Where the Houston Astros rank among MLB’s all-time dynasties
By Bill Felber
Where do the World Series-winning Houston Astros rank among the game’s all-time great dynasties?
Now that the Astros have won a second World Series in six seasons, it’s fair to ask that question. In fact we can use the Astros’ standard — two world titles in a six-season span — to delineate teams that might be deserving of consideration for such a list.
Given the Yankees’ penchant for winning successive titles in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, there are plenty of such teams that could be considered.
But since many of those are largely duplicative of similar periods, we can effectively narrow the list down to 30 or so “dynasties,” by which we mean relatively distinct groups of teams who won at least two World Series within a period of six contiguous seasons.
By looking at the regular season winning percentages of those teams, we can also rank them.
By that method, the Astros set a significant bar. Between the start of their championship 2017 run and finishing off the Phillies Saturday night, the Astros won 541 regular season games against just 279 losses. That’s a .622 winning percentage.
It includes divisional titles in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 with six consecutive post-season appearances. Not that we’re factoring it into the equation, but their cumulative post-season record over that span is 53-33, a nifty .616 percentage against the game’s best.