The Houston Astros will not appear in the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2016 after being eliminated by the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday.
The Astros lost to the Tigers in two games in their best-of-three Wild Card Round matchup.
The Tigers win is a stunning turn for a franchise that was 55-63 on Aug. 10 after a loss to the San Francisco Giants. The Tigers then finished the season 31-13 to clinch the final wild card spot. With the Kansas City Royals defeating the Baltimore Orioles, the two lowest seeds in the American League have now advanced to the next round.
The wins by the Tigers and Royals continue the trend of lower seeds advancing since the playoffs expanded to 12 teams three seasons ago. Last season, neither team in the NLCS was a division winner.
Houston won only 88 games this season en route to its AL West crown. Not including the pandemic-shortened 2020 year, that’s the fewest number of wins the Astros have had since missing the postseason entirely in 2016.
From 2017-23, not only did Houston appear in the ALCS every year, it made the World Series four times, winning twice and losing twice.
The only other team to make the World Series multiple times in that span is the Los Angeles Dodgers, who’ve made three, winning once in 2020.
The Astros’ run of championship league series appearances came under the specter of one of Major League Baseball’s most notorious scandals.
In 2019, an investigation by The Athletic revealed Houston coaches players had devised an intricate sign-stealing system in an effort to aid batters. Using cameras in centerfield, players or coaches watching the live feed would then relay to batters at the plate what pitch was coming via audio cues, such as banging on a trash can.
The Astros were revealed to be using the sign-stealing system from as early as 2016 into the 2018 season — which encompassed their 2017 World Series win.
