games in the series. At the same time, the Mariners beat the Rangers and the White Sox lost too.

The Astros are now 3 games (plus the tiebreaker, so functionally 4 games) ahead of the Rangers and 6 games ahead of the Mariners for the division with 15 games left in the season. That is a much stronger position than it probably sounds to you.

Imagine that the Astros stumble and they don’t even manage to go .500 the rest of the way. They finish the last 15 games with 7 wins and 8 losses. That barely puts them at a winning record at 82-80. Even if the Astros go 7-8, the Rangers would need to go 11-4 to take the division. The Mariners would need to go 13-2! Yes, Seattle only play the Angels, Rockies and A’s, but it’s hard to go 13-2 against even bad teams.

Fangraphs now give the Astros an 87.5% to win the division, and to be honest, I think even that’s low. Nonetheless, they’re the highest odds to win their division of any team in the AL. That includes the Rays and White Sox.

Speaking of the White Sox, the Astros have now pulled within half a game of Chicago and the 2 seed. Additionally, they hold the tiebreaker against the White Sox. Not only is the division within reach, but a wild card round bye is attainable as well.

They’ll have to keep grinding out the wins though.

Josh Hader: 2026 Astros Co-MVP

As Josh Hader put the finishing touches on yesterday’s 2-1 win, it occurred to me that every win the Astros get always seems close. When was the last time the Astros won and convincingly in a blowout?

It’s been awhile. vulpesvulpes on TLA Discord looked it up: “Last time we had a 5+ run differential in a win was August 4th vs Blue Jays”

August 4th! Over a month ago!

Here are the Astros wins since then:

Out of 16 wins, all but 2 either required a save, or Hader pitched the 9th with a 4 run lead or the win came in extras. It cannot be emphasized enough how important Josh Hader is to this 2026 Astros team.

62.2% of Astros wins had someone record a save on it. That’s the 4th highest percentage in MLB.

Hader might be as important to this team as Yordan Alvarez is.

Astros @ Rays Games Information and Gamethread Details

It’s a bullpen game for the Astros. Miguel Ullola will serve as opener. I wouldn’t expect him to go more than an inning and change. The starting pitchers gave decent length during the Phillies series, so the bullpen should have enough available arms, especially with the extra man on the pitching staff from September call-ups.

Drew Rasmussen starts for the Rays. An All-Star this season for the second season in a row, Rasmussen, a 31 year old right hander, is 14-5 in 27 starts, with a 2.88 ERA and 0.91 WHIP. He has a 9.2 K/9 and 1.6 BB/9. He has been excellent for most of the season.

An exception was when he faced the Astros earlier this year and was not his usual excellent self. On July 4, in 5 innings, he allowed 5 runs, including 2 home runs, on 7 hits and 2 walks, striking out 5. The Astros would go on to win on a Yordan Alvarez walk-off 2-run home run.

The game will be broadcast at 6:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

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

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

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Feature photo from  @astros on X,  Source Link.