We live here.
The playoffs.
Other teams visit. They stumble in from time to time.
Not us.
We've taken up permanent residence.
This is the narrative most guys never experience. Or it's come and gone so quickly they don't even know what they're missing.
Ernie Banks played 2,528 games and never saw one playoff game.
Ken Griffey Jr. hit 630 career home runs, but never batted in the Fall Classic.
Houston doesn't know that pain, not anymore.
Seven straight years in the playoffs.
Six straight years making the ALCS
Four trips to the World Series
TWO titles.
We scuffled this year, didn't we? On the field, in the clubhouse, on the board. We couldn't figure out how to sustain our excellence for long runs. We were challenged by all comers, struggling to beat the teams we knew we should, then turning around to break the spines of the ones who called themselves our rivals.
It looked early and often like injuries would eat us up. McCullers never played at all. Luis Garcia was done after just six games. The straw that stirs the Astros missed 72 games. We kept hearing that Uncle Mike was just a week away, but that week kept disappearing over the horizon until finally he arrived in mid-September and picked up where he'd left off in early 2022 as a professional hitting machine. Alvarez missed 48 games. It was a cacophony of frustrations and injuries that should have served as the perfect recipe for the Astros to let the division slip through their fingers and tumble out of the playoffs altogether. No one would have been surprised. The injuries were too much, and the competition suddenly stiff in a division that's rarely had a pulse over the last decade.
But that's not what happened. Kyle Tucker became a bonafide MVP candidate. Alex Bregman had his best season in four years. When he was healthy, Yordan was Yordan, and when he returned from injury, Altuve was arguably the best he's ever been.
Framber became an ace and threw a no-hitter. How wealthy has our pitching stock been of late? Suddenly the team that had just two no-nos between 1987-2014 has tossed five in the past four years.
Our young pitchers shone and then stumbled. So we turned to an old friend and asked him if he'd rise to the occasion one more time. Justin Verlander answered the call to the tune of a 7-3 record that win-loss record the difference between winning the division and missing the playoffs entirely.
Bryan Abreu continued his status as ridiculously lethal. At age 34, Hector Neris had the best year of his career. And while we rolled our eyes at their playing time, we found incredible depth in unexpected places as Chas McCormick put up a 22-homer, 19-steal season; Yanier Diaz belted 23 bombs in 104 games; and Mauricio Dubon carried the offense through the first two months of the season, hitting .278 in a breakout performance that nobody saw coming.
The board got nasty, even though we're all after the same thing. An Astros title. Maybe we can try to remember that when we get down 2-0 from time to time. For all of the frustration, for all of the teeth-grinding, when Game 162 was in the books, there we were again at the top of the AL West.
It's a different-looking AL playoffs. The other three teams standing are fresh faces this far into the post-season, and every single one of them wants what we have.
Time to put it on, get loud, wear orange, and enjoy the very best part of every baseball season.
This is our house. Our title to defend. Our time to get it done.
The playoffs.
We live here.
For the H.