The Houston Astros are really that good

the Houston Astros really are that good. They were so good in 2017 when they were cheating, and they’re still so good in 2021 when, it’s reasonable to assume, they’re not. And no matter who they face in the World Series, which they’re headed to for the third time in five years after knocking off the Boston Red Sox in impressive fashion on Friday night, they play a brand of baseball worth savoring.

If you’re from Boston or New York or Los Angeles or, rather, you’re a baseball fan with a pulse anywhere outside the Houston metro area, the above paragraph might cause teeth grinding, eyebrow furrowing, nausea, irritability or any number of other reactions normally listed in a TV commercial for a new pharmaceutical product. The Astros are the villains of Major League Baseball, and nothing annoys fans (baseball, soccer, wrestling, any kind of entertainment really) more than the villain succeeding.

It’s just that since the Astros became baseball outlaws, they’ve also become something else: the second team to reach five consecutive American League Championship Series and the first in the American League to go to three World Series in a five-year span span spanning from the Yankees of the early 2000s. Nearly two full decades of baseball and no team has accomplished what the Astros accomplished with a 5-0 sweep over the Red Sox in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series at Minute Maid Park.

The first appearance in the trilogy led to a championship that is now in disgrace due to the sign-stealing, garbage-can hitting scheme that accompanied it, and the second ended with a Game 7 loss weeks before the revelation of that scheme. But these Astros are far enough removed from the versions of those series to appreciate this team for what it is: a fearsome group of hitters, an excellent group of pitchers, and a team that has improvised enough pitchers to find itself four wins away from getting another ring.

Even those who despise the Astros can’t help but respect them. They play the kind of baseball that no longer exists. They led MLB in batting average. They struck out the least amount of times. They connected on fewer foul balls than anyone else. They had fewer swings and misses than any other team in the league.

In many ways, the Astros are a superior offensive team now than they were even in 2017. Yordan Alvarez, the 24-year-old slugger and SCLA MVP, went 4-for-4 in the final game with a pair of doubles and a triple and batted for .524 in the series. Kyle Tucker, the 24-year-old right fielder, connected on a three-run home run that took an uncomfortable two-run lead and turned it into a five-run cushion. Both spent 2017 in the minor leagues.

The Astros pitching staff doesn’t have as many stars as it did then, as Justin Verlander, a free agent in 2022, missed the entire year; Dallas Keuchel and Charlie Morton are gone. Instead, they have Luis Garcia, who pitched brilliantly in Game 6, is 23 years old and spent 2017 playing in the Dominican Summer League. Framber Valdez, 27, shut down the Red Sox in Game 5. He had yet to make his major league debut that season. The two helped limit Boston to a total of five hits over the final two games. Alvarez himself had seven.

All the things the Astros did so well when they were cheating, they’re still doing now. Which, of course, might lead even a person who isn’t particularly cynical to think they’re still cheating. And that, more than anything else, is the consequence of what the 2017 Astros did. It not only tainted that championship; it also cast skepticism on their pursuit of more. So why is it reasonable to assume they’re no longer breaking the rules? Beyond the sheer arrogance it would take to cheat again, the combination of MLB’s crackdown on in-game electronic communications and the embarrassment that haunts the Astros wherever they go is compelling.

Beyond that, winning clean changes the Astros’ narrative. It makes what they did in 2017 even sadder, yes, in the same way that Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez’s use of performance-enhancing drugs is sad. It wasn’t necessary. They didn’t need that boost.

After how poorly the Astros handled the revelation of their cheating, how long it took them to apologize, how they were wrong pretty much all about the aftermath, the possibility that any kind of recognition for what they are doing today would not make it be viewed through the lens of what they did in the past is lost on most. That has hardened the players, made them even more isolated than they were. Sometimes it seems strange when people get motivation from their own misdeeds, but that’s exactly what the Astros have done.

“We’ve made mistakes in the past, but you can’t go back,” said injured starter Lance McCullers, one of the few members of the 2017 team still in Houston, along with first baseman Yuli Gurriel, second baseman Jose Altuve, third baseman Alex Bregman and shortstop Carlos Correa. “All we can do is keep moving forward, play good baseball, stay within our clubhouse and our fan base and our incredible city, and just do our thing.”

“We were talking about that the other day,” Correa said. “It was me, Altuve, Yuli, Bregman. We asked the same question. We said, ‘Why, why do we keep showing up and doing it?’ And we came to the conclusion that it’s because we hold each other accountable. And what I mean by that is that we expect everybody to be better than they were last year, and we expect everybody to show up in really good shape … Make sure you prepare every day to help us win because we know the four of us can’t do it alone.”

They couldn’t have. They needed Alvarez and Tucker and Michael Brantley, whose career shifts remain a hallmark, and Martin Maldonado, the catcher whose half of the strikeout-catcher’s double-kill on a steal attempt to end the seventh inning was magnificent. They needed Valdez and Garcia, and Phil Maton and Kendall Graveman, two acquisitions made at the trade deadline who in Game 6 served as a bridge to Ryan Pressly, who secured the final out.

When AJ Hinch, their manager, was fired in early 2020 after MLB’s report on the scheme, they also needed stability, and Dusty Baker took over and provided a semblance of that. Baker is 72 years old. He hasn’t been to the World Series since 2002, when he managed the San Francisco Giants. That was four teams ago. Throughout the game, Baker is beloved, and even those who refuse to appreciate what the Astros do on principle have a hard time not rooting for Baker.

“Game 6 has been my nemesis for most of the playoffs, and that’s what I was thinking,” Baker said. “I mean, you have to overcome your nemesis. I was afraid of electricity when I was a kid, so now I own an energy company. You try to overcome things in your life.”

You try to overcome things in your life. There may be no better way to describe the 2021 Houston Astros. They know no one will feel sorry for them when they get hit by ball and strikeout counts, as happened to reliever Ryne Stanek twice in the same eighth-inning at-bat. They know that when Correa does things like look at his wrist and touch it, saying the postseason is “my time,” it will be met with derision, even though Fernando Tatis Jr. did it, the fans would love him for it. They know that outside of area codes 713, 281 and 832, they’re still the bad guys.

And that’s okay. Fans will feel how they’re going to feel, because fanaticism is at its core emotional and irrational. But in the midst of the booing and jeering and everything that’s about to hit the Astros, whether in Atlanta or Los Angeles, there’s a kernel of truth that everyone should recognize, as much as it pains them to do so.

The Astros are that good. So if, or when, they win another World Series, it should surprise no one.