HOUSTON — If you want to discuss whether the newly expanded playoffs make it hard for favorites to win, you’ll have to speak up. They can’t hear you over the sound of the home run train at Minute Maid Park.
The favorites in the American League—and least favorites in the hearts of many fans—spent Wednesday night doing what they do every year. On Wednesday, the Astros beat the Yankees 4–2 in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. Ace Justin Verlander went six. Three Astros hit bombs, setting off that whistling locomotive ride. Closer Ryan Pressly finished it with a four-out save. The details change. The results stay the same.
This is the sixth straight season the Astros have played in the ALCS, an unprecedented run of dominance in the modern era. How do they keep doing it? Righty Lance McCullers Jr., whom Houston selected in the first round of the 2012 draft and who’s been there for that whole run, tried to attribute it to luck, then reconsidered.
