Should Houston Astros lose their 2017 World Series title over sign-stealing? Posted Jan 25, 2020. In this June 17, 2019, file photo, Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch looks on. Yu Darvish wondering real reason behind 2017 World Series meltdown. Cubs players echoed what many others in the game have said: The.

This is the October the Astros and their fans have dreamed about for years.Winning the 2017 World Series is not only possible, it’s a realistic goal. Houston is an elite baseball team, by any measure of elite baseball teams. The Astros won 101 games this season; they enter the playoffs boasting a lineup stacked with All-Stars and a rotation led by a Hall of Fame-bound right-hander and an ace lefty with a Cy Young award on his resume.Winning the first World Series title in franchise history should be the only thing on their minds.And yet, that’s just not the case. A little more than a month ago, the Houston metro area was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, an unrelenting, heartless storm that dropped an almost inconceivable amount of rain — more than 50 inches in some places — over southeast Texas for five horrible days.The Astros were out of town when the skies opened up, but they returned shortly after the rains finally stopped, eager to reconnect with their families and friends and offer a helping hand to their neighbors. They were happy to be home, but heartbroken by what they saw.As they were trying to process the devastation they finally witnessed first-hand, they received a jolt of baseball news on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.A few seconds before midnight, right before the calendar flipped to September, the Astros’ front office pulled off one of the biggest trades in franchise history.

General manager Jeff Luhnow finally finished an oft-rumored deal for superstar pitcher Justin Verlander. For months, Verlander had been looked at as the potential final piece in Houston’s World Series puzzle, the piece that vaulted the Astros from “contender” toward “favorite” status.The deal was absolutely cause for celebration.But if you’re a player, how do you celebrate a baseball transaction while your soul aches because your community has been devastated by one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s history?

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The conflicting extremes were overwhelming.“Combining that into one day,” manager A.J. Hinch says, “was almost too much to take.”To understand how the Astros are approaching this long-awaited October, we have to look back at the days that helped them gain perspective on the intersection between baseball and real life. At the time, the thought was pretty laughable.The Astros were coming off consecutive seasons of 106, 107 and 111 losses, and despite the glimmer of hope that summer — the Astros were “only” 12 games under.500 at the end of June — a healthy dose of skepticism was appropriate for a team on its way to a 92-loss season.How rough was the rebuilding process? Think about this: The Astros won 101 games in 2017, and they finished better than.500 each of the past two seasons, too (84 and 86 wins, respectively). And, yet, they have STILL lost more games since the start of the 2011 season (631) than any other franchise in baseball, with the exception of the Twins (642).Yeah, it was painful. Falling-face-first-into-a-Texas-sized-mound-of-fire-ants painful.Back in summer 2014, that Sports Illustrated cover suddenly gave the Astros’ oft-criticized rebuilding process a very public target date: October 2017.Nothing like three-and-a-half years of anticipation to build a little pressure. On MLB’s master schedule, the Astros were supposed to return to Houston on Aug.

29.That, of course, wasn’t possible.Hurricane Harvey had just barely stopped its onslaught by the 29th, so the Astros played three games against the Rangers on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. Baseball made the best of a bad situation — all tickets were $10, fans could sit as close to the field as they wanted and all proceeds were donated to hurricane relief — but the whole experience was unsettling.The Astros wanted to go home. They hated the helplessness. They hated not being in Houston with their families, while the people they loved dealt with the hurricane on their own. They understood, as baseball players, why they couldn’t play that series against the Rangers in Houston. But they knew, as people, that more than anything they wanted to be in Houston.When word came from MLB that they were going home after the series finale on Aug.

31 — a 1:10 p.m. ET first pitch— the change in the clubhouse mood was immediate.“We don’t necessarily know exactly what we’re walking into,” Springer told SN, “but we’re coming back, and I’m excited about it.”. His smile, which opened up as he finished that sentence, told the story.While the players and coaches were on the plane back to Houston, Luhnow was negotiating with Detroit general manager Al Avila, trying to hammer out a deal for Verlander. The pressure to make something happen was intense. Remember, the Astros didn’t make any impact moves at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, even though they were rumored to be in the mix for several big names.That inactivity didn’t sit well with Astros players. Dallas Keuchel didn’t hide his disappointment, and a couple of days later, Josh Reddick echoed Keuchel’s sentiments. August had been a frustrating stretch for the club; after cruising through the early months of the season with baseball’s best record, Houston was sputtering.The Astros hadn’t won more than two games in a row since the All-Star break, and they were just 11-17 in August.

From strictly a baseball perspective, the team needed a serious shot in the arm, and that shot in the arm needed to happen before midnight on Aug. 31 for the new player to be playoff-eligible.The Verlander negotiations went all the way down to the final moments. “Nothing forces a deal like a deadline,” Luhnow said with a laugh on a conference call the next day.Word spread quickly. Players texted and called Hinch, hoping for confirmation, or refreshed Twitter looking for good news. Carlos Correa, who was on a rehab assignment, was so happy when he heard about the trade that he threw his PS4 controller into the air, and it broke.Verlander wasn’t the only addition. Cameron Maybin had been a starting outfielder for the Angels, Houston’s AL West rival. Considering the Angels were only a game out of the second wild-card spot at the time, Luhnow’s trade for Maybin caught lots of people off guard.Including Maybin.“Pretty surprised, actually,” Maybin told SN, about a half-hour after he stepped foot in his new clubhouse for the first time on Sept.

“I felt like I was a big part of helping the Angels get to where they were, you know? So it was a surprise. But it was an exciting surprise, going to a team that’s been one of the best teams in baseball this year.”When the Astros woke up the morning after the deadline, though, they were quickly transported back to the truth of what had happened in Houston. Instead of playing the Mets on Sept.

1, MLB had adjusted the schedule so the teams would play a double-header the next day, and gave the Astros a day to deal with non-baseball realities on the 1st.“It’s good to interact with our families, with our friends, with our fans, and start the rebuild process,” Hinch said. “Our last week has been chaotic, but nothing compared to what the city of Houston and the surrounding areas have gone through. So for us to be able to get home, get settled and do a little bit of reconnection yesterday was much-needed.”A large group of players and coaches went to the hurricane shelter at the GRB Center, just down the street from Minute Maid Park. What they saw was unforgettable.“It was just a massive state of devastation, and you realized how many people really did lose everything,” Reddick said. “They’re just in there with a few bags, what they can fit in their little area. It really was upsetting.”The experience wasn’t dismissed by the time the double-header started the next day. Hinch was asked whether he thought his players could put what had happened out of their minds during the game, and his response proved the Astros had the proper perspective on the situation.“You know what?

I don’t want it out of their minds,” he said. “I want them to think about it for this week, I want them to think about it next week, I want them to think about it next month, and in six months and whenever people need something and we have time and energy and money and whatever we can do to help, I want them to think about it.”The manager and his players were on the same page.“These next few weeks, games, days, whatever, I know that this team is going to play with a lot of emotion,” Springer said. “We’re going to play with a lot of heart. The city’s been through a lot over the last few days, and this game is part of the city.”.

Within the first minute of his first statement of his first press conference as an Astro, Justin Verlander made it clear he was eager to embrace his new community.“Hopefully we can bring a championship to a city that could really use something like that right now,” he said. “And hopefully I can be a part of that, and we can give the city something to rally around.”“We recognize our part in healing,” Luhnow said a few minutes later, “and I think having a team that’s on its way to hopefully a successful September and hopefully a long postseason run will give Houston a healthy distraction.”MORE:Verlander has dominated since the trade.He made five regular-season starts in a Houston uniform, and his 1.06 ERA is eye-popping. In 34 innings, he struck out 43 hitters, allowed 17 hits and walked just five. He'll get the ball for Game 1 of the ALDS against the Red Sox on Thursday, at Minute Maid Park.“This is what we play the game for,” Verlander told reporters on Wednesday in his pre-start press conference.

“This is bringing back some fond memories just being here and doing the interview room. There's a buzz, there's an excitement, even in the locker room you just sense it and feel it.”The Astros have been great, too, and not just with Verlander on the mound. After going 11-17 in August, Houston won 21 of its final 29 games in the regular season, the second-best mark in baseball in that span.Winning the World Series won’t be easy. It’s never easy, especially for this franchise — the Astros, who were founded in 1962, have made the postseason 10 times without winning a championship, and they've been bounced in particularly painful ways more often than their fans would like to remember.They've blown multiple-run leads in potential series-clinching games in 1980, 2004 and 2015.

They were bounced from the 1986 NLCS in the 16th inning of Game 6. The one time they made the World Series?

They were swept by the White Sox in 2005. Yep, that's painful.

Falling-face-first-into-a-Texas-sized-mound-of-fire-ants painful.And the path to the 2017 title feels especially crowded with championship-caliber teams this season.Cleveland won 102 games this year, and the Dodgers won 104 times. The Yankees have a powerful lineup and a deep, outstanding bullpen, and the Red Sox are led by ace Chris Sale. The reigning champion Cubs are back in the mix, and so are the 97-win Nationals, with their starting pitching excellence and superstar outfielder Bryce Harper healthy again.Will the Astros win the World Series? Impossible to know.But they do know they have the talent, and they absolutely have the motivation.“It’s our job to go out there and run through a wall if need-be, do whatever it is that we’re supposed to do,” Springer said. “Because our city deserves that.”.