The Astros are baseball’s most business-like buzzsaw.

In the year Since 1976, no one has won a World Series without winning a postseason game. Of course, Major League Baseball’s playoffs were smaller then: the ’76 Cincinnati Reds swept the Philadelphia Phillies in three games in the National League Championship Series and then swept New York. Yankees in four-game World Series. Since the World Series was the only playoff series until MLB added two championships in 1969, the playoffs swept the World Series between 1907 and 1966, defeating the other playoff team. League.

Baseball’s currently undefeated Houston Astros could be approaching uncharted waters even if they don’t extend the postseason this year. After winning 106 games in the regular season, they jumped into the league’s new Wild Card round and started the playoffs by sweeping the Seattle Mariners in a three-game division series and dispatching Aaron Judge and the new four-gamer. York Yankees. A sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series would make the Astros 11-0 in the playoffs, the most postseason record MLB has ever seen — though even a five- or six-game winning streak would put them safely among the majors. Final teams never. Their only peers in recent times are the 2005 Chicago White Sox and the 1998 Yankees, who went 11-1 and 11-2, respectively, to lift the Commissioner’s Trophy (or as the man once called it, “the piece of metal”).

Dominance of one kind or another is nothing new to the Astros. The last time they didn’t make at least the ALCS was in 2018. It was 2016, just a few weeks before Donald Trump was elected president. And their success was fleeting: It didn’t end when MLB forced them to stop cheating, or when manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow went into exile because of that scandal. It didn’t end when various stars (Jerritt Cole, George Springer and Carlos Correa) left the team in free agency. If there’s anything special about the 2022 Astros, though, it’s how quietly they’ve gone about their success. They are not in the top flight like other seasons. The 2019 World Series runner-up had an .848 OPS, the highest in MLB from 2017 to 2022 by a 16-point margin. Their 2017 series winner He was not far behind. (This year’s team had a 111 OPS+, a far cry from 2017’s 123, which again led every team from 2017 to 2022.) The 2019 team had a plus-280 run differential, while winning every MLB season through 2022. The Dodgers posted a plus-334 margin. Not only do the Astros hit the trash cans, they scream about how they fill up the stat sheets. Now they’re something else: the most relentless, boring buzzsaw in baseball.

Despite the changes and turmoil in the front office and bullpen, the Astros have found a lot of continuity. Second baseman Jose Altuve and third baseman Alex Bregman have been linchpins throughout their postseason run in 2017, but the roots run deeper than that. Every hitter in the starting lineup has been a part of the organization since at least 2019, and every starting pitcher since at least 2017, but often longer. The Astros’ player development flavor has changed somewhat since Dustin Baker and James Klick replaced Hinch and Luhnon as manager and GM, but there are clear limits to how the Astros play and what they do well.

The Astros’ offensive identity has revolved around innings for years. In the year Out of 180 individual team seasons in the league since 2017, no Astros team is in the top 30 in strikeout rate, or in the top 15 in starting angle. They hit a lot of home runs, but only their 2019 team hit one in 4.5 percent of plate appearances, which ranks among the top 25 in hitter rate over that span. Where Astros excel is in getting wood on leather. The three top-ranked teams from 2017-2022 in contact percentage — how often the bat is on the ball — all made contact between 79.5 and 78.9 of the most recent Astros teams over the period. (At 76.8 percent, the 2022 team is 23rd.) It helps to be selective, and the Astros have done a good job of not swinging at bad pitches for long periods of time. During that span, they chased 26.8 percent of balls out of the strike zone, the fifth-lowest rate in MLB. Overall, they swung at a lower pitch percentage than every franchise except the Yankees and Dodgers during these years (45.7).

The Astros were more aggressive this year. He swung at 48 percent of his pitches, 15th-highest in the league. Their most coordinated balls are still getting wood on the ball, however, the contact rate was second only to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Not coincidentally, Houston had the second-lowest strikeout rate in the league and the eighth-highest walk rate. The Astros were one. at least What happened to the lucky teams in baseball once their batted balls were in play. Even though the Astros were 13th in average exit velocity and 11th in what Statcast describes as “hard-hitting” percentage, or 25th in their strikeout average on balls coming off the bat over 95 miles per hour. Astros expeIt was designed His batting average was .249, fifth best in MLB. In fact, Houston was 12th at .248.

Perhaps the biggest testament to Houston’s offense is that it’s fundamentally unlucky and still finished sixth in baseball in wRC+ (112). He also helped the Astros hit 214 home runs, fourth most in the league. If you’ve been looking for a change in approach in Houston since the firing of Luhnow and Hinch, it might be here: Starting in 2020, Astros hitters are swinging at an upper end they’ve never seen before. The team’s launch angles have been around 14 degrees over the past three years, up from 11-12 under Luhnow and Hinch. (The league average is about 12 degrees.) The Astros aren’t hitting more homers than they used to, but swinging for the fences has helped offset the loss of Correa and Springer, who averaged 28 and 36 home runs in 162 games, respectively. respectively, during their careers. The 25-year-old hitter, who hit a career-high 37 bombs this year, is a revolutionary strategy to “get Jordan Alvarez.”

Cleverly wise, the Astros have arrived at a reasonably simple formula: pour on the Heat and throw in a few goodies to balance it out. They threw 51.7 percent of their fastballs, a jump from figures in the 40s over the past three years. Their average fastball by staff as a whole was 94.2 mph, led by two fireball relievers (Ryne Stanek, Bryan Abreu and Hunter Brown) who averaged 96 or better. But even Astros starters throw really hard: Justin Verlander (95.1) sits in the 93-94 range and leads a bunch of other guys. The Astros’ pitching staff has gotten plenty of outs with sliders, curveballs and cutters, all of which have produced positive run values ​​throughout the Astros’ season. Verlander’s fastball is, to no one’s surprise, the most valuable pitch on Houston’s staff, averaging 24 times better than average on the year. (Verlander is throwing a stronger fastball at age 39 in 2022 than he was at age 29 in 2012.)

The pitching staff makes things easy for the defense. Houston’s pitching staff had a strikeout rate of 26 percent, just a hair behind the New York Mets at the top of the league. But the defense has stepped up, posting the third-lowest batting average allowed in games (.268). The Astros are one of the most flexible teams in baseball, fielding a full halftime. The Astros were fifth in runs batted in (67). 34 of those runs saved came from infield shifts and another 13 from outfield shifts, rather than anything else a player has done. The Astros have outstanding defenders, including shortstop Jeremy Pena (15 saves) and right fielder Kyle Tucker (13). But more than anything else, it’s what happens when Houston’s elite television crew puts together a good defensive scheme behind it. The result was a 2.90 staff ERA, second only to the Dodgers. And they’ve been stingy in the postseason, with opponents scoring just 2.6 runs per game against them.

one thing does not It’s his fault that he stayed in the game. At least, sort of. The Astros are scoring 4.4 runs per game, down from 4.6 during the regular season. Some of their best hitters (notably Pena and Bregman) are still buzzing, but some have had brutal lengths. Tucker has a .634 game OPS, and Altuve has all three hits in 32 at-bats. The Astros’ arrogance, which has been a threat all year, is good, but if a few balls are pushed, their offense has a chance to grow. You can be the judge of how likely Altuve is to continue hitting .094 against the Phillies.

Add it all up, and Houston has built an unpredictably dominant regular season and is on the cusp of being good at everything in the playoffs. But for a team like this, if the Astros pull off an undefeated postseason, it will be hard for them to fly under the radar. And it will be even harder to deny these Astros their place in history as one of the greatest teams in baseball history.

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