Ranking the Astros “Golden Era” Teams

With the impending departure of yet another member of the Houston Astros’ “Golden Era” in shortstop Carlos Correa, it’s hard to not see the writing on the wall that sooner rather than later the greatest stretch in Houston sports history since the “Clutch City” Rockets is running out of time.

The Houston Astros’ “Golden Era” may be coming to an end.

With the signing of Justin Verlander and the emergence of Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker as perennial threats at the plate, the Astros have extended their window of contention.

But the emergence of the Seattle Mariners along with a healthy Los Angeles Angles lineup featuring Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and Anthony Rendon, not to mention the consistently competitive Oakland A’s and the free spending high money additions the Texas Rangers just made, the division crown is no longer a foregone conclusion for a team that has been so division dominant in the past five years.

Not discounting the Astros ability to remain competitive in the near or even prolonged future, but the faces of the team will have changed considerably as Verlander is 39-years-old on a one-year contract (with a player option for second year), Yuli Gurriel is 37-years-old on the final year of his contract, leaving only Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman as the remaining core that won a World Series signed past 2023.

While the next generation of Astros could begin their own dominant run, let’s rank the best Astro teams from 2017-2021. These rankings are based strictly on pure talent. Basically if you could start a season with the final rosters from each year and the players at the stages in their career they were at, which team would you most trust to secure a World Series win this season.

The 2021 Houston Astros

It may seem strange to rank a team that got to within two games of another World Series title at the number four slot, but once again the pitching on this team, as was exposed in the playoffs, is enough to bump them down.

The offense on this team is arguably the best of the entire five run stretch. And the defense was definitively the best in the five years of this golden era.

But aside from Lance McCullers Jr. and the bullpen additions that came halfway through the year, you would be hard pressed to take this team over the ones that had stronger starting rotations.

The bullpen after the trade deadline went from a weakness to a strength and they had to overcome a complete meltdown by the starting rotation as well as an unfortunate forearm injury to ace Lance McCullers Jr. to help the Astros battle through the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox.

The rotation though just does not stack up compared to the other three teams we’re about to rank.

The 2017 Houston Astros

Yes, they won the World Series. How could they not be number one on the list? But if you look at the teams on paper, the 2018 and 2019 Houston Astros are basically the same team as 2017 only with better pitching and in 2019 better hitting.

This team is the one that gave us all the memories, but if you were to open spring training today, which of these rotations/bullpens would you want most?

• 2017 – Justin Verlander, Dallas Keuchel, Lance McCullers Jr., Charlie Morton, Mike Fiers (Yes, Mike Fiers, who believe it or not, led the Astros rotation in innings pitched that year.) But for argument’s sake let’s add Colin McHugh and Brad Peacock into the equation.  And Ken Giles as your closer.
• 2018 – Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton, Lance McCullers Jr. with Roberto Osuna as your closer and Ryan Pressly as your set-up man.
• 2019–  Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Zack Greinke, and then some combo of Wade Miley, Framber Valdez, Jose Urquidy and Brad Peacock (this was the year Lance McCullers Jr. was out for a full season. Imagine if he was healthy that year.)

If we’re talking about the pitchers as they were in those years, it’s hard not to look at 2018 as well as 2019 and wonder how they didn’t win the World Series in those seasons too.

In 2018 Their rotation got better and their bullpen went from Ken Giles at the back end to Roberto Osuna and Ryan Pressly (Both mid-season acquisitions.)

And the 2018 offense was almost identical to the 2017 only with the mid-season addition of Martin Maldonado they upgraded defensively behind the plate.

In 2019 it was the same offense only adding Yordan Alvarez and Michael Brantley. The rotation lost Lance McCullers Jr. but added Zack Greinke who at the time was in contention for the National League Cy Young joining what would eventually be the number one and two vote getters for the American League Award in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole (respectively.)

If you had to roll out one of these three teams, you’d be hard pressed to take the 2017 Astros over the 2018 and 2019 Astros, both of which finished with better regular season records (101 wins for the 2017 Astros compared to 103 for the 2018 Astros and 107 for the 2019 Astros.)

Now down to our final two.

The 2018 Houston Astros

A big reason this team doesn’t get the recognition it deserves in the golden era is because they had the worst ending to any of the five teams, getting bounced in five games by the Boston Red Sox. But it was a Red Sox team that was an absolute buzz saw and one of the most dominant teams in both regular and post season history.

They won 108 regular season games and then went 11-3 in the post season never losing more than one game in any series.

The Astros could have had a more competitive series but games two and four showed just how unpredictable bounces and the narrowest of margins can be the difference between a win and a loss.  Game four especially still sticks in the craws of many Astros fans.

Joe West, an umpire that draws the ire of many a baseball fan across the sport, was responsible for a a blown fan interference call (To assume an out on that play is a mind-bogglingly bad judgement call. Fan interference should be clear as in Jeffrey Maier. I could rant on about this but let’s just continue with the article.) that cost the Astros a two run home run.

Then later in the game Andrew Benintendi moving just a few steps over during an Alex Bregman at bat and making an amazing diving play to end the game on what could have been a game-tying hit sealed the Astros fate. While they had game five left it seemed all the momentum and energy was on the Red Sox side and David Price gutted out six innings on short rest.

But this Astros team deserved a better fate, ending, and ranking in the annals of Astros history.

The 2019 Houston Astros

Forget the “Golden Era.” This is hands down talent wise the best Astros team in franchise history and one of the best baseball teams ever assembled.

It still is hard to believe they couldn’t find a way to win one home game in the World Series, especially considering their starters in those four home games were Gerrit Cole, Zack Greinke and the eventual American League Cy Young winner Justin Verlander getting two starts.

Yet somehow they lost in seven games to a red hot 93 win Washington Nationals team and no Astro fan will ever hear a ball ting the foul pole the same way again.

Let’s just go over the history this team made that season on their way to a franchise record 107 wins.

First their starting pitching. Their rotation was headed by the top two in Cy Young voting, the fifth time ever in Major League history that has happened and first time since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling did it in 2002.

Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander join Johnson and Schilling on an even shorter list of being the only teammates to crack the 300 strikeout mark in a single season. The list is just those two pair of teammates and that’s it. Add in the fact that the Astros grabbed Zack Greinke at the deadline and this is one of the best starting rotations ever assembled.

The bullpen was once again solid with the back end of Roberto Osuna and Ryan Pressly, but toss in the fact that Will Harris was having a career year and postseason (until Games 6 and 7 of the World Series unfortunately), and it made the idea of beating this team that much more difficult with starting pitchers who could go a full nine if needed but if not, a solid six innings was more than enough with this seven-eight-nine combo in the back end.

And of course the offense. The 2019 Astros offense has the second best Weighted Runs Created Plus of all-time at 124. (wRC+ quantifies run creation and normalizes it in order to compare players who play in different ball parks and eras.) They trail only the 1927 New York Yankees (126), arguably the greatest offense of all-time.

The offense featured a career year for Alex Bregman who finished second in MVP voting along with great seasons from the rest of the home grown talent in George Springer, Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve.  Add in free agent hitting machine Michael Brantley and the eventual rookie of the year Yordan Alvarez and it still just doesn’t seem real that this team didn’t win the World Series.

Here’s the stat that I think shows their dominance on both sides of the ball. They led the league in strikeouts thrown while striking out the least on offense. They are the only team in Major League history to do that.

The “what if’s” of this season linger on. What if Zack Greinke hadn’t been pulled at 80 pitches in game seven? What if Gerrit Cole had come in rather than Will Harris in that situation? What if Lance McCullers Jr. was healthy that year? Things we can only wonder and speculate about now.

This team fell one home win short of what seemed like an inevitable championship. It was the first time in North American sports history where the road team won every game of a series, an especially heartbreaking way to lose.

Despite not winning it all, this still is the most talented team not just of the Golden Era Astros, but in franchise history and a top 10 team in the history of the game. They came up one game short of putting their ultimate stamp on their place in Major League history, but it doesn’t negate that they are one of most talented group of baseball players ever to share a uniform.