Joe’s Notes: Why We Hate the Astros

This is the first World Series I’ve been nervous about since 2019, and the first I’ve been nervous about for non-gambling reasons since 2016, when the Cubs were in it. Of course, the gambling reasons are a big deal too—we get a decent amount of our site traffic through betting advice here, and only if the Phillies win is our track record positive again entering college basketball season—but the series itself, for those who love baseball, is quite the series.

On one side, you have the Phillies, everything that is good and true and just about the game of baseball. Kyle Schwarber would be enough to earn the team these words on his own, but the defiance of Zack Wheeler, the electricity of Philly fans, and even the step into the good by Bryce Harper—a character often characterized as a “douchebag” early in his career, but of ambiguous morality, now turned decidedly biguous by age and willingness to play through injury and proximity to Schwarber (who again is all that is right with humanity even if we often caution on this site to not make heroes out of people, especially people you don’t know)—combine to make this a heart-gripping team, one I wish to remember with great fondness every time I hear “Dancing On My Own” from now until the day of my death.

On the other, you have the Astros.

This is a little paradoxical, but I don’t think the Astros’ cheating—or what we know they did—was that far beyond the bounds of what was happening on other teams. The Red Sox’ scheme was a step further down, but not a huge step, and I have no ill will towards the Red Sox. I don’t really think the Astros cheating itself is why they’re still so hateworthy. The problems, I think, were and are these:

First, the Astros had no real identity before the scandal came to light. They were a shrewd organization, akin to the Rays but with money to spend, but beyond that? Nothing. The Astros were a blank slate, waiting to be cast as good or evil. Carlos Correa does not appear to enjoy playing baseball. Alex Bregman does not appear to enjoy playing baseball. Justin Verlander has always seemed more similar to Gerrit Cole than Pedro Martinez in terms of emotional presence, and Verlander himself is a ringer who should have been more of an all-time Tigers icon than he likely will be. Dusty Baker is a media darling but either a villain or a nothing to fans, the guy who wrote Barry Bonds’s name onto lineup cards, the guy who murdered Mark Prior in cold blood, the guy who wasn’t even the Astros’ manager during the trash can banging but became the face of the team in the post-scandal era, partially because he stood up so vigorously for Correa after the Joe Kelly incident (while applying a double standard to Kelly and himself, a Dusty Baker trademark). None of these guys, aside from the cheating, were eminently hateable. Jose Altuve was pretty likeable, in fact. But Altuve wasn’t likeable enough, and he was alone in that likeability, and with no great read on how we felt about these cheaters, it was easy to cast them as the worst people to ever walk the earth. There was no, “Oh man, but I really like Rafael Devers.” Plenty of players were liked (Michael Brantley, Martín Maldonado), but nobody was so nationally beloved that they could not be easily painted with a broad brush. Correa and Bregman were especially blank slates. And they, alongside Verlander, Cole, and Altuve, were the faces of the team.

Second, the Astros reacted with whining. The Joe Kelly incident epitomized this. Correa and Bregman—again, blank slates before the cheating—were the targets, Kelly didn’t come within two feet of hitting anybody, it was a single game in a 60-game season (so the stakes were high, disincentivizing hijinks), the whole thing was questionable in motive from Kelly’s side. It seemed, from my Joe Kelly-blogging-adjacent point of view, like Kelly was having one of his wild days, realized what was happening, and decided to steer into it. Then, the Astros took the bait. Fearing for safety? Reasonable. Cussing at a pitcher from the dugout and then crying at a press conference about how that same pitcher cussed at your shortstop? Unreasonable. If the Astros had said, “Yeah, we messed up, we get that people hate us, we’re going to keep our heads down and play good baseball and point out again and again our stance that Jose Altuve wasn’t really a part of this,” the public would have reacted differently.

Should they have done this? No. They’re competitive, they want to win, crafting an identity within their own circle as a persecuted team was the smart move. But this identity decision ostracized them from the rest of baseball, and in the sphere of fandom, Astros fans are the most intolerable people around, so clearly in the wrong on just about everything that they can be dismissed out of hand. Yankees fans? You have to deal with those. Astros fans? Might as well be a different species. And not one that poses a threat.

Third, the Astros of the trash can era did a lot of other shit. Yuli Gurriel made a racist gesture at Yu Darvish. Brandon Taubman berated female reporters in a (successful) attempt to show off how comfortable he was with domestic violence. Way back when, before Trevor Bauer was what Trevor Bauer is now, Trevor Bauer singled out Astros pitching for its use of illegal substances to improve grip. That whole rule-enforcement change started with Bauer v. Astros. Other teams have these issues too, but the Astros had a lot of them, and they were all known before the trash can details emerged. Like Seth Rogen’s interviewer reacting to Dale Doback’s fart, the trash can made everything else line up.

Fourth, no justice was served. The Players Association did one of the things labor unions do, which is make it harder to punish members for punishment-deserving offenses. Rob Manfred did one of the things Rob Manfred does, which is betray himself as being completely out of touch with those who love his sport. Would MLB have lost an effort to suspend players for the scandal? Yes. But they didn’t even try. Trying would have meant something, and any level of success would have kept fans from feeling a veritable responsibility to punish the Astros themselves, a punishment which was then delayed because fans couldn’t really attend games until 2021, more than twelve months after news of the scandal broke.

So? Yeah, we hate the Astros. And it’s obviously the Astros’ fault, but it’s not as simple as the fact that they cheated. They’d never given us a reason to like them. They’d done enough sketchy shit beforehand to make this seem like more than a one-off. They reacted as though they were the victims. And Rob Manfred mangled the management of the situation, just like he mangles just about everything. I see that The Athletic feels some responsibility to try to rehabilitate the Astros, writing a zillion articles about their player development and their bullpen and Dusty friggin’ Baker, slayer of young pitchers and complainer about everything under the sun. I know that Correa has moved on. I know Baker wasn’t there in the first place. But my experience, and my impression of where other fans are at, is that we aren’t ready to feel anything but loathing towards the Astros, and we won’t be ready until Alex Bregman has retired. This isn’t a two-year sin. This is a twenty-year collection of fury. My kids will be confused as teenagers in 2040 about why I hate the Astros. Nobody else will be.

The Numbers

As we’ve done with the other ten series: Where FanGraphs’s projection systems see the matchup, where betting markets have it:

Depth Charts: Astros 53.4%
ZiPS: Astros 58.2%
Betting Markets: Astros 63.0%

Echoing a theme we’ve seen all postseason, the Phillies are probably undervalued by betting markets. Single-game markets are famously efficient, but futures markets are not, and the fact the Phillies aren’t as big an underdog in Game 1 as they are in the series as a whole catches the eye: Even with Aaron Nola on the mound, this is a good matchup for Houston. They get Justin Verlander pitching at home with each bullpen fully stocked and theirs the better bullpen.

Still, the betting markets are telling us something, and the best illustration of it might be in ZiPS’s game-by-game probabilities:

The Phillies aren’t a favorite in any game but Game 5, when they combine home field advantage with having one of their two aces on the mound. Even in Game 5, they aren’t a big favorite. So: In every single game of the series except for possibly one, the Phillies are going to be the underdog. There isn’t a safety valve. But at the same time…

The Phillies aren’t worse than a 45% underdog, rounded, in any game until Game 7. In every single game, the Phillies have a solid chance, either through a starting pitching advantage (slight though tonight’s might be) or home field advantage. Every single one of these games, on paper, is close to a tossup. And this is where the psychology is likely pulling the odds in the Astros’ direction. An Astros sweep is more believable than it was entering the ALCS (which the Astros did, eventually, sweep). But the Phillies winning the series is also more believable. We’re flipping a coin four to seven times. It’s slightly weighted. It’ll probably come out on the Astros’ side. But the Phillies have a darn good chance. Here’s hoping they take it.

A Note to Regular Readers

More notes tomorrow, or at least, that’s our intention. We should be back closer to full capacity next week. Apologies for our absence this week. The other jobs took some precedent.