Weary of the Astros? Prepare to get wearier

Houston won its second World Series in six years and might not stop there.

Your grievances have a bright future. Your grudges have several years to bloom. If you still want to deny the Houston Astros their first World Series championship, you must have muttered your way through their second, achieved Saturday night in Game 6 against the Phillies. But if you want to keep such bile within your system, knock yourself out. The Astros will be front and center for a while.

There were only five members of the 2017 Astros who earned a second ring this time: Jose Altuve, Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel and Lance McCullers Jr. What strikes you is the quality of the names they’ve lost, not just 2017 Series MVP George Springer and Carlos Correa, but outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, now with Toronto, and pitchers Joe Musgrove (San Diego) and Charlie Morton (Atlanta).

Although Bregman and Verlander were certainly pivotal to this championship, the Astros won because of the kids they’ve signed and developed and, in the case of Yordan Alvarez (pictured), burglarized. In fact, their biggest crime in all these years was the larcenous acquisition of Alvarez from a meticulous Dodger organization that dealt him for mid-inning reliever Josh Fields in 2016.

You will no doubt see Alvarez in the top five vote-getters on this year’s Most Valuable Player Award ballot, and those who saw Alvarez’s Space X home run that landed above the batter’s eye in Minute Main Park still aren’t sure they can process it. Alvarez had the highest OPS against lefthand pitching (.997) of any lefty hitter in the American League, and this new-frontier shot came against lefty Jose Alvarado, whom the Phillies had used against Alvarez throughout the series. More about that later.

The point is that the Dodgers, when asked if they wanted to trade Alvarez, then a prospect, for Fields, said firmly that they were not about to part with pitcher Yadier Alvarez. Then Jeff Luhnow, Houston’s GM at the time, checked with his people and said, no, he wanted a different Y. Alvarez.

If you can’t keep your Alvarezes straight, then maybe you shouldn’t be whining about sign-stealing injustices five years later.

To repeat, the 2017 Astros were cheating by stealing signs electronically and were punished in 2019. They lost their general manager and manager, gave up draft picks, watched Alex Cora get fired in Boston and watched Carlos Beltran get fired before he even managed a game for the Mets, and took nightly abuse in every stadium they visited, and still do. To say they should have forfeited a World Series in which they won Games 2 and 7 on the road, away from the surveillance and the garbage cans, is like saying the Patriots should have relinquished a Super Bowl trophy because Tom Brady deflated a football to win a 45-7 AFC Championship Game.

The Astros lost Game 3 of this World Series when McCullers seemed to be tipping his pitches in a way that could be divined by human powers of observation. That wasn’t Philadelphia’s fault. That was McCullers’ fault. It happens every day in the major leagues. When the Washington Nationals defeated Houston in the 2019 World Series, they concocted a sign-protection system and thus won all four games at Minute Maid, although the Astros had given up the chicanery by then.

In that Game 3, the Phillies’ Bryce Harper came to the bench after he homered and had a deep confab with Alec Bohm, presumably about McCullers’ delivery. There’s a big difference between a hitter taking such info to the plate, and a hitter listening for garbage-can percussion and then reacting as a pitcher is delivering. But it won’t matter to those whose knees jerk involuntarily.

The real tragedy of all this Astrickery in 2017 is that the team did not need illicit help to hit. It has taken pains to prove that. Houston has been to six consecutive League Championship Series and has played in the World Series in four of the past six seasons, winning twice. ALCS and Series MVP Jeremy Pena is 24, 100-RBI right-fielder Kyle Tucker is 25, Alvarez is 25, center-fielder Chas McCormick is 27 and Bregman is 28. On the mound, Cristian Javier is 25, Bryan Abreu 25, Luis Garcia 25 and Jose Urquidy 27.

The Astros won the Series without two players who may be prominent in 2023. The injured Michael Brantley is a career .298 hitter (and a free agent at 35), and Hunter Brown is a 23-year-old righthander from the baseball coldbed of Wayne State University in downtown Detroit. Brown pitched 20 1/3 innings for Houston this year and struck out 22.

Unless Verlander walks away from a $25 million player option on the heels of a probable Cy Young Award, all of the essential Astros will return, and there are no signs of a nascent revolt in the American League West.

The Phillies shouldn’t grieve for long. They royally entertained their city after an 87-win season. But, especially in the N.L., they must know this might have been a speed date. In that context, it was tough for Phillies’ fans to watch Rob Thomson lift Zack Wheeler in the sixth inning so Alvarado could pitch to Alvarez, even though that had been the game plan.

Wheeler said he was slightly taken aback by the move, which was reminiscent of Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash lifting Blake Snell from Game 6 of the 2020 World Series and lighting up the life of the Dodgers. It happens every year in the postseason, it seems, a case of spreadsheets prevailing over eyes. And with all the data peppering every computer screen, you’d think someone would notice that lefty pitchers do not spook Alvarez. The Mariners made the same by-the-book move in Game 1 of the Division Series, bringing in lefty Robbie Ray so Alvarez could take him to the bridge.

Most of all the night belonged to 73-year-old Dusty Baker, whose path is cleared to the Hall of Fame. He complicates all this because he just isn’t a very good villain.

The Astros are the fifth club he has managed over 25 years. Every one has reached the playoffs. He has left them all in better shape. He has a seven-year streak of getting to the postseason. And, considering the reputational rubble in which the Astros found themselves, Baker was the instantly credible adult in the room, an irrefutable sign that the nonsense was over, and all the Astros had to do was play ball, with Baker’s full support.

By winning the World Series, Baker removed any reason to block him from Cooperstown. Not that he’s done.

“Now that I’ve won one, I want to win two,” he said.

If all you need is hate, Opening Day is March 30.