Astros 2023: Not that you’ve asked

The last time the Astros played for real was almost five months ago, as they finished off the Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series on November 5, 2022. That World Championship clinching game rode on the back of two players, who are critical to the Astros’ 2023 success, Framber Valdez and Yordan Alvarez.

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Top 10 reasons the Astros can repeat

It has been a long time, almost a quarter of a century, since the last time a team was a repeat champion in major league baseball. The Yankees (Spit!!) won the title in 1998 against the Padres, repeated in 1999 against the Braves, and felt so good about it – took the trifecta against the Mets in 2000. The Yanks (Spit!!) were only stopped by Luis Gonzalez, and his bloop single to center that helped the D’Backs beat Mariano Rivera and the Yanks in the 2001 seventh game.

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Astros 2023: Now what?

Rightly or wrongly, there were always two good arguments about why the Astros could survive after letting Justin Verlander go to the highest bidder.

1) The Astros had a lot of starting pitching depth with Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Lance McCullers Jr., Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy, and Hunter Brown.

2) The Astros’ offense would pick up some of the slack with the addition of Jose Abreu’s big bat and the return of Michael Brantley, who only played 64 games in 2022. Hey, and Jeremy Pena, who excelled in the playoffs, would bring more juice in his second season in the majors.

So, how is that working for the Astros?

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