Dominant Astros March into the World Series as Perfect MLB Villains

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Scan the headlines of the stories written about the Houston Astros over the last few weeks and you’ll notice the use of the word villain. Even this publication has used that word to describe the Astros, and it’s not because we’re running out of adjectives: It’s because the narrative really does fit for the 2021 edition of this baseball club. 

The Astros clinched a World Series berth Friday night at Minute Maid Park, their third in five seasons, eliminating the Boston Red Sox with a 5-0 win. This was a controversial series involving two controversial teams. The Astros stole signs from opponents at home by using illegal cameras in the dugout tunnels throughout the 2017 and 2018 seasons and former bench coach Alex Cora took the same scheme to Boston as the manager of the Red Sox in 2018. A league investigation in 2020 revealed as much, and there has been palpable fan anger in every major league city except for Houston and Boston since then. 

When the playoffs began earlier this month, the narrative around the Astros was that they were using the fan anger as fuel for their own fire. They wanted to show baseball that they were more than just a “trash” team. While manager Dusty Baker disputed that notion, it still seemed like a convenient narrative. Baker wasn’t the manager when the sign stealing occurred, but he’s a savvy veteran manager who understands he has to stand by his team and try and deflect the negativities in order to allow them to focus on baseball. If he says it’s no big deal, then it won’t be as big of a deal. The words will be written but the players won’t give very many juicy soundbites. They can go about their work without thinking too much about what happened two years ago. 

The Astros know that many fans don’t care for them. The disdain has been made known throughout the season as the fans returned to the stands. It was advantageous to use the boos to drive them this season. And if the Los Angeles Dodgers return to the World Series with a chance to enact some vengeance, then the majority of baseball will be rooting for redemption. 

But every sport has a good villain. It wouldn’t be sports if we didn’t have the favorites, the underdogs and the teams that are easy to hate. 

The New England Patriots had Tom Brady, which is what made those two New York Giants Super Bowl Wins even sweeter. The Golden State Warriors had a super team with Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, but in 2019 it seemed like all of North America was behind Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. 

Root for who you want, but there is no question the Astros belong in the World Series this year. They scored 34 runs in six games against the Red Sox and outscored Boston 23-3 over the final three games of the series. Houston was facing a 2-1 series deficit before those final three games and much of the offensive success can be attributed to designated hitter Yordan Alvarez. The ALCS MVP capped off a dominant series with a 4-for-4 performance in Game 6, including a double and a triple. He’s only the second player in Astros history to record 11 hits in an ALCS game, coming one shy of matching Jose Altuve’s mark of 12 in the 2020 ALCS. 

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

While much of this run has been propelled by the same core of players from the 2017 World Series team (Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Yuli Gurriel and Lance McCullers Jr.) Alvarez, the 2019 Rookie of the Year, was the player that broke out for Houston when some of the others were neutralized. 

Go ahead and root against the Astros. If they keep hitting like this, it won’t matter. History might look back on this era’s Houston squad as a villain, but sometimes the villains win championships no matter how loud you boo. 

Astros Players of the Game

RHP Luis Garcia: 5.2 one-hit innings, one walk and seven strikeouts. Garcia flirted with a no-hitter into the sixth inning, bouncing back from a dismal start outing in Game 2. After lasting just three outs in his last postseason start, Garcia was throwing harder than he had all season in Game 6.

DH Yordan Alvarez: 4-for-4 with two runs and an RBI. Alvarez and Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers led all postseason hitters with 11 runs scored. 

RF Kyle Tucker: 1-for-4, two-run home run. Two years ago, the Astros managed to keep him at the trade deadline, and this is exactly why. Tucker plated an insurance run with a double play and homered in the bottom of the eighth to push the game out of reach for Boston.

Red Sox Players of the Game

CF Enrique Hernandez: 1-for-4 with a triple. Hernandez had a magical month and it looked as though the magic would continue in the sixth when he tripled off of Garcia, but Phil Maton got Devers to pop out to Correa to end the inning. 

RHP Nathan Eovaldi: One earned run on five hits over 4.1 innings. Eovaldi gave the Red Sox a chance in an ultra-close game. 

Mad About the Villans? Feel Good for the Hero

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

Baker returns to the World Series for the first time since 2002, when he was the San Francisco Giants skipper. Back then his son, Darren Baker, was the little batboy who was saved by J.T. Snow in Game 5 of the World Series. Now, Darren is playing in the Washington Nationals organization., 

Only the ninth manager to win a pennant in the AL and NL, a few years ago Baker was a castoff who was considered too old manage. A.J. Hinch, the Astros former manager and the current manager of the Detroit Tigers, was the model other teams were trying to duplicate. But a second World Series appearance 19 years after the first one Baker has managed to evolve as the game has. 

So if you want something to root for in this World Series, Baker is good story. He’s one of only two active Black managers in baseball, with the other being Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. 

Some things are still the same—like the toothpicks he chews in the dugouts—but Baker has proved that sometimes the old school baseball minds have a place in a new-school era.