I was blessed to write about sports for a living for a few years - prep and college level - and there was always one thing that stood out - teams that know how to win turn it on in the playoffs, even when their personnel changes. I recall watching Austin Westlake's football squad go 7-3 one year - a serious downturn for their usual regular season expectations, then go on and win the state championship with a roster most put well below their best teams ever.
The Astros have tapped into the understanding that not a lot of teams grasp. The regular season doesn't mean ***** It's just a chance for you to find the pieces that work and get them geared up for the post-season. Of course you've got to win enough to qualify, but once the playoffs starts, it breaks down to the teams that have and can, and the teams that can't and won't.
We saw it for years from the San Antonio Spurs. They didn't care if they were the 1 seed or the 5 seed - those 82 games were about figuring out who was going to step up in the playoffs and who wasn't, and what combinations worked. Every year they'd watch Phoenix or Dallas or Houston put up a gaudy win total, then wipe their asses out in the playoffs.
Same for the Patriots during Brady's prime. Didn't matter if they went 10-6 or 14-2 in the regular season. When the playoffs started, they went to work.
Correa, Springer, Altuve, Bregman, Gurriel - they get it. Injuries slow you down, the scandal pursues you town to town, opposing pitchers think they've got your number because you went 0-for-4 on July 29th against them, and now they can't figure out why they can't get you out in the playoffs. Because the mid-summer games they thought were Game 7 of the World Series were your training camp.
4-0 in the post-season. About to put Oakland out of its misery. Who's next?