Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman is one of the best players in baseball, and his Astros are surely among the best teams in baseball. Bregman is of course a confident sort, which perhaps makes the following words he recently uttered at FanFest not all that surprising. Via Cut4 ...
"The day they gave us the [World Series] ring, I put it in my closet and I haven't looked at it because I want another one," said Bregman. "I'll put the second one away after we win the third. ... The Astros are going to be a dynasty."
Bregman cited the Lebron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh Miami Heat squadrons as the kind of dynasty he's talking about. While that's not the first NBA dynasty that leaps to most minds, they did indeed win a pair of titles. Whatever the basketball specifics of the comparison, this is bold stuff from Bregman.
The Astros of course won the World Series in 2017, and last season they barged to 103 wins before falling the eventual champion Red Sox in the ALCS. They're well positioned once again heading into 2019, what with Bregman, Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander, and Gerrit Cole still in the fold. Maybe they'll need some rotation help at some point (recall that Lance McCullers Jr. is out for the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and Dallas Keuchel is a free agent), but Michael Brantley looks like a nifty addition to the lineup. More to the point, the SportsLine Projection Model (@SportsLine on Twitter) right now tabs Houston for 96 wins and an 82 percent chance of making the playoffs.
It won't surprise anyone if the Astros are a postseason fixture for years to come, but it's no easy feat to go the distance. Thanks to baseball's structural parity, the MLB postseason is much less predictable than the NFL and NBA playoffs. Throughout MLB history, the team with the best regular season record has gone on to win the World Series much less than half the time. The odds are even longer in the era of the expanded playoffs. As well, the core isn't going to be together forever. Yes, Bregman isn't eligible for free agency until after the 2022 season, and Altuve is locked up long-term. Verlander and Cole, though, can walk after the upcoming season. Springer, Brantley, and Reddick are free agents after 2020, and Correa and McCullers hit the market the following winter. You get the idea.
Bregman's confidence is to be praised and is even justified to an extent, and to be sure he's playing to the gallery a bit, considering the venue. In baseball, though, always take the field versus any one team when it comes to winning it all. Even if that one team is Bregman's Astros.
