After a quiet offseason for the Houston Astros, do they have enough to maintain their stranglehold on the AL West?
Twas a rather quiet offseason for the Houston Astros, don’t you think? It’s almost as if losing in Game Seven of the World Series barely phased them and they’re now marching forward to 2020 like business as usual with another World Series trip on their minds.
I joke, of course, the ‘Stros just went through one of the hardest offseasons I can ever imagine watching a team go through. Will the overwhelming pressure be too much for this supremely talented team to handle, or will they band together and shut everybody up?
In case you’ve been living under a rock, not only did the Astros lose a major piece to their rotation in Gerrit Cole signing with the Yankees this offseason, but there was also this little controversy surrounding them and stealing signs dating back to their World Series championship in 2017 that resulted in their GM and manager both being suspended and subsequently fired. The scandal has rocked the foundation of the Astros (arguably the best franchise in baseball the past several years) as well as the entire baseball world, and what this team is about to go through will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen as baseball fans.
This is a team that will relentlessly get mocked by opposing fan bases and even shunned by colleagues around baseball. We’ve heard an unprecedented number of star players step up the plate (so to speak) and call out the Astros for what they’ve done in confrontational fashion- something the baseball world is not accustomed to seeing.
Everybody hates these guys right now and that weight alone will be a heavy burden for a team even as talented as they are to overcome. What the Houston Astros also have working against them right now is a questionable rotation that could very well be without their ace Justin Verlander for at least the opening of the season with a lat injury and recent groin surgery he’s gone under.