It felt a little like this play from 22 years ago.
Tough to come back from that.
That moment is when the Yankees dynasty (1996-2001) ended.
They did go back to another World Series in 2003 and lost to the Marlins.
But that always felt like a footnote, even in the moment.
By that point, Paul O’Neil, Chuck Knoblauch, David Cone and Scott Brosius had all retired.
Other players had moved on.
Don’t get me wrong.
I don’t think the Astros will be a bad team next year.
The playoffs are not out of the question by any stretch.
Remember they won 16 games less in 2023 than they they did in 2022.
They were two games away from missing the playoffs entirely.
Dusty Baker already made his way out of Houston before Adolis Garcia got the ALCS MVP award.
The timing seemed bizarre but the decision makes sense.
The guy is 74 years old.
Maybe a new manager is exactly what this team needs?
It’s going to start being a much tougher climb for the Astros.
The Rangers are so much better than they were and the Mariners aren’t going anywhere.
Once the A’s move to Las Vegas, they should spend money.
I mean, they can’t spend less.
At least the Astros don’t need to worry about the Angels.
They are the rare team with a farm system worse than the Astros.
The Justin Verlander desperation trade is exactly what great teams do when Rome starts to catch fire.
That’s an end days kind of move.
Now, I am guessing some people reading this don’t consider the Astros run to be a dynasty.
The 2010-15 San Francisco Giants were a dynasty.
Obviously the 1996-01 Yankees are in that group.
Now, if you win only two, you need more on the resume.
I don’t consider the 1992-93 Blue Jays a dynasty because they never won another pennant.
If this indeed the end, how will the Astros be remembered?
The cheating scandal from 2017 should probably be a bigger deal.
They lose their manager and GM and just kept trucking.
You were legitimately cheated.
It took seven games for the Astros to beat both the Yankees and Dodgers that year.
If they lose one more game in either series, we aren’t talking dynasty right now.
If anything, the Astros have a 1990’s Buffalo Bills aura surrounding them until they won in 2022.
When you cheat at anything, it makes a defense very difficult to create.
That was the greatest baseball team of my lifetime.
I’ll lament that the Braves should have won another title but I can’t consider them a dynasty.
Then I’ll bring up the Astros run with a shrug or a frown.
It’ll be the banging of trashcans.
I’m not saying that’s even entirely fair and maybe time will smooth that over.
They had great pitchers in this run like Dallas Kuechel, Justin Verlander and Ryan Pressly.
They didn’t cheat.
But memories aren’t always fair.
Then again, neither were the Astros.
