Old foes renewing World Series rivalry
HOUSTON: The Houston Astros, unfazed by a cheating scandal surrounding their 2017 World Series championship, will return to baseball’s biggest stage for the third time in five years today and are slight favourites to beat the Atlanta Braves.
The bestofseven championship will renew a rivalry between the old foes given the teams met in the National League Division Series five times from 19972005 before the Astros moved to the American League.
Houston will undoubtedly enjoy plenty of support from fans but will get little to no backing from most observers as a handful of players remain from the team that was found guilty of cheating for stealing pitch signs en route to the 2017 title.
‘‘Ever since the news came out, the bad news that we’ve had to deal with about what happened in 2017, I think we've all wanted to prove what kind of class of players that we are and team that we are,’’ Astros designated hitter Yordan Alvarez said.
‘‘I wasn’t here with the team in 2017, but I’ve gotten booed just as equal as anybody else.
‘‘We all have the same mentality that we really want to win a World Series to demonstrate that we are just a great team.’’
An MLB probe revealed in January 2020 that Astros employees watched a feed from a centre field camera to decode signs, and banged on a trash can to tell batters what pitches to expect during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
The Astros received a maximum fine of $US5 million ($NZ6.98 million), forfeited first and secondround draft picks in 2020 and 2021, and their manager and general manager were each suspended one year before swiftly being fired by Astros owner Jim Crane.
In an attempt to move on from the scandal, the Astros enlisted popular veteran Dusty Baker as their manager,
At 72, Baker is the secondoldest manager to take a team to the World Series, and he has never won the ultimate prize in baseball.
Houston had the better regular season record and will host the first two games of the World Series before play shifts to Atlanta at the weekend.
The Astros, who fell to the Washington Nationals in the 2019 World Series, are the more experienced of the two teams given the presence of seasoned players like infielders Jose
Altuve, Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa.
Atlanta, which secured its spot in the World Series after an upset of the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, is returning to the championship series for the first time since it was swept by the New York Yankees in 1999.
The Braves hold an edge in pitching, with the potential to send Max Fried and Charlie Morton — the latter won the 2017 World Series with Houston — out for the first two games.
Atlanta is a confident outfit having overcome several obstacles, including the loss of slugger Marcell Ozuna to a hand injury and legal troubles followed by a seasonending knee injury suffered by dynamic outfielder Ronald Acuna jun in July.
‘‘We have had like 40foot potholes that we’ve hit, like humongous speed bumps, everything you could possibly see in a road we hit it, and we still somehow overcame all that,’’ Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman said.
‘‘And I think that’s what is what this team has, is anything we got thrown at us, we overcame it.’’ — Reuters