Ascending Astros soar from baseball's bottom to top

HOUSTON (AP) — After losing 100 games in three straight seasons, the Houston Astros are in position to become the first team to win 100 in four consecutive years.

A core of José Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and George Springer has been supplemented with stud starting pitchers Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke, the combination leading the Astros to their second World Series appearance in three seasons.

"The ability to recognize when you have a chance to win — and realistically when you have a chance to win and not — I think is one of our most important responsibilities," former Boston Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said ahead of Tuesday's Series opener against Washington. "You can fool yourself one way or the other. Making the wise decisions is extremely important for you to try to win a championship."

Houston went 56-106 in 2011 after dealing stars Lance Berkman, Michael Bourn, Roy Oswalt and Hunter Pence. The team was sold from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane that November, and the new owner fired general manager Ed Wade and replaced him with Jeff Luhnow, who had spent eight seasons in the front office of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Luhnow, a University of Pennsylvania graduate with a Master of Business Administration degree from Northwestern, hoped to build a model of sustained success with a franchise that often acted as a mid-market team but does have the resources from the No. 7 television area in the U.S.

"Now we have two pennants under our belt, but what we really want is two-plus championships," Luhnow said. "The goal was always to put ourselves in a position to win multiple championships. And I'll tell you what, even if we accomplish it this year which I hope we do, it's not going to change our goal. Multiple means two or more so we're going to go for the more...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Ascending-Astros-soar-from-baseball-s-bottom-to-14554062.php