Ranking Five of the Astros’ All-Time Greatest Rivals

1. St. Louis Cardinals

Do I even need to explain this one? The two teams battled for the NL Central from its founding in 1994, through 2013. One of the two ball clubs won the division from ’96 through ’06, with the exception being 2003.

Over that span, the Astros took the division four times, compared to the Cardinals six. The clubs faced each other in the National League Championship Series in both ’04 and ’05, with the Cardinals taking the first 4-3, and the Astros taking the second 4-2.

Both clubs would move on to lose the World Series in their respective years. A memory that still haunts Astros fans is Albert Pujols’ monster three home run in game 5 of the 2005 NLCS, which some would say “broke” Brad Lidge.

Although this rivalry has gone dormant as of late, the rivalry with Pujols himself stayed active through his tenure on current AL West rival Angels. This most recently came up during the 2019 incident involving the aftermath of the Marisnick situation.

Pujols was seen talking/ yelling to the Astros dugout, and it appeared that Lance McCullers Jr. was yelling directly at Pujols. A weird part about this rivalry is that Astros Legend Lance Berkman has his lone World Series Ring with the Cardinals in 2011.