Made to Rule Part 4: Houston Astros

Houston Astros

No pro sport league has been more difficult to conquer than Major League Baseball. As far as dynasties are concerned, this century so far has been a barren wasteland. No team has even managed to win consecutive championships since the Yankees at the turn of the century. Those Bronx squads still cast a massive shadow over the sport to this day, with no team having managed to reach the heights that Jeter, Rivera and co reached during that time.

There are candidates one can conjure when thinking of organizations that have flirted with dynasty status. The St Louis Cardinals. The Boston Red Sox. the San Francisco Giants. The Dodgers more recently.

But the Astros are the team that to me is most interesting to look at. The reasons are countless.

Among the list of teams that are deeply and earnestly despised by the zeitgeist of US sports fandom, the Astros might be the most reviled of them all. Becoming embroiled in a morbid sports scandal, driven to oblivion’s edge by the scorn of the sports world at large, and ultimately assuming an “us against the world” siege mentality to turn the tables on their critics.

Their record speaks for itself. 7 division titles, 4 100-win seasons, 7 straight trips to the American League Championship, 4 American League titles, and 2 World Series championships. In this section I will focus on the organizational aspect of this run, especially as it pertains to the philosophy and character of the Astros, why they did what they did, and the ripple effects that it has had on the Astros and their dynasty hopes years down the line.

Cometh from Nothing

Baseball is America’s oldest major sport, and as such it has been seen in a lens that is very unique and rather different from other sports. No other league is as beholden to tradition and lore as MLB. The mystique of old stadiums that is present in MLB is not something you really see in other leagues in our country. It is then no surprise that for so long the New York Yankees had a near-absolute stranglehold on the league. Even proud organizations with history such as the Cardinals, Dodgers and Red Sox had long been the little brother to the domineering Yankees.

So if the Cardinals, Dodgers and Red Sox are little brothers, what does that make a team like the Houston Astros? Texas is football country, plain and simple. Baseball has traditionally been a sport of the East Coast, where the money and power in the sport was based. Texas was essentially a backwater, a far-flung province and product of Major League Baseball’s 60s expansion. There was no history and unlike Atlanta, who inherited the respected Braves and their own history, the Astros as well as fellow Texas team Rangers had to start from scratch.

The Astros had some solid teams throughout their history, but never managed to truly break through and gain respect in the only way respect can be earned in sports. In the 90s it seemed like the Braves were always in the way; in the 2000s it was the Cardinals. The Astros did manage to win their very first league pennant in 2005, when they beat the Cardinals and won the National League. They got their very first moment under the bright lights of the World Series, only that the moment turned out to be more of a cameo as they got swept by the White Sox in the lowest rated World Series at the time.

The Astros would then undergo what can simply be described as the most hellish a rebuild can get. The team went 3 straight seasons losing more than 100 games, going 56-106, 55-107, and 51-111. To most fans it seemed like the Astros were hitting the bottom of the barrel, reimagining how badly a poverty franchise like the Astros could stink it up. The team’s general manager Jeff Lunhow and his boss, the newly minted team owner Jim Crane, saw things very differently.

Not Business as Usual

Everybody in sports wants to win, but there comes a point where the price is too great to bear for the professionals involved. This is especially true in organizations that don’t win, and hence become accustomed to winning. The standards are lower, expectations vague, and the media scrutiny is practically nonexistent. Maybe the stars align and you win the trophy every once in

a while. So why rock the boat when you can just stay the course and play it safe like always?

In the case of the Astros, this certainly would have made sense, but the Astros were in a very strange place in 2011. As part of this watershed year the Astros were undergoing a league-sponsored league change, swapping the National League for the American League. This is a very rare thing in the major leagues, and for a sport as heavily steeped in tradition as baseball changing leagues can be seen a major alteration to the sport. Of course, since it was the Astros nobody really cared. It was the Astros after all, they were just there to make up the numbers and balance out the two leagues. Nobody could fathom this going any further than that.

Then there was the matter of the new owner. Jim Crane had bought the last-place Astros for a sum of $680 million. The Astros were relatively poor for a major league franchise, so spending their way to relevancy was not an option. Crane instead went in the other direction, limiting spending and focusing on the farm system rather than big-money free agents.

By the time of their move to the American League in 2013, the Astros essentially were a brand new team. New owner, new general manager, new league, new uniforms, new roster, and an almost entirely new operations staff after Crane went on a firing spree and “cleaned house”. Crane and Lunhow were applying shock therapy to the moribund Astros organization.

Rise of the Nerds

Baseball had long been a sport that placed a premium on professionals who had experience in playing the game. This meant that there was very little room for professionals who came from different backgrounds that did not involve playing baseball. For the burgeoning analytics community, that meant growing pains in establishing a foothold in baseball’s front offices. Teams used analytics, but it was certainly not mainstream and considered secondary to other approaches.

This all changed with the Astros, as Lunhow formed an entire cohort of analytics-based professionals to come to the Astros and establish what was essentially the first full time analytics department in MLB. Luhnow and his staff were overhauling the old Astros operation and applying math in the most ruthless manner possible, all in the pursuit of discovering a championship formula. Contrary to most similar struggling organizations, the Astros showed a real tangible hunger in their push to tear down the old structures and build something new. Similar to the Warriors in their hiring of Jerry West, the Astros’ employment of outsiders with backgrounds in other professions outside baseball marks an interesting dynamic and parallelism as far as the question goes of building a winning organization.

As part of the new calculus from the front office, the Astros had to not just lose, but lose big in order to get their hands on the top draft prospects. They did just that from 2011-13, capped off by the historically putrid 51-111 season in 2013. The strategy also involved keeping the roster payroll as low as possible; in 2013, the Astros had around a $24 million payroll, which was by far the lowest in the major leagues.

A Method to their Madness

The Astros were widely panned for their approach, but by 2014 some people were beginning to notice that there was something different brewing in Houston. A bizarre and potentially terrifying experiment as far as the rest of the league was concerned was underway, Starting with the notorious Sports Illustrated June 2014 cover, where writer Ben Reiter proclaimed the Astros “Your 2017 World Series Champs”, the Astros became a popular team of the future, tipped for great future success based on their rapidly growing farm system, promising young core, and overall organizational strength.

After finishing the 2014 season 70-92, the Astros prepared for the next season that would surely involve more losing. But by this point the Astros’ young talented core was getting tired of losing. By now Jose Altuve had established himself as one of the best hitters in the game, and George Springer was quickly living up to his first round potential. Dallas Keuchel won the Cy Young award for the American League, and the Astros’ #1 overall pick Carlos Correa had won Rookie of the Year. These players formed what was arguably the best young core in the major leagues, a product of the front office’s relentless pursuit in building a championship core.

The Astros finished 86-76 and earned the American League’s second wild card spot, earning a trip to Yankee Stadium. Under the bright lights of the Bronx’s Yankee Stadium, the unheralded young Astros came away with a 3-0 win. Keuchel stifled the Yankee batters, and Houston’s collection of young stars produced enough runs to stun baseball’s most famous team. You wouldn’t have augured it back then, but this game turned out to be just the first of many clashes between these two most unlikely of rivals.

In their first appearance in the divisional round in ten years, the Astros lost to the eventual champions Kansas City Royals in 5 games. When looking at the series in retrospect, it’s hard to not see the two organizations as representing two different dimensions and eras of the sport. The Royals. emphasizing small-ball baseball and having won the last two American League pennants through a traditional approach, and the Astros, on the cusp of a golden era and armed with a talented young core acquired through a cutthroat analytical approach that had unnerved so many in the league. The Astros fell short, but they had succeeded in establishing themselves on the scene and earning some respect, even though it was still early in the process.

The Astros in 2016 regressed somewhat, finishing the season 84-78 and missing the playoffs entirely. Nevertheless, the Astros core was by now reaching the point of return, where it no longer belonged in the realm of imagination and had very much arrived as a real championship threat. As the 2017 season approached and a power vacuum at the top of the American League, it seemed that the moment was approaching for the Astros to finally strike and make Sports Illustrated’s Ben Reiter seem like a genius.

Riding the Hurricane

The narrative of a Cinderella run is one of the most time-enduring fan favorites in sports. The public loves seeing a plucky underdog rise up and ride the momentum to a most unlikely of triumphs. The idea of the 2017 Astros being an unlikely feel-good story supported by most neutrals would have not made much sense at the start of the year. The Astros were loaded with talent, and while they had never won a World Series championship in their history, they still were based in a big market located in one of the biggest states in the country. It ain’t Cleveland we talking about.

Hurricane Harvey changed all this. The category 4 hurricane ravaged the states of Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, leaving the city of Houston with significant damage. It was estimated to have cost Houston $125 billion in economic damage, tied with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina as the costliest hurricane on record. This led to great nationwide sympathy for Houston in general, which naturally extended to Houston sports. Jose Altuve and Texans player JJ Watt became the two faces of the city’s resilience, and the Astros run in the 2017 postseason garnered attention similar to the Yankees 2001 run after the September 11 attacks and the Red Sox 2013 run in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.

The Astros were a pretty compelling team when it came to baseball as well. They compiled a 101-61 record, and won the American League West for the first time ever. This year Altuve left no doubt about his status in the game, winning American League MVP and winning admirers from all across the nation. The big 3 of Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer had few equals in the sport, and the Astros doubled down on their championship aspirations by trading for Justin Verlander right at the trade deadline. Verlander was seen as one of the most feared pitchers of the past decade. He was highly motivated and hungry for his first ring, having come up several times short with the Tigers.

After winning their divisional round series against the Red Sox 3-1, the Astros faced the Yankees in the American League Championship. It was the most blatant matchup of old school vs new school you could find in the AL, with the historically great Yankees boasting nearly a century’s worth of dominance facing the Astros who had moved into the league less than five years prior. You could have argued that from a Yankees perspective, they were defending their league and its heritage against the gentrifying usurpers coming from the baseball wasteland known as Texas.

I still remember this series quite well. Every game was cinematic, and the fan atmospheres were electric. The Astros really should have lost this series. Both Games 1 and 2 in Houston came down to the wire, with both finishing in 2-1 Houston wins. Game 1 was especially notable as it featured a walk off Carlos Correa RBI where Jose Altuve ran from 1st base all the way home in a decision that should have cost the Astros the game. Yet the Yankees fumbled the ball and Altuve somehow got home, earning the Astros the win and Altuve the first of many legendary playoff moments.

The Astros were trashed in the three games at Yankee Stadium, reminding the world that they were still very much a young untested team swimming in uncharted waters. Many people, including the writer of this writing, wrote off Houston’s squad and gave the benefit of the doubt to the Yankees heritage. Yet the Astros did the unfathomable and stood their ground, with Verlander delivering a gem in Game 6 and Charlie Morton and Lance McCullers combining for a no-hitter in Game 7. The Yankees scored 1 combined run across the 2 final games of the series.

Keep this in mind for later.

In their first ever World Series as champions of the American League, the Astros faced the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers were favored to win the World Series, and had their own history of playoff disappointment to deal with. It had been 29 years since they last were in the World Series and won it, and since 2013 had suffered 4 straight years of postseason heartbreak. The Dodgers were backed with significant investment from its ownership group, and the expectation was that the drought would finally end.

Just like the Astros-Yankees American League Championship, the series was a wild ride of twists and turns. Just when it seemed that the Astros were destined to go down 0-2, Marwin Gonzalez hit a game-tying home run in the 9th inning at the expense of star closer Kenley Jansen to send it to extra innings. Altuve, Correa, and Springer would all hit home runs to tie the series up. The next two games were split leading to a crucial Game 5 with the series lead at stake.

The game ended 13-12 in favor of the Astros in what was the second-longest World Series game ever, and featured the Astros erasing 3 different deficits through towering home run balls. The game was referred to as an “instant classic” that displayed the most exciting exuberant play that the sport could conjure. The game would define the series and how it was remembered for the years to come. The Dodgers won Game 6 in LA to force a Game 7, but the Astros comfortably won Game 7, never breaking a sweat after putting up 5 runs in the first 2 innings. George Springer won World Series MVP, and the Astros celebrated winning their first championship.

In the aftermath of their championship, the Astros received nothing but support from the nation. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, this championship run was seen as a feel-good story, and the narrative of Houston winning as part of its recovery from Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath and as a sign of its collective resilience resonated with many neutrals. The Astros received a warm reception at the White House, and Jose Altuve would go on to win countless individual accolades like AP Athlete of the Year and Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year(shared with JJ Watt).

This was indeed a celebration of the Astros’ greatness, a honeymoon in the eyes of the nation. No one had anything mean to say about Houston’s champs. But all that was about to change.

Meet the Nouveau Riche

Entering the 2018 season, the Astros were seen as the firm favorites to repeat as champions and begin consolidating baseball’s latest dynasty. The season went fairly smoothly for the defending champions, especially in comparison to previous champions and their well-chronicled championship hangover. The Astros completed the acquisition of star pitcher Gerrit Cole prior to the season, pairing him with Verlander to strengthen the starting pitcher rotation. At the trade deadline the Astros acquired closer Robert Osuna. Remember this guy, he’ll come up later.

The Astros went 103-59 and won their division. They dispatched the Cleveland Indians in the divisional round in 3 games, but ran into the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship. The Red Sox won 108 games that year, and were managed by first-year manager Alex Cora. Cora had been with the Astros the previous year, and had brought all that he had learned in Houston over to Boston. The result was an unstoppable juggernaut that was too much for the Astros, who lost in 5 games. The series was notable for Houston losing all 3 of its home games, something that would become all too familiar a sight in the years to come.

Though the result was disappointing, there was still optimism around the Astros and their chances of attaining more hardware. They had been the first defending champion to win at least 100 games since 1990. The roster that won in 2017 still remained largely intact. The expectations for the Astros were as high as ever, and they went on to prove those lofty expectations right by having one of the most dominant seasons in recent MLB history.

The Astros won 107 games, with a murderers’ row of batters and an elite rotation of pitchers posting the greatest season in Houston Astros season. Rookie sensation Yordan Alvarez was a major catalyst, with the Cuban winning AL Rookie of the Year and establishing himself as a major part of the core. For the 3rd straight year the Astros made a trade for a star pitcher, this time acquiring Zach Greinke. With Verlander, Cole, and Greinke, the Astros seemed unstoppable and poised for rarefied air.

What seemed like an inevitable march to greatness for one of baseball’s greatest ever teams turned into a prolonged slogfest, as the Astros were put to the test by the underdog Tampa Bay Rays. The Astros prevailed in 5 games, carried by Gerrit Cole’s pitching and Jose Altuve’s home runs, but they did not look as flawlessly dominant as advertised.

In the American League Championship Series the Astros faced the Yankees for the 2nd time in 3 years. The Astros were smacked around for most of the first 2 games, before Carlos Correa’s walk off home run salvaged a win in Game 2. The Astros returned to Yankee Stadium for the next 3 games, evoking memories of 2017 and how they were completely overwhelmed by the Yankees. There was anticipation that a similar thing could play out, but this time the Astros turned the tables and won 2 of the next 3 to take a 3-2 lead back to Houston. This was the first time the Astros had dominated in crucial road games to turn a series around, something that would become somewhat of a trend in the years to come.

The close out game 6 turned out to be one for the ages, and would ultimately become one of the definitive images for this Astros run(for better and for worse). The game was close and tense, with the Astros taking a 4-2 lead to the final 9th inning, 3 outs from the pennant. The confetti was ready to drop as part of the celebration for the soon to be 2x American League champions, until star closer Robert Osuna gave up a 2 run home run to DJ LeMahieu. In the bottom of the 9th, Alex Bregman managed to fight off Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman and earned a walk, setting up Jose Altuve to win the pennant and be the hero.

Triumph and Peril

Jose Altuve’s towering 2 run home run to clinch the American League pennant and send his team to the World Series was an all-time classic, a coronation for one of baseball’s most beloved stars and an euphoric knockout blow for the ambitious Astros in their struggle with the Yankees for American League domination. Yet, in hindsight, it also marked the commencement of a doomsday clock for baseball’s crown jewel. Jose Altuve’s most triumphant moment, as definitive a walk off can be, was soon to be subjected to scrutiny and derision. Whereas one can argue that Altuve’s criticism was unfair and even tragic for a player of his stature, the Astros organization’s very own mess was entirely brought upon themselves. It revolved around the star closer the organization traded for the previous year, Roberto Osuna.

Right after Altuve’s walk off home run, in the Astros’ locker room celebration, an employee of the Astros’ front office was reported to have taunted a group of female reporters with an expletive-laden outburst. Who was the object of the outburst? Osuna, of course, who the employee was glad to have. “Thank god we got Osuna!”

The outburst was completely uncalled for, starting off with the fact that Osuna was the only reason that Altuve needed to come up with his heroics in the first place. Osuna in general had been underwhelming throughout his tenure with the Astros, and his blown save in Game 6 was far from surprising. So why did this employee think this, and more importantly why did he make his attitude so brazenly clear to a group of female reporters? Why do this and tarnish the Astros’ reputation in what should have been the organization's finest moment?

I have some thoughts on this, which I will expand upon in later sections, but needless to say this created a great cloud of negativity around the organization as the World Series was set to begin. Resentment towards the Astros was building to an all-time high around the league, simmering under the surface in a quiet yet palpable way. It almost seemed that the Astros were tempting the baseball gods with their audacity, displaying a sense of exceptionalism and fearlessness. The question was, would they get away with it?

Predictably enough, the Astros came into the World Series as one of the biggest favorites in recent history, and went on to lose the first 2 games at home. They looked utterly flat and ordinary, as if they had taken the occasion for granted. It didn’t help that their opponent, the Washington Nationals, had benefited from more rest than their rivals and were deeply motivated to prove the world wrong about its underdog status.

Facing an 0-2 hole heading into Washington DC, the auguries for the apparently doomed Astros were plenty in store. However, on the road Houston suddenly rediscovered its dominant juggernaut form and reeled off 3 straight wins. With their stars once again cooking and the series heading back to Houston, ring #2 seemed all but locked up for the Astros. After all, it seemed unfathomable that one of the most dominant teams of all time would lose 2 more games in front of their home fans(and go 0-4 in total during the series). A coronation was surely coming.

The Big Bang

The Nationals won Game 6, forcing Game 7 to decide the series. Heading to the 7th inning, the Astros led 2-0 off the back of Zach Greinke’s standout pitching performance. The Astros were just 9 outs away from their 2nd championship, and the stadium was buzzing. That is, before one of the most consequential innings in recent baseball history played out and unraveled the entire Astros project. These were the most pivotal developments of the inning.

• Anthony Rendon hits a solo home run to cut the lead to 2-1

• Juan Soto earns a walk to put the go-ahead run at home plate

• Astros manager AJ Hinch replaces Greinke with reliever Will Harris with a man on base

• Howie Kendrick hits a ball that goes straight off the right field foul pole, giving the Nationals a 3-2 lead

That was all she wrote. Ever since that foul pole ball(which at the time I had no idea what it meant since I had never seen something like that before), the Nationals never looked back. Any chance of an Astros comeback was snuffed out when Osuna came back in the eight and predictably gave up more runs to Washington. Sorry Brandon Taubman. Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten Osuna?

The season concluded and left the Astros empty handed, stunned by one of the most unlikely of upsets. It was a dark day for the Houston Astros and their dynasty aspirations, but the reckoning was only beginning. The Astros were vulnerable, and their rivals smelled blood. Things were about to get a lot more serious for the Astros.

Goodbye World Series, Hello Trouble

On November 12, 2019, The Athletic released an expose that shocked the sports world. Journalists Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich revealed the Astros to have orchestrated one of the most audacious sign stealing schemes in recent history. The story had the effect of a nuke, dropped onto an unsuspecting populace and eliciting a chain reaction with wildly unpredictable conseauences. For the Astros themselves, it was the ultimate insult to injury. Not only had their dynasty hopes seemingly been dashed for good, but their first and so far only championship was being called into question.

As for the intricacies of the scandal itself and how it was carried out, I will not go into much detail about it since it received very detailed coverage for years with reporters equipped with far greater insight(I also have frankly forgotten about most of the details in the years since). Since this writing looks specifically into the Astros and their run, I will focus more on how this scandal impacted the Astros’ dynasty hopes on as well as off the field.

The most obvious impact was felt in the loss of both the Astros’ general manager and player managers, Jeff Lunhow and AJ Hinch respectively. The Astros lost their first and second round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts, and had to pay a maximum $5 million fine. So while the Astros did not lose any of their players to lifetime bans, nor did they have their championship vacated like many wanted them to, the consequences were nevertheless damaging to the two-time American League champions. They had no manager and no general manager. They were facing a barren farm system with their lost picks, and were widely seen as a pariah in the baseball world that no one wanted to touch. The players faced a hostile reaction from opposing fans in every rival ballpark.

It is in that sense that the COVID pandemic can be seen as a blessing in disguise for the Astros. The pandemic halted the season and kept the fans from coming to the stadiums and antagonizing the Astros. Nevertheless, the attacks continued on social media, and impacted many Astros players. Arguably no one was more impacted by this than Jose Altuve, who went on to have the worst season of his career in the abridged 60-game season of 2020.

The Astros were very mediocre in the COVID-impacted regular season of 2020 and only went 29-31, but due to the expanded playoff format of that year still made it to the postseason. The Astros dispatched the Twins in the Wild Card round and the Athletics in the divisional round. In the American League Championship, the Astros faced the surprising Tampa Bay Rays, who had upset the Yankees in the previous round. In what was a difficult series for the Astros, they fell behind 0-3 to the Rays but stormed back to win the next 3, highlighted by Carlos Correa’s walk off home run in Game 5. The Astros seemed poised to complete the comeback and further torment America, but the Rays won Game 7 and forced the Astros to watch the Dodgers win the World Series from their couches.

With this defeat, it appeared at the time that the Astros’ days in the limelight were coming to a close. The Dodgers had finally climbed the mountain and claimed the ultimate prize, and an era of Dodgers dominance would surely commence. The Astros looked destined to fall back into obscurity, their legacy defined by the sound of a trash can being banged from a dugout.

Embracing the Heel

In 2021 the Astros entered with many questions lingering, most notable being the pending free agency of star shortstop Carlos Correa. The Astros performed very well in what was seen as a return to their old standard, winning 95 games and reclaiming their division. Jose Altuve bounced back and regained all star status along with Carlos Correa. The Astros seemed poised to be major contenders in October.

A major theme throughout the season for the Astros had been one of proving their doubters wrong. Utilizing baseball’s version of a siege mentality, this attitude, spearheaded by Correa, cast the Astros as the villains hated by all of America. Rather than feeling bad about this and the whole scandal, Correa encouraged his teammates to feed into this frenzy and embrace the villain status. Why not take on the whole world and prove them wrong?

Throughout the whole season the Astros encountered hostile environments everywhere they went, most notably in Dodger Stadium and Yankee Stadium, but the heat was raised as the Astros took on the White Sox in the divisional round. The White Sox had the whole stadium blacked out and booed Altuve, Correa and Bregman every time they came up to bat. The Astros were soundly beaten in Game 3, but Game 4 was a different story as the Astros won 10-1. The game was capped off with a towering Altuve 3-run home run in the 9th, stunning the crowd.

The Astros set up a tantalizing matchup with the Boston Red Sox for the American League. This was a showdown between arguably the league’s two most preeminent powers, a rematch of 2018’s ALCS. The most dramatic aspect of this series was that of Alex Cora, former Astro who now managed the Red Sox. Cora had been implicated in the scandal, and many Astros fans were resentful that Cora did not lose his job like Hinch did.

The first two games in Houston were split, with the highlight being Carlos Correa’s game winning home run in Game 1 and subsequent It’s my time wrist watch celebration. The Red Sox wiped the floor with the Astros in Game 3, and you could start feeling Fenway imposing its presence and making a difference. Just like 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018, the vibes of the Red Sox seemed impeccable. The Astros would have to break the Red Sox’ confidence in their own Fenway fortress.

Thus Game 4 would be critical for the Astros. Lose, and a 3-1 deficit would be insurmountable. Win, and the dynamic of the whole series would change. Through 7 innings, the Astros looked dead in the water and were down 2-1. But then Altuve hit a solo home run to start the 8th, and the game was tied. The Astros were now in business, but as the inning came the game was still tied. Then came the 9th.

7 innings. The Astros scored a whopping 7 runs in the top of the 9th to take back control of the series. The inning started with a ruthless double by Carlos Correa, which he celebrated in peak Carlos Correa fashion. Everyone got to step up to bat, with Correa even getting a chance to bat and get on base again. It was a ruthless display, one that silences even the loudest of ballparks like Fenway. The series was essentially over after this. The Astros won the next two games 9-1 and 5-0, and clinched their 3rd AL pennant in 5 years. The Red Sox, seen as a team of destiny, were sent home in decisive fashion. 3 years on they are yet to return to postseason baseball, let alone the American League Championship.

In the World Series the Astros faced the Braves, an old rival from their pre-2013 days. Like 2019 the Astros enjoyed home field advantage, but once again this home field “advantage” turned out to be more of a false promise. The Astros faced a difficult matchup, and split the first two games in Houston. The Astros dropped two close games in Atlanta, losing 2-0 and 3-2, and faced a 3-1 hole. In what could be their final game of the season, the Astros fell behind 4-0 after the 1st inning and everything seemed lost for Houston. But the self proclaimed heels of the major leagues would not bow out so easily for the Atlanta crowd.

Led by the unlikeliest of stars in catcher Martin Maldonado, the Astros stormed back to win 9-5 and deny the Braves a coronation in front of their home fans. The Braves had been 7-0 prior to this series, but the Astros found a way to win in the most adverse of circumstances. The turning point came when Maldonado came up to the plate after Bregman was initially walked with 2 outs. With the bases loaded, Maldonado somehow managed to stay alive and earn the walk, tying the game and throwing the Braves’ decision to give the intentional walk back in their face. After such a prolific win, it seemed that the Astros could seize the momentum and complete another comeback like they had done with the Red Sox.

But as by now had become something of a pattern, the Astros followed a riveting road triumph with a deflating and lifeless performance, one that from a Houston Astro fan perspective could be branded as flat out disrespectful. The epic home stand many anticipated never materialized, and what did materialize was Jorge Soler hitting a grand slam to wrap up the game and championship early in the game. The Braves put up 7 runs and the Astros never responded. The Astros fell short once again and were scorned by a general audience relishing in their failure. It seemed that the Astros had been cursed by their own hubris. The World Series trophy seemed out of reach.

Filling some Carlos-sized Shoes

In the offseason following the 2021 season, the Astros faced the question of whether they’d bring back shortstop Carlos Correa. Correa had been vocal in his desire to test the free agency market, and the Astros organization had been historically reluctant to hand out big contracts. Astros owner Jim Crane admitted as such, saying that “certainly dollars are a factor”. Ultimately Correa departed the Astros, embarking on a free agency odyssey that led him to the Twins. The player that would replace Correa at shortstop was rookie Jeremy Peña. The Dominican joined the Astros core that still ranked among the most loaded in the major leagues.

It had been a good while since the Astros had put together a dominant regular season. Since winning 107 games in 2019, Houston had lost a World Series by losing all 4 games at home, been at the heart of the sport’s biggest cheating scandal in a century, played an entire season in front of no fans, come back from 0-3 down in a series just to fall short in the end, and managed to make it back to the World Series just to once again get embarrassed at home.

It was safe to say that they had been through a lot since Jose Altuve’s game winner against the Yankees. Entering the 2022 season, it was fair to question how much the Astros had left in the tank. The Astros offense had in the past been the catalyst for their success, but in 2022 the spotlight would shift to the pitching rotation.

Veterans Justin Verlander and Lance McCullers were bolstered by aces Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier. Luis Garcia and Jose Urquidy formed the back end of the rotation, and Ryan Pressly had an elite season as Houston’s dependable closer. It was a testament to Houston’s ability to develop talent and maintain an elite level. Valdez, Javier and Garcia had all pitched in the previous postseasons and struggled. All three took losses in the previous year’s World Series, with Garcia having an especially rough experience in the decisive Game 6 World Series loss that he started. Though the Astros pitchers had taken a lot of blows, by 2022 the young core had grown into a battle tested and hungry group that was determined to clear the last hurdle.

The Astros would go on to win 106 games, with the pitchers only giving up 518 runs all year, setting an Astros franchise record. Verlander and Framber Valdez made the All Star team, along with Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, and Kyle Tucker. The Astros dominated the American League and were only behind the Dodgers in the overall standings. It seemed that the 2022 postseason was destined for a rewind of 2017.

The Cuban Missile Crisis(For Baseball)

The divisional round provided plenty of shocks in the National League side of things, as the higher seeded Dodgers and Braves fell to the Padres and Phillies. In the first year of baseball’s new playoff format, it was tempting to draw conclusions about how the changed format could benefit underdogs. The Astros certainly had all they could handle, with the division rival Seattle Mariners coming for the five-time division champs. The Mariners had been in the shadow of the mighty Astros, but led by the young star Julio Rodriguez and a talented core confidence was high in Seattle that the Mariners could pull off the upset.

In Game 1 the Astros struggled out of the gate, and entering the 8th inning were down 7-3. Yordan Alvarez got on base and Alex Bregman hit a 2-run homer to pull within 2 runs, setting up a nail-biting finish in the 9th.

The Astros managed to get a man on base with David Hensley getting hit, but Altuve struck out to leave the Astros one out from losing the 1st game. Jeremy Peña stepped up to the plate in his first huge at-bat of his postseason career and came up clutch, getting a single to keep the Astros alive and providing an opportunity for the next guy up to call game. The next guy just happened to be Yordan Alvarez.

The Mariners panicked and took out their closer Paul Sewald for Robbie Ray, who was a lefty like Yordan and could presumably provide the Mariners with an edge. The problem was that Ray had been in a slump and was susceptible to giving up home runs. Indeed, it only took 2 pitches for Yordan to send the ball into the stands in a no-doubt-about-it moon shot. Seattle’s win probability dropped off a cliff, from nearly 100% to 0. Yordan ripped the Mariners’ hearts out in the most brutal way possible, and he was only getting started.

Game 2 was more of the same as far as both teams were concerned. The Astros faced another early deficit, only this time they opted not to wait until the bitter end to pull themselves off the ledge. Down 2-1, it happened in the 6th inning, and once again it was the Peña-Alvarez combo doing the trick. Peña singled, and Yordan hit a home run deep into left field off starter Luis Castillo. The Astros tacked on another run in the 8th, and just like that the Astros had secured another close win. A strong game from Framber Valdez and some timely hits had carried the Astros through a tough spot. The Astros had unearthed a reliable formula, one that they could count upon for the rest of the postseason.

If Games 1 and 2 were all about landing knockout blows, Game 3 was an agonizing war of attrition. Starting pitchers Lance McCullers and George Kirby each pitched a gem of a game, and the score remained scoreless. Then the relievers came in…and the score remained stuck at 0-0. The Mariners came so close to winning it, but every single time the crowd was left ruing another missed opportunity. It was the first home postseason game for the Mariners since 2001, and the home crowd was as frenzied as one could imagine, yearning for the downfall of the hated Astros. Instead, it was a slow death for the Mariners, as the innings and missed opportunities kept piling on for Seattle’s bereft ball club. Finally, up came Jeremy Peña to lead off the 18th inning, and on his sixth pitch hit the ball to deep left. 1-0 Astros. Luis Garcia wrapped it up to mark his gutsy 5-inning save, and the Astros were off to their 6th straight trip to the AL championship and their latest rendezvous with the Yankees.

Do you really want Houston?

The Yankees had faced their own challenge in the divisional round from upstart Cleveland, prevailing in 5 games. After winning the decisive 5th game, Yankee fans were filmed chanting

the name of the team they wanted to see in the next round.

We Want Houston.

What could that mean? Presumably as Yankee fans they would want their team to win ring #28.To do so, they would have to win the World Series, and in order to do that they would have to win the American League Championship. Problem was that the team waiting for the Yanks in the ALCS(and the subject of the viral chant in question) had seen this movie before. Twice, actually. The Astros had been the culprit for the Bronx experiencing October nightmares and dashing what seemed to be preordained marches to ring #28. Not even the Red Sox had been as ruthless in dishing out October misery on New York’s pinstriped team. When you factored in Houston’s win over the Yankees in the 2015 wild card game, you could not help but wonder if the Yankee fans holding up the sign and chanting were operating under a sort of gambler’s fallacy. Maybe this time we’ll get lucky.

What was supposed to be a revenge/redemption fanfic for Yankee fans ended up as an anticlimactic dud, a 4-0 sweep that was somehow always close yet also somehow never close. After all, anyone who watched the series and saw Aaron Judge go 1-16 throughout the 4 games would have to have been a serial optimist to conjure up a scenario where the series outcome could actually be in question.

4-2, 3-2, 5-0, 6-5. The Astros won by these scores, and celebrated on Yankee Stadium’s field. Just like 2015, only this time they got to raise a trophy. It was their 4th American League pennant in 6 seasons, and while conference/league pennant titles do not a dynasty make, not even the most committed Astros hater could deny the stubborn durability of this ball club. They had been disgraced and cast aside as cheaters in 2020, but here they were, raising another trophy in the emptied ballpark of baseball’s most hollowed franchise. The Yankees could keep all their world series rings and pennants, but in that moment there could be no doubt as to who truly ran the American League. The A in AL might as well have stood for the Astros.

As for the Yankees, it was a bitter pill to swallow, one so bitter it carried on to next year as the Yankees missed the postseason altogether. Banter aside, it is a feeling so eerily relatable for me as a sports fan. You hope that the team you love and support and live for can rise up and buck history, righting the wrongs of the past and bringing deliverance from the ghosts of failures past.

You do see this in sports; after all the Lakers eventually beat the Celtics and the Bulls finally got past the Bulls. The Colts took down the Patriots and the Red Sox came back from 0-3 down to break the curse. All that is well, but just as often(if not more) you see the opposite. The Browns never beat the Broncos. The Kings were never able to overcome the big bad Lakers. The Rockets never quite figured out Golden State. Slaying the boogeyman can be a lot. Just like in the real world, fixing the mistakes of the past can prove to be the ultimate burden in sports. Everybody wants to be Michael Jordan and stick it to the Pistons, but it so often can feel more like Jerry West losing to the damn Celtics every year.

Houston’s October Blues

The 2022 World Series pitted the favorite Astros against the Philadelphia Phillies, who were riding a remarkable run that had seen them become baseball’s team of destiny of 2022. If there was any team that could stop the Astros, it was a ball club featuring an unstoppable Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. A pitching rotation that had stepped up in the big moments all October long didn’t hurt their odds too.

Game 1 saw the Astros taking an early 5-0 lead, and it seemed that they would win their first ever World Series Game 1 in their 5th attempt. Justin Verlander seemed in control, until he wasn’t. The Astros ace gave up the lead in the 4th and 5th innings, and the game would go to extra innings. In the top of the 10th JT Realmuto hit a home run, and the Phillies went on to take Game 1.

The Astros were now 0-5 in World Series Game 1s, and many of the same problems from previous postseason failures had once again manifested themselves. Their Hall of Fame ace pitcher had thrown away a lead, and Houston’s three best hitters consisting of Altuve, Alvarez and Bregman had gone a combined 2-13. Your star players not delivering both on the pitching and batting fronts was not a good sign for the Astros.

The Astros approached Game 2 with a must-win mentality, looking to avoid what happened in 2019. Framber Valdez pitched 6 scoreless innings, setting the tone for the Astros as they once again took a 5-0 lead. This time there was no comeback from the Phillies, and the Astros won 5-2 and tied the series up.

Even though they avoided the 0-2 hole, the sentiment nevertheless was that the advantage lay with the Phillies. The series was coming to Philadelphia, arguably the most hostile home field advantage in baseball. Citizens Bank Park had terrorized visiting opponents all postseason long, The Phillies had not lost at home during the postseason. Ringing the Bell had become a notorious ritual for the Phillies faithful. The Braves and Padres had endured this torture. Soon it would be the Astros turn to face the bell.

For Whom the Bell Shall Ring

If we were to compare this World Series to another playoff series in this Astros run, the most compelling comparison would be the 2021 American League Championship with the Red Sox. The basic narrative was remarkably similar: the Astros had split the first 2 games at home with

an opponent from the East Coast, and now had to play 3 games in front of a notoriously hostile fanbase. As if playing for a championship was not enough motivation, the most hated team in baseball and possibly all of sports was coming to town. It couldn’t get any better for Philadelphia sports fans.

Game 3 couldn’t have played out any better for the Phillies. Bryce Harper hit a cinematic 2-run homer in the 1st inning, and things wouldn’t get any better for Lance McCullers throughout the night. The Astros lost 7-0, and the discussion afterwards concerned whether or not Lance McCullers was tipping his pitches.

Once again the Astros were pushed to the brink, and faced a critical Game 4 down in the series. After the duds from Verlander and McCullers, Houston desperately needed more from its starting pitchers, and Cristian Javier more than stepped up to the plate. Turning back the clock to 1956, el Reptil pitched 6 no-hit innings. Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly pitched the last three innings, completing only the 2nd no-hitter in the World Series since Don Larsen in 1956. The Astros won 5-0, tying up the series 2-2. Just like that the Astros had broken Philadelphia’s aura of invincibility at home.

Though the perfect record at home had been shattered, the Phillies and their supporters were unfettered and prepared to bounce back in the all important Game 5. The game was tense as so many games of this magnitude tend to be. The two teams each traded a run in the first inning, before starting pitchers Verlander and Noah Syndergaard settled in. Jeremy Pena hit a home run at the top of the 4th to put the Astros up 2-1, but the game remained tense heading into the later innings.

Then Jeremy Pena extended Houston’s lead to 3-1, before Philly native Chas McCormick salvaged what seemed certain to be a game-changing hit at the bottom of the 9th. The Astros prevailed 3-2 and went back to Houston looking to exorcise the ghosts from 2019 and clinch in front of their fans. Would this finally be the moment for the Astros?

Air Yordan takes Flight

Game 6 was a drab affair, one dominated by the two starting pitchers and leaving very little margin for error. For the Astros Framber Valdez was again in his bag, pitching 6 dominant innings where he allowed just one run. He needed run support though, and up to the bottom of the 6th the Astros had been held scoreless, Phillies pitcher Zach Wheeler not giving the Astros anything up to that point. Something had to give.

In the bottom of the 6th, Yordan Alvarez, who had come through in so many big spots for Houston, had what could only be his magnum opus. With two men on base, Alvarez hit a towering home run that flew 450 feet and sailed into the stands high over center field.

“You’re the man, today” his fellow Astros told him.

That moon shot put the Astros in control, and they never looked back.

The World Series MVP was given to Jeremy Peña. His story as well as that of Alvarez says a lot of how the Astros built their championship roster. The institutional knowledge of Altuve, Bregman, Gurriel and Verlander, who had been there for the 2017 run, were complemented by the new core of hungry stars such as Peña, Alvarez, Tucker, Framber, Javier, and Garcia. The similarities with the 2022 Warriors are striking.

About Jim and Dusty…

In looking at the Houston Astros’ 2022 championship run we have closely looked at the players who drove that championship bus over the line, as well as the general narratives that fueled the championship run. We also looked at the roster decisions made by the Houston front office.

But two men that have barely been mentioned for a while are Jim Crane and Dusty Baker, the owner and then-manager of the Astros. The team that had just claimed the championship.

This is no accident. The reason for this is that I just don’t think that these two deserve much, if any, of the credit for this championship run.

The most credit I can give them is that Crane stayed out of the way and let his general manager James Click build the roster. The Astros payroll was among the top 10 in the major leagues for 2022, which is decent enough investment for a program looking to compete every year for championships.

As for Baker, he had brought a sense of calm in the wake of the sign stealing scandal. You can say that during the 2022 run he pushed many right buttons, bringing out the best in role players like Chas McCormick and Martin Maldonado and managing the bullpen effectively. He certainly did his part and earned his ring.

But as far as building a dynasty goes, these two simply were never going to cut it. Every dynasty that has ever existed was led by a chain of command that demanded the highest standard of excellence from everybody in the organization. The chain of command generally goes like this.

Owner→Front Office→Head Coach/Manager→Star Player

This constitutes the key to a sports organization’s success, and if this chain of command succeeds in instilling a winning successful culture, such institutional knowledge becomes the ultimate trump card. It is in this way that the Dodgers are surpassing the Astros, which I will talk more about when concluding this post.

Jim Crane had shown in the past that he was not afraid to step into the spotlight and take on the role of the outspoken team owner. He did this during the sign stealing scandal, when he spoke several times and supplanted his star players as the most visible person affiliated with the Astros. Crane had also shown a tendency to run a tight ship in his organization; in other words, he wanted all team employees to be his employees. This tends to be the case with hands-on owners.

This dynamic had been helpful to the Astros way back in 2011-13 when Crane was basically rebooting the failing Astros of then, but the situation was very different. James Click had cooked in Tampa Bay, and now he had helped build a juggernaut in Houston that seemed poised for a dynasty. Sure, he was certainly not the only voice in the room, but he was a solid voice.

ESPN reporter Jeff Pasan reported on what was going on behind the scenes. Titled “Inside the champion Astros' behind-the-scenes turmoil”, the piece contained several bombshells and revealing quotes. Crane had been growing tired of Click, and had brought in former players Jeff Bagwell and Reggie Jackson into the organization in an apparent attempt to undermine Click’s authority over the front office. Crane was also personally negotiating deals as well as striking down trades negotiated by Click, such as one nixed trade for Wilson Contreras.

“Sometimes I wonder if [Crane] thinks he’s Jerry Jones”

That quote right there from an Astros staffer is as direct a red flag as it gets. It doesn’t get any more ominous than being compared to Jerry Jones. For a Texas team especially.

So during the offseason following the championship Crane had gotten rid of Click and made clear that he was going to be more involved in baseball operations. He had hired Dana Brown to be the new general manager, but it was becoming clear to observers that Crane was fully in control.

As for Dusty Baker, he had finally gotten the ring that he had been after as a manager for so many decades. Now there was no doubt that he was Hall-of-Fame bound. Rather than riding off into the sunset on top, Dusty decided to stay on for another year.

The Astros didn’t know it then, but they were in trouble.

Somebody Take the Car Keys Away

We all love our grandparents. We cherish them and treasure the memories that we made and continue to make with them. This is all true. But also present in this is that elephant in the room that is always there, lurking in the corner but painfully visible for all to see.

When it’s time to let go and accept that maybe it’s not working anymore, that perhaps it may be time to hand over the car keys once and for all for the sake of everyone. That is a difficult thing for anyone to handle, there can be no doubt about that.

So imagine that, but instead with a professional sports organization and its septuagenarian manager. Said organization is trying to win back-to-back championships, and the manager is on top of the world and is being endlessly praised by all his friends and admirers in the media.

Both the local Houston and national media adored him. The Astros fandom loved him too. And all this adoration made Dusty Baker untouchable for the 2023 season. This ended up being a bad thing for the Astros, and it all comes down to that word that starts with H.

Hunger.

The Astros were never able to recover the insatiable drive that fueled their hunt for a championship, a hunt that culminated in 2022. Houston managed to defend their division title in a close race with the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners, but October brought about old ghosts from seasons past.

Home Field Disadvantage

Successful sports teams usually are strongest at home. Home Field/Court advantage is one of those old sports truisms that still manages to persist, despite data that indicates that it may not be as important as traditionally believed.

If legendary stadiums such as the old Yankee Stadium and Boston Garden personified the epitome of home advantage, giving the Yankees and Celtics an almost mythical sense of invincibility, then Minute Maid Park would be the poster child of home field disadvantage.

Since the 2017 postseason, where they went 8-1, the Astros had struggled at home in the decisive postseason series. In 2018 they lost all three games in Houston against the Red Sox after winning the first game in Boston, but the most notorious of all was the 2019 World Series. As was previously mentioned, the Astros won all three games on the road in Washington D.C. and still managed to lose the World Series because they couldn’t win a single game at home in front of their own fans.

The road team won all seven games of the series, something that had never happened before in a seven-game series of a major North American sports league.

Four years later, it happened all over again.

The unthinkable happened. The Astros, facing their in-state rival Texas Rangers, took a 3-2 lead off a vintage Jose Altuve go-ahead home run.

Common sense would have indicated this as the turning point, not just for the series but for the postseason as a whole. The Dodgers, perennial powerhouse in the National League, had been bounced from the postseason, and the Phillies were on their way out as well. The Rangers were on the ropes, an inexperienced team with no past success that had been bossed at home by their far more experienced rivals. The Astros seemed on their way to a fifth American League title in seven years and a favorable World Series matchups.

Instead, the Astros took all the momentum and good feelings generated by Altuve’s greatness, and wasted it in an utterly embarrassing couple of games. Turning the clock back to 2019, it was time for the Rangers to blow out the Astros and celebrate on Minute Maid’s field. A field that was, by now, clearly cursed for the Astros.

For a fan who believes in jinxes and poetic justice, one would argue that this home field disadvantage was karma for the dark cloud that was the 2017 sign-stealing plot. The team who had been so dominant at home in 2017, banging home run after home run as if it were a video game, could now barely buy a run as the visiting team turned the game into a laughter. The Red Sox, Nationals, Braves and now Rangers had all lifted trophies at Minute Maid Park, before disappointing Houston fans.

I think this is a fair view from a fan perspective, but the best explanation I can find is a brutally simple one: bad habits. As written in previous sections, the lion’s share of the responsibility lies in the lack of urgency and accountability that came from leadership in the Houston Astros organization, namely owner Jim Crane and manager Dusty Baker. The team had a mediocre regular season, and the home record in particular was abysmal. The Astros spent all year losing games to weak competition, a glaring sign of a team that is not completely locked in.

Nothing was done to address these issues, and the Astros were exposed in the Rangers series(in particular the last two home games). Before the decisive Game 7, I remember having a feeling that the Astros were going to lose, and lose bad. This was going to be the funeral for the Astros’ dynasty, and so it was.

Conclusion and Takeaways

The Astros are undoubtedly a success story in the modern game of baseball. They managed to build some of the most dominant teams of our time. Their leading superstar Altuve reached staggering heights, proving a “little” guy like him from Venezuela can accomplish it all in this sport. Several more players drafted in Houston have gone on to have long successful pro careers.

This success story, however, seems to be perpetually overshadowed by asterisks. The sign stealing scandal is a clear black mark for them, but for me it is only the tip of the iceberg, just one amongst several self-inflicted wounds that kept this team from reaching even more rarified air.

Jim Crane’s cheapskate owner tendencies, which were once an asset that helped the organization mount an effective rebuild, cost the Astros several of its prized championship players. George Springer was the first to go, later followed by Gerrit Cole, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman. Only Altuve was offered a decent contract, largely due to his standing as the city of Houston’s most beloved athlete since Hakeem Olajuwon. The Astros were able to draft well and stay elite for a time, yet at some point attrition gets the best of you. In a world where the Dodgers exist, the owner has to invest in the roster. Eventually you will no longer be competitive.

Manager Dusty Baker also played a role in this downfall. Often compared to Andy Reid, it is striking how vastly different the two teams’ fortunes have been since the second championship. Whereas the Chiefs became only more focused and obsessive in their pursuit of excellence under Reid, the Astros seemed complacent. Dusty Baker’s management style created the conditions for a lack of urgency and accountability. Baker and his players seemed satisfied, comfortable with what they had accomplished.

This atmosphere of satisfaction was so profound that it even seeped into the fandom. Houston fans were incessant in their gloating over the 2017 championship, so much so that for them it seemed to wipe away the team’s failures in subsequent postseasons. I understand and even empathize with these fans due to how draining the sign-stealing scandal was on the organization and city; nevertheless, living off past glories is a recipe for disaster in sports.

This attitude, which could easily be described as hubris, is what I believe ultimately ended up being the Astros’ downfall. They believed that because they got the best of the Dodgers in 2017 they would always hold the edge, in spite of the Dodgers’ spending. Jim Crane thought that because the Astros survived the sign-stealing scandal’s fallout and came out the other side with a championship, he could just fire his general manager and run the team as if he were Jerry Jones.

In the end, it wasn’t the MLB or the Dodgers or Yankees who took down the Astros. The Astros beat the Astros, and now it is the Dodgers who stand alone atop the sport, peerless, while the Astros get used to life as just another team.

2017 was sweet while it lasted.