Three reasons the Houston Astros are dominating the AL West (again)

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

The Houston Astros are running away with the American League West. Again.

This should be the fifth consecutive full season in which the Astros win their division. Each of the previous four, they won it by more than 10 games. They already boast a lead larger than that, and manager Dusty Baker noted this week in Anaheim that his team is not loosening its hold on the reins as the All-Star Game nears.

The Astros feel like they must keep pushing because of what awaits over the next week: an after-sunrise arrival in Houston on Friday morning, then three games in fewer than 60 hours to finish the first half. Their second half begins with a home doubleheader against the world-beating Yankees, immediately followed by a six-game road trip.

“We’re trying to create as much room, as much distance, as we can prior to the break,” Baker said. “That’s one reason we want to add to our lead — because that’s gonna be a very difficult stretch of games.”

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The Astros have excelled this season by balancing short- and long-term interests. They’ve kept 39-year-old Justin Verlander healthy in part by supplying him with more rest as he returns from Tommy John surgery. For 12 of his 16 starts, he has received at least one extra day, and he will get at least a week ahead of his last start of the first half. 

But within his starts, Baker is unafraid to extend Verlander past the 100-pitch mark, most peers’ boundary these days.

It helps, too, that the rest of the division has flailed. Entering play Wednesday, the Angels had won only one-fourth of their past 44 games. The Mariners have been hot, but they started slowly enough that they remain out of the divisional hunt. The Rangers are not awful but are irrelevant, and the Athletics are both.

Here are three key reasons the Astros have once again pulled ahead in the AL West.

1. They have a new core.

The Astros’ three most valuable players this season — Yordan Álvarez, Kyle Tucker and Jeremy Pena — are all 25 or under. None was a significant contributor during the team’s back-to-back 100-win seasons in 2017 and ’18 or part of the 2017 sign-stealing scandal. Tucker and Álvarez were part of the playoff run in 2019, but Pena just arrived this spring, as a ready-made replacement for Carlos Correa.

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Those three rival any team’s top position players, and they are together making just more than $2 million this season. Their arrivals have allowed the Astros to pull back their payroll to 10th in the sport, their lowest positioning in five years, and remain this competitive.

2. They kept some of their old core.

In addition to that new star trio, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Yuli Gurriel are still there and, mostly, still contributing. Altuve has regained his prime form. Bregman has been 25% better than average. Gurriel, at 38, is still starting every day. 

In addition to their on-field contributions, those players have kept the clubhouse’s tone the same. Reliever Ryne Stanek noted that at least a few of the team’s veterans approached him on his first day with the team in February 2021. He remembered being in the weight room and players such as Altuve and Bregman telling him they expected him to contribute to another championship that fall. The directness took him by surprise.

Stanek compared the circumstances with the Astros to his experience ascending through the Tampa Bay Rays‘ organization, where his cohort of young players had won championships at every level of the minor leagues and were thus accustomed to winning. 

“It’s hard to teach people how to win if they’ve never won,” he said. “Most of the guys here have won — a lot — and the expectation, regardless of people we lose or injuries, is that we are going to win every day. Feeling like you’re going to win matters. I think that’s an unsung causation for winning.”

3. Their pitching has been dominant and remarkably deep.

Of the 14 pitchers who have thrown double-digit innings in an Astros uniform in 2022, the worst ERA belongs to Jose Urquidy, who, with a 4.08 mark, has been a perfectly competent back-end starter. That’s how good the Astros’ group has been, surely in part due to Martin Maldonado‘s game-calling prowess.

As an example of how rare their across-the-board success is, 19 men have pitched double-digit innings for the cellar-dwelling Cincinnati Reds. Fifteen of them have worse ERAs than Urquidy. Twenty-one men have pitched double-digit innings for the Angels, the team that was supposed to challenge the Astros in 2022. Eleven of them have worse ERAs than Urquidy. Even the Dodgers, who have a roughly equal ERA to Houston’s overall, have a couple of struggling relievers.

Houston has none. 

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Verlander and Framber Valdez are the team’s All-Stars, but plenty of others were worthy of consideration. Stanek has a 0.63 ERA. Cristian Javier is striking out the world. Houston’s entire 13-man pitching staff is carrying an above-average WHIP. And they’re about to get Lance McCullers Jr. back, as long as his recovery from a forearm injury continues on its pace. 

It’s an uncommon collection of competence, and it bodes well for the Astros’ ability to last three more months on top.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic and, before that, the Angels and Dodgers for five seasons for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. His first book, “How to Beat a Broken Game,” came out this spring. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.