ALL THEY NEED IS A MIRACLE
The Astros, MLB’s most controversial team, can still win it all thanks to 60-game season
I occasionally wonder if I refer to 2020 too often.
The chaos of 2020.
The insanity of 2020.
The uncertainty, unpredictability and absolutely un-normal normal that is 2020 — in the sports world.
Then I think about the 2020 Astros.
The 2020 Astros are 2020. And no team locally or nationally — sorry, Texans — represents the craziness of 2020 like Dusty Baker’s Astros.
They aren’t as good as they were supposed to be. For months, they’ve been disappointing, frustrating, annoying and letting us down.
They’re also still ticking, still around and still alive as we approach October.
Heck, if things get really crazy, these Astros could catch fire and win it all again.
If the American League’s No. 6 seed can win four consecutive postseason series away from Minute Maid Park, potentially take down Marwin Gonzalez’s Minnesota Twins and make MLB commissioner Rob Manfred regret expanding the playoffs in 2020.
Thanks to A.J. Hinch (remember him?), we started taking for granted making the postseason in America’s fourth-largest city. In 2020, the Astros entered the final Friday of an unprecedented 60-game season still hoping to qualify for the wild-card round.
When they scored 12 runs in
Arlington against the worst team in the AL, the offensive outpouring was treated like a communal breakthrough. When they fell 5-4 to the Rangers in 10 innings a day later after blowing two late leads, it took Mike Trout’s Los Angeles Angels losing to the MLB-best Los Angeles Dodgers for the .500 Astros to receive a lackluster playoff ticket.
Mask up, 2020 Astros. Your time might have finally arrived.
Ace Justin Verlander is now professionally associated with Tommy John surgery and might never pitch for the local nine again. Closer Roberto Osuna, like Verlander, has disappeared between the lines. Yordan Alvarez, the AL’s reigning Rookie of the Year, played in all of two games this season. Jose Altuve entered Saturday hitting an absurdly low .220. Yet an underachieving, heavily bandaged team still had a shot to win the World Series.
Baker’s squad will require an October miracle to acquire a shining trophy and rings. But if the San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins and Cincinnati Reds can win the World Series in 2020, so can the Astros.
The AL West already belongs to the Oakland Athletics. Don’t worry about that trivial crown.
All that mattered for Hinch’s 2017-19 Astros was winning it all. And all that matters for the 2020 Astros is the same.
No one cares about a 60game* season — as long as you make the playoffs. And when you still have Alex Bregman, George Springer, Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel, Michael Brantley, Kyle Tucker, Josh Reddick (and Altuve) in your daily lineup, you still have a chance to become the hottest team in baseball in October.
If you can win a few games on the mound.
Zack Greinke continues to be an overpriced, start-by-start question mark in orange and blue. Framber Valdez has a better ERA than Lance McCullers Jr and the Astros’ new No. 1 starter. The bullpen is often one pitch away from another depressing disaster.
Point blank: This team can’t compare to Hinch’s old teams and is a daily betting nightmare.
Then again, these Astros also haven’t been accused of relying on trash cans to predict the future.
Like you, I have no idea what’s about to happen in the playoffs.
Well, I do know one thing. The rebuilding Rangers won’t make the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.
But even the above tip of the cap to Arlington’s crew comes with a public acknowledgment in 2020. No matter what happens to the Astros this postseason, everyone knows they’re entering another offseason of major change. If first-year general manager James Click can’t figure out the new master plan, the great state of Texas might soon be sporting two big-league rebuilders and Astros owner Jim Crane might again be staring at a half-empty Minute Maid Park in a couple years.
Within the chaos of 2020, two final outcomes still feel possible for Houston’s MLB team.
The Astros make you really mad. The bats whiff. Without Gerrit Cole and Verlander, the starting arms can’t hold up. The bullpen cracks. Frustrated fans answer all the disappointment by begging Crane to replace Baker, after just 60 games, with the second coming of Hinch.
Or your Astros make everyone else in baseball America furious by returning to the World Series for the third time in four years, and a tarnished golden era starts to shine again in a different way.
It’s already been a crazy, chaotic year — in the real world and sports world.
Maybe these overmatched Astros will discover a miracle in October and finally make 2020 their year.