How the Astros went from WORST to FIRST | Rebuild Recap 

No team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history. Cheating at such a high level that it isn't even baseball any more. It's some other game. By contrast, of the regular players on the 2018 Red Sox team, only three improved their OPS over the prior year - Bogaerts, Benintendi and Betts - and only Betts had the best year of his career. Six of the nine regular players actually decreased. I am sure that the Red Sox also cheated in 2018 and perhaps 2019 (until the cheating was revealed), but statistically, they didn't seem to benefit much, indicating to me that they probably cheated a lot less than the 2017 Astros. The worst was in the World Series. Just one example, Kershaw threw 51 off speed pitches and the Astros swung and missed at ZERO of them. Someone ran a computer sim, and the odds of that happening were 128,061 to 1. So it would take 4266 years and it MIGHT happen again. Just absurd - why even play the game.

​@@drbryant23You conveniently left out the fact that the Astros in 2017 actually hit worse at home than on the road. So much for cheating making them a juggernaut 😂

@@shoukatsukai I was not ignoring anything. There has never been any official conclusion that they Astros did not cheat on the road. The MLB concluded, in a report accepted by the Astros organization that the Astros cheated during the regular season and “throughout the postseason.” img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/mlb/cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf. There was no indication that the Astros cheated only at home. The statistical anomalies indicate that they were cheating on the road, certainly in the world series.

@@shoukatsukaiI’m by no means an Astros fan. 99% of baseball fans have no idea what they’re talking about when they bring up the Astros cheating scandal.

@@drbryant23 Altuve improving his OPS is not suspicious... beside the fact that he never even cheated to begin with

Only one world series without cheating. Finishing second is not a dynasty.

The 22 ring eased my pain on 19.. but it still haunts me as well. They can make me almost forget about it if they win it all in 23.. Stros hitting their groove and we need some production from Javier and a some production at 1B.. really wish we had yuli for the playoffs

Get over it. 2019 was the best world series since 2016

Gawd. This comment hurts me too

@@universenerddEven tho Astros cheated, I’m still going with 2017 being better than 2019. World Series was insane

@@crishdz23 regardless, 2019 was entertaining af

No one wants to admit that happened. It was incredible. Yes, they still lost game 7, but it was historic. However, when you're the villain of the post season, no one is gonna talk about the good you do

We’d struggle against the Brewers, but that’s basically it. For the most part the A’s were our only real competition.

Definitely have a chance to be a dynasty. time will tell..

@@Ares14 YES!!!

All I know is the AL West was jumping in joy seeing a team that would lose 100 games constantly join their division, only to be absolute haunted and have them win titles faster than anyone else there.

And just joining the AL 10 years and knocking the yanks out the most in their postseason history is COMICAL. Only team also without an all time losing record against them and are the last 2 no hits against the Yankees both at Yankee stadium 😂 Brings me so much joy I can’t even express

And still can’t top the rangers 😂

@darthwallace4216 Yeah sure, cubs fan. Some idiots didn't know, THE ASTROS ALWAYS START OUT MID. Go watch some ball and come back when you know what you're talking about

@@darthwallace4216you really would bet on the rangers to beat the Astros in the playoffs ?

@@darthwallace4216 The team doesn't currently look like it's good enough this year to overcome Dusty's managerial malpractices to take the division, but I'll still take the 'Stros in a series against the Rangers in the playoffs.

@@darthwallace4216lol one good year, and already talking. Haven’t won shit lol. They choked in the series too

Definitely will do that in the future

The 1980 Astros lose to Philly is the worst hurt

Not to mention they weren’t the only team cheating according to multiple other big league players, but the rest of the MLB doesn’t want to acknowledge that

​@@camdavis6433aint nobody else banging trashcans😂 no one else was cheating on the same level as the astros. Just stop

That's what bothers me. They didn't need to cheat. They were already a Great team and most likely would've beaten LA without cheating, especially considering Dave Roberts is a overmanaging freak lol.

​@@Videogamelover58well what it should tell you is that probably more teams were cheating than just the 3 that have been revealed and the teams were cheating to keep up with the others who were also cheating.

They were certainly talented enough to have won without cheating. In fact, Correa said that Altuve was disgusted by the cheating and got angry at teammates when they tried to force him to cheat along with the rest of the team. There may have been other players that didn't want to cheat, and the fact of the matter is that no team in baseball history displayed the statistical anomalies of the 2017 Astros. Every single player up and down the lineup improving OPS, including five guys with career highs. Lifetime journeymen like Marwin Gonzalez and Jake Marisnick cheating to bat 200+ points higher OPS than anytime in their careers. But they clearly had the talent. And even with all that talent, they were cheating to win against teams that lost nearly 100 games that season like the White Sox and the Mariners. There's no pride to be had there. Why not try to win those games honestly?

That's probably because no team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history. Cheating at such a high level that it isn't even baseball any more. It's some other game. The worst was in the World Series. According to the MLB findings, which were accepted by the Astros organization, they Astros cheated "throughout the postseason" in 2017, which includes the World Series. Yu Darvish, who has the highest K rate among right-handed pitchers in MLB HISTORY (and a very high K rate against the Astros in a meaningful number of innings lifetime), could only get one swing and miss on an off speed pitch in two World Series Starts. Kershaw could not get the Astros to swing and miss at a single off speed pitch and he threw 51 of them. That is an impossible statistic. The Astros were cheating at such a high level that you might as well not call it baseball.

@@drbryant23 oh ok so Judge cheated on 2022 since he had a massive jump in stats? great ehory

I 100% agree that the Astros weren't the only ones cheating, maybe not even the only ones cheating to the extent they did. But they are the ones who were caught and thus must face the punishment for it.

@@drbryant23yeah that’s not facts lmfao

@@drbryant23Lmfao they only cheated at home and won on the road? 🤣🤣👎🏻

No team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history. Cheating at such a high level that it isn't even baseball any more. It's some other game. By contrast, of the regular players on the 2018 Red Sox team, only three improved their OPS over the prior year - Bogaerts, Benintendi and Betts - and only Betts had the best year of his career. Six of the nine regular players actually decreased. I am sure that the Red Sox also cheated in 2018 and perhaps 2019 (until the cheating was revealed), but statistically, they didn't seem to benefit much, indicating to me that they probably cheated a lot less than the 2017 Astros.

@@drbryant23Red Sox still cheated you crash dummy and ASTROS STILL 2 x TIME WS CHAMPS

@@HOilers34 The worst was in the World Series. Kershaw threw 51 off speed pitches and the Astros swung and missed at ZERO of them. Someone ran a computer sim, and the odds of that happening were 128,061 to 1. So it would take 4266 years and it MIGHT happen again. Just absurd - why even play the game. In just the 1st inning of game 7 one guy (Bregman) steals third for the only time in his life and another (Gurriel) has a thirteen pitch AB, probably the longest of his career. It you understand baseball and stats, you know that the only explanation is cheating. It’s not even baseball anymore.

@@drbryant23 I suspect your a Dodgers fan. I'm a Giants fan,so I'm a rival. I'm cheering for my Giants to catch up to LA.

@@drbryant23 still 2x time champs

I just went by WAR, he wasn't in the top two in WAR.

⁠ That's not true. Even though the Astros stopped using trash cans on September 21 against the White Sox (where Farquhar of the Sox caught them as show n in the famous Jomboy video), the MLB determined that the Astros cheated "throughout the Postseason" in 2017. See page 3, para2 of the Report under "factual findings." So, they had dvised ways other than trash cans to cheat. img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/mlb/cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf

Love ur videos

@@Sillydeath123thank you, I really appreciate you saying that

There is no confirmation that the Astros only cheated at home. The MLB findings were that the Astros cheated "throughout the postseason" including the World Series. There was NEVER a statement that there was no cheating on the road. It is on page 3, para. 2 of the MLB Report, if you are interested. This is obvious if you watch Game 7. In a single inning, one Astro (Breman) steals third base for the first and ONLY time in his eight-year career, and another (Gurriel), who saw the fewest pitches per AB of any player in the entire MLB in 2017, somehow manages a THIRTEEN pitch AB, the longest of his entire eight-year career. The odds of either event happening are very, very small; the odds of both happening in the same inning are zero. They were cheating. The "leak" that Darvish was tipping his pitches was started by Carlos Beltran. No one, including the Astros, experts hired by Darvish and dozens of hard core Astros fans, have been able to find the "tip". It doesn't exist. Beltran of course, was later revealed as one of the guys who designed the cheating scheme and lost his job as manager of the Mets, and was denied first-ballot entry to the Hall of Fame as a result.

I think that the Astros were talented enough to have won without cheating; but the burning desire to win affected most of the team and they ended up resorting to cheating to beat teams that lost 100 games like the White Sox and the Mariners - they didn't even try to win those games honestly without cheating. So, we'll never know what would have happened if they actually had to study scouting reports, study game film for pitcher tendencies, etc., like other teams. Would they have still won? Maybe, but unfortunately, 2017 remains tainted. That said, 2022 was legit, and deserved and in fact achieved with a .248 team batting average (far below 2017's juiced average), because they won with strategies, defense and most of all, pitching. A completely different team, and a well-deserved championship.

@@drbryant23 So Basically what your saying is, BIG Market Teams like Dodgers and Yankees should have won 2017? That they DIDN'T Cheat? You REALLY believe that?

Wrong. We had a rough year and I’m glad we were able to make it as far as we did in the playoffs. We weren’t gonna beat the Rangers this year, nobody was. 3/5 of our starting pitching was gone and offense and defense lacked a lot, and not being able to win at home didn’t help. 2024 will be a different year.

Thanks man

No team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history. Cheating at such a high level that it isn't even baseball any more. The worst was in the World Series. Just one example, Kershaw threw 51 off speed pitches and the Astros swung and missed at ZERO of them. Someone ran a computer sim, and the odds of that happening were 128,061 to 1. So it would take 4266 years and it MIGHT happen again. Just absurd - why even play the game.

He doesn’t care he’s just saying that for clout. He’s pathetic

Agreed

Congrats

Appreciate it

Appreciate it

As an Astros fan I concur

there’s no proof of trash can banging in the postseasons. Only regular season home games in 2017.

No team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history. Cheating at such a high level that it isn't even baseball any more. It's some other game. The worst was in the World Series. Just one example, Kershaw threw 51 off speed pitches and the Astros swung and missed at ZERO of them. Someone ran a computer sim, and the odds of that happening were 128,061 to 1. So it would take 4266 years and it MIGHT happen again. Just absurd - why even play the game.

​@drbryant23 This guy in every comment. Ignores other years. Lol doing everything he can to discredit a Legit 2017 Championship.

@@Adoublelan13 Not sure what you mean by "trying" to discredit a legit championship. I have no interest in whether people think that the championship is "legit" or not. I am simply stating the fact that the MLB Report on the Investigation of the Astros Cheating, states very clearly, on page 3, para. 2 under the heading "Factual Findings:, that the Astros cheated during the regular season and "throughout the Postseason" in 2017. That includes the World Series. img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/mlb/cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf Now that it has been established that the Astros were cheating in the World Series, some of the anomalies of the World Series make some sense. In Game 7, in the span of one inning, one player (Bregman) steals third base for the first and only time in his career, and another player (Gurriel) has a 13 pitch at bat, the longest of his career. In the meantime, Clayton Kershaw throws 51 off speed pitches, and the Astros swing and miss at NONE of them. A computer sim indicated that the odds of this happening were 128,000 to 1. I could write an entire book on the statistical anomalies from the 2017 Season. If you still want to believe that the 2017 championship is "legit", I can understand that. If I were an Astros fan who didn't follow or understand statistics, I would want to believe that as well.

@@Adoublelan13 Obvious Dodgers fan. He can hug his COVID Championship though.

@@Tornado1994*Mickey Mouse

Luhnow in my opinion, was made the fall guy for the cheating system. Carlos Beltran and other unnamed veterans also played roles in designing the system, and as we have seen from the tapes of the games, virtually all Astros hitters used the cheating system. Why Luhnow ends up being blackballed from baseball is a puzzle. He took the fall for the entire team because of the cheating system.

There is a website that has all of the home game data of trash can bangs. Going through it is interesting and it makes you wonder why people make Jose Altuve the face of the cheating scandal despite only having like 2% of total pitches seen at home having a bang compared to everyone else having around 18%. Hell all the players constantly said Altuve hated it and told them to stop banging during his at bats. But those statements cannot be proven, just the stats. Altuve has shown over his whole career that he is among the best hitters in the league. Bregmen, Correa, Gurriel, Springer, Beltran, Marwin all should be the face of it, not the dude who only had less than 1% over his entire pitch count if you include away games

@@schlootle the MLB official findings only stated that the Astros cheated during the regular season and “throughout the postseason” in 2017, so we cannot assume that they did not cheat on the road. That said, your point about Altuve is a valid one. Correa said that Altuve hated the cheating and got mad when his teammates tried to make him cheat, and the trash can bang rate seems to confirm this. The likelihood is that Altuve tried to compete fairly without cheating. Unfortunately the team around him was cheating, and 2017, Altuve’s best season is looked on as tainted. I hope that in the future it will not affect his Hall of Fame chances

That's probably because no team in history has cheated like the 2017 Astros. The increase in OPS by the Houston Astros from 2016 to 2017: 1B Gurriel .677 -> .817; 2B Altuve .928 -> .957; SS Correa .811 -> .941; 3B Bregman .791 -> .827; LF Gonzalez .694 -> .907; CF Springer .815 -> .889; RF Reddick .749 -> .847; C McCann .748 -> .759. Utility Marisnick .588 - .815 That's an entire lineup with improved OPS from 2016 to 2017. Five of the nine players set career highs that they never topped. It's insane. Nothing like that has ever happened in MLB history.

That's because there's butthurt. Nobody wants to admit how Disingenuous the entire Scandal was. Astros WON 2017 by Beating the Largest most EXPENSIVE Baseball Teams in the MLB. The UNDERDOG came out of nowhere and WON. And people HATED that. So they fabricated this whole "Cheating by stealing signs" Narrative as if they were the ONLY ones doing it.

@@Tornado1994 Actually, they won in 2017 by cheating against the worst and CHEAPEST baseball teams in the league. Because we have the trash can banging games, we can see how they used cheating to win against the Oakland A's, the Seattle Mariners and the Chicago White Sox (who lost 95 games that year!). Can you imagine a team that doesn't even want to try to win honestly against teams that lost nearly 100 games? Of course, after cheating to win against the worst teams in baseball, they also used cheating "throughout the postseason" in 2017 against the best teams as well. img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/mlb/cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf

If the video was about the Red Sox I would’ve

Very good

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to please your needs. Please forgive me 🙏🙏

Yanks, Boston , dodgers all had reports of cheating as well.

Thanks, took me around 2 weeks from researching to writing to recording to making the graphics and then finally editing

Thanks

We are doing fine

@breadandcircuses8127 We are in the playoffs that is good enough

We are doing just fine bro.. we just need to get into the playoffs that’s it.. hitting and landing jv back will be fine …

Also 2017 is the first official world series. Sorry we beat la in la to win that so that's ours

You're welcome for that genius Mike Elias

how did those two rings taste tho?

@@aaronnguyen8837 we all know how you got your 1st two rings... Bang bang

@@ghosttownbound i see two trophies in the trophy case🤷

@@aaronnguyen8837 2 after how many years.... as tainted as they are...black sox and asterisks remembered for ever

@@ghosttownbound I don't give a fuck, all I see is two trophies in the trophy case

2 rings in 5 years is a dynasty

Comments are basically a war scene

They won the 2017 World Series. Dodgers and Yankees both cheated in 2017.

Bro go to sleep. Mommy says stop whining

@@bruceortiz2292 The 2023 Yanks are a Trash Fire.

Yankees cheated and still couldn’t win! 😂

Are you out of your mind?

Just because he made the big leagues doesn’t make him not a bust. He was the first overall pick, he was expected to be a top of the rotation starter not some average pitcher

Cheating had nothing to do with the rebuild itself

BOO LOUDER!!! The more hate = the more great, Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox also cheated

how did those two rings taste tho?

Mike Trout said that he would hit over .700 if he knew what pitches were coming. In fact, if he could have gotten the trash can bang in the World Baseball Classic, he would have never swung at Ohtani's slider for strike 3. He would have sat back and watched it tail off. Man, cheating completely changes the game!

@@drbryant23 dude can't even hit a fastball down the middle anymore lmao. That's why he's batting .250 and is up there in strikeouts the past couple of seasons🤣

Good one