Once again the media has done this to themselves. They bastardized and exploited the cheating scandal story to garner as many clicks as possible... and now they purposely avoid talking or writing about the Astros due to the potential backlash from readers/viewers that will lead to them getting heat. Thus they don't talk about them, they don't write about them, they're likely the best team in baseball... and its all done very "quietly".
We just won 2 series against the Red Sox (one on the road), won a series in Buffalo against the Jays, and swept a 4 game set at home against the (former) leaders in Run Differential. Has any team in baseball put together a stretch that impressive yet this season?
My other, better idea is to buy a 30-sec ad on every MLB broadcast for a weekend: Fade to Astros Logo.
I think the Media is trying to capitalize-off the cheating scandal, and the Astros winning while under the microscope, is bad for their narrative - essentially hurting their caricature portrayal of the Astros as a bunch of villainous cheaters. But leave it to the idiots to try and bury what the Astros are doing right now; after all these folks know this is baseball and slumps always plague even the best of teams. They'll spotlight the losing and swiftly sweep under the rug the winning; they know that baseball fans want to hear about the cheating Astros when the playoffs come around (and magically the regular season, get's forgotten by the sports media). What gets me is that Altuve is having another monster season, and at 5'6" is amongst the best sluggers in the game. But the "haters in baseball", will do everything in their power to whitewash his accomplishments. And yet, Altuve was the one who least benefited from the trash can controversy; however the media has pushed that narrative, he was the face of the villainous Astros.
Ermahgerd! 1. Houston Astros Record as of Monday: 61-39 Last Power Ranking: 3 Maybe this is a profoundly ill-fated strategy that will end in you booing as you see the name of their team scroll across. But consider the possibility that the Astros looking like the class of the American League again is not simply a story of how the cheaters are winning again. Even in the absence of Justin Verlander, the Astros rotation is thriving behind the upstart arms of Framber Valdez and Luis García. And it’s late July, so the central question facing the team is less about anyone in the offensive core and more about whether they will actually pony up for the relief help they so obviously need. Then once the Astros inevitably make the playoffs, everyone can go back to booing again.
So now the athletic is trying to make light, or make it seem like its silly that everybody is booing or finding fault with the Astros... when they helped create that stigma in the first place? Pieces of work... all of them.
The 2017 Astros beat three of baseball supreme royalty, as proclaimed by the national sports media syndicate. The Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Dodgers to earn the World Series title. Who cares if anyone else in baseball cheats, the Astros committed the gravest offense to the media syndicate; they deprived them of their title for their own teams.
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/...uarter-mark-power-rankings-astros-giants-mets Ringer has us #1 on 8/17: 1. Houston Astros (70-48) The Astros of 2021 are starting to resemble the Astros of 2017. No, no, no, not for the reason you’re thinking. That 2017 team had plenty of star power, but perhaps even more important, its pitching and offensive production were dispersed evenly throughout the roster—particularly before the late August trade for Justin Verlander. Without an easy out in the lineup, the Astros could rip off big innings through both multirun homers and old-school conga line action. And while the lack of standout pitching left manager AJ Hinch scrambling after Verlander and Dallas Keuchel took their turns in the rotation, he was able to mix and match enough to find success in the playoffs. This time around, the Astros are getting above-average production (by sOPS+, or OPS relative to league average production in that split) from eight of nine offensive positions. And while closer Ryan Pressly was the only Houston pitcher to make the All-Star Game, the six Astros who’ve thrown at least 75 innings all have an ERA+ of 120 or better (including Lance McCullers Jr., who’s in the middle of the best season of his career). No other team has more than three pitchers who meet those criteria. That depth has allowed Houston to weather injuries to the likes of José Urquidy, Kyle Tucker, and Alex Bregman, and stay at or near the top of the AL pecking order in a pretty chaotic season for the rest of the league. And they’ve done it fairly quietly for a change.
