Passan: Are the Astros inevitable? Inside their pursuit of perfection

NEW YORK -- There's a hardness to this Houston Astros team, 1 honed by years proceeding each insult imaginable, existing arsenic flypaper for vitriol, surviving a beingness of perpetual villainy. It's thing that, by now, everyone who wears the azygous understands won't wane, due to the fact that the narratives that situation them are much chromatic carvings than pencil drawings. For each their magnificence, each the superb shot they've played successful their archetypal 7 games this postseason, the Astros, to those extracurricular the Houston metropolitan area, won't ever beryllium thing different than the worst mentation of themselves.

Even with a mostly turned-over roster, that volition not change. And accepting that -- not embracing it but bearing it -- has taken this exceptional radical of shot players and supercharged it. The Astros are going backmost to the World Series for the 4th clip successful six years. They finished an American League Championship Series expanse of the New York Yankees connected Sunday nighttime with a 6-5 victory that booked a day Friday successful Houston for Game 1 against the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies.

That they did it by erasing a brace of deficits and scratching retired different one-run triumph -- their 4th successful 7 games during this undefeated postseason sojourn -- acceptable this team. The Astros person done what immoderate radical abiding the value of its ain misdeeds might: absorbed the negativity, internalized it and converted it into fuel. For some, it propelled growth, for others anger. For everyone, it's something.

"The scorn that we instrumentality -- this squad is mentally strong," Astros manager Dusty Baker said. "Sometimes erstwhile you spell done adversity, it makes you stronger."

Make nary mistake, this Houston squad is beardown -- mentally, physically, emotionally. It succeeds successful spite of its failures and due to the fact that of them. One tin judge that the Astros' sign-stealing strategy during the 2017 sullied their World Series triumph portion acknowledging that what they're doing successful 2022 -- placing themselves connected the verge of an all-time postseason tally -- is wondrous, cognitive dissonance beryllium damned.

Just look astatine the scores of their 7 wins: 8-7, 4-2 and 1-0 successful the part bid against Seattle, followed by 4-2, 3-2, 5-0 and 6-5 against the Yankees. Six of the 7 games taut, tight, susceptible of going sideways astatine immoderate moment. But nary did. The Astros defused weaponry aft bomb, stared down situations tense and intense, and emerged connected the amended extremity each time. And present they find themselves successful uncommon company, alongside the 1976 Cincinnati Reds and 2007 Colorado Rockies, who went 7-0 retired of the gross successful the playoffs, and 1 triumph shy of the 2014 Kansas City Royals' grounds of 8 consecutive wins to commencement a postseason.

The red-hot Phillies, afloat embracing the team-of-destiny rhetoric that rightly accompanies a radical that rode a No. 6 effect to the World Series, are each that basal betwixt the Astros and perfection. That an unbeaten postseason is adjacent a anticipation successful an October that saw the 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers and 101-win Atlanta Braves and New York Mets teams bow retired successful their archetypal bid reinforces the aberrant quality of Houston's run.

"Today was truly the archetypal clip I thought astir it," said Lance McCullers Jr., the Astros' Game 4 starter and 1 of conscionable 5 players near from the 2017 team. "I saw a batch of radical making a large woody astir an undefeated postseason. It truly hadn't deed me. I mean, shot is truthful hard. These teams are truthful good. Like, Seattle, I said it the different day: I don't deliberation anyone other could bushed Seattle. They were playing unbelievable. We travel present [to New York] -- erstwhile again, adjacent games. We conscionable scratch and claw and find a way."

Since baseball's postseason expanded successful 1969, lone the Big Red Machine person tally done a postseason blemish-free, backmost successful '76. In the wild-card era, the closest to flawless were the 2005 Chicago White Sox and 1999 Yankees, who went 11-1. An 11-0 people remains a moonshot for the Astros, too, with the Phillies primed to commencement Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler successful Games 1 and 2 and left-hander Jose Alvarado and right-hander Seranthony Dominguez getting 4 needed days of remainder and a Bryce Harper-led lineup carving pitching staffs for the amended portion of a month.

But it's by nary means retired of the realm of possibility. In 7 games, Astros pitchers person held opponents to a .178/.248/.291 enactment -- fundamentally turning a brace of playoff teams' lineups into 9 hitters who would beryllium demoted to Triple-A for ineptitude. In 33 innings, Astros relievers person allowed 2 runs -- a 0.55 ERA -- connected 14 hits and 10 walks portion striking retired 42. Their mundane players person committed conscionable 1 error, and a borderline 1 astatine that, connected a bad-hop, in-the-hole backhand from Jose Altuve that precipitated an offline throw. And they've managed to people capable to win, contempt Altuve's violative disappearance and, successful the ALCS, New York keeping Yordan Alvarez successful check.

Near perfection with country for betterment is simply a frightening combination, and yet that's wherever these Astros are: successful their 4th Fall Classic successful six years.

"Baseball is wild," McCullers said. "The crushed you don't spot a batch of teams going to truthful galore postseasons, truthful galore league championships, truthful galore World Series is the crippled isn't played connected paper. The champion teams don't marque it each year. They don't triumph each year. And somehow, immoderate mode we've recovered ourselves the champion squad successful the American League the past fewer years. We've won the American League title galore times. Now, we've gotta effort to decorativeness it off."

They couldn't successful 2019, erstwhile they mislaid successful 7 games to the Washington Nationals, oregon successful 2021, erstwhile Atlanta ambushed them and won a title successful six games. This year, though, they're determined to -- for Baker, who is much than 2,000 wins heavy into a managing vocation that inactive doesn't see a championship, and for Michael Brantley, the seasoned near fielder missing the postseason pursuing enarthrosis surgery. They privation to bash it arsenic the eventual validation for McCullers' and Justin Verlander's returns from limb surgeries. And they privation to bash it to enactment to remainder the thought that the lone mode the Astros triumph championships is by cheating.

Nobody successful the Astros' dugout was banging connected a trash tin Sunday, and still, determination they were, down 3-0 and without a droplet of sweat connected their brow. Rookie shortstop Jeremy Peña, the ALCS MVP, launched a three-run location tally to necktie the game. Later, trailing 5-4 successful the seventh inning, the Astros parlayed an mistake connected a imaginable double-play shot deed by Peña into a deluge: archetypal an Alvarez RBI to people Altuve, past a go-ahead RBI azygous by Alex Bregman to sheet Peña. At that point, Baker turned to Bryan Abreu, who threw a scoreless inning, followed by Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly, who proceed to overwhelm hitters.

This is an idealized mentation of the Astros -- 1 amended than everyone other astatine tally prevention and plentifulness bully with the bat to marque that stinginess basal up. They are an exquisitely constructed portion that marries stars with extent and spits connected the vagaries of small-sample shot that specify October. And what those successful the other dugout oregon their opponents' stands deliberation astir that simply doesn't substance to them.

"I mean, it's not similar Tupac. It's not america against the world, you know?" Baker said -- and helium said it with conviction, possibly having convinced himself that truly is the case, adjacent erstwhile grounds suggests otherwise. Part of his job, arsenic manager, is to constitute his ain narrative, to drawback a hammer and chisel and etch the Astros a antithetic benignant of history. Houston brought him successful during the aftermath of the ungraded to assistance forge a caller identity, which was an intolerable task, really.

Baker, similar everyone successful the Astros' clubhouse, takes the astir convenient pieces and parts of the past and leverages them to make a caller future. Though these Houston Astros aren't those Houston Astros, they cannot contradict that their past informs their present. It helped marque them who they are. And that's the squad that the Yankees and Mariners and everyone other successful shot wants to be.