Once derided as a sarcastic gimmick to sell magazines, Sports Illustrated’s 2014 cover predicting the Houston Astros would win the 2017 World Series suddenly seems very prescient ahead of Tuesday’s World Series opener in Los Angeles.
At the time, the Astros were coming off a Major League-worst 51-111 season, which is why it was such a shock to see a cover announcing the Astros as ‘Your 2017 World Series Champions.’
Even the local paper, The Houston Chronicle, described the cover as ‘more of an attention-grabbing, perhaps even tongue-in-cheek projection than a prediction.’
In June 2014, Sports Illustrated predicted that the Astros would win the 2017 World Series
Astros second baseman Jose Altuve (No. 27) is lifted on his teammates’ shoulders after Houston defeated the Yankees in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series
The forecast has yet to fully come to fruition, but the 63-year-old Sports Illustrated can still take pleasure in predicting the Astros’ turnaround, which seemed like an impossibility as recently as three years ago.
‘It was kind of farfetched,’ said Astros starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel, who will face Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw in Game 1. ‘And I talked to a couple of the SI guys who wrote the article and for them to write it, it’s kind of unbelievable.
‘It’s almost come full circle,’ he continued. ‘We’ve still got four wins yet, but that cover, if we do win, it’s going to make somebody really, really famous.’
Written by SI’s Ben Reiter, the piece described the Astros as baseball’s ‘great new experiment.’ And as counterintuitive as it seems to those unfamiliar with professional sports in the United States, that strategy was predicated on losing a lot of games.
Baseball’s draft, like those of the other three major American team sports, is ordered in terms of losses so that the leagues’ worst teams can have the best chance to improve.
The Houston Astros celebrate reaching the World Series after beating the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Oct. 21, 2017
So instead of shopping for free agents and trying to turn a bad team into a mediocre one, the Astros tanked hard, averaging 108 losses every season from 2011 through 2013.
‘When you’re in 2017, you don’t really care that much about whether you lost 98 or 107 in 2012,’ Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow told SI back in 2014. ‘You care about how close we are to winning a championship in 2017.’
Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow
Since 2011, Luhnow drafted shortstop Carlos Correa, who was named Rookie of the Year in 2015 before earning in All-Star Selection in 2017, and centerfielder George Springer, who was also named the 2017 All-Star team after previously gracing the aforementioned SI cover.
‘Yeah, honestly, I think we were all a little jealous of Springer getting the cover,’ Keuchel said.
The centrepiece for Luhnow and the Astros has been 5-foot-6 second baseman Jose Altuve, who was signed out of Venezuela in 2007 for just a $15,000 signing bonus.
Not only has Altuve rewarded the Astros with five All-Star selections, but after hitting 24 homers and posting an impressive .410 on-base percentage in 2017, the three-time American League batting champion is the favorite to win MVP.
The SI article has been a popular collectors’ item in Houston, with many fans trying their best to get it autographed by its subject.
The Houston Astros’ scheduled Game 1 starter Dallas Keuchel meets the press
‘It’s still floating around,’ Springer said, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. ‘I see it a lot.’
As Springer put it in a recent interview, ‘If we win it, then whoever wrote that story needs to go buy a lotto ticket.’
Introduced as the National League’s Houston Colt .45s in 1962, the Astros changed their name upon moving into baseball’s first domed stadium, the Astrodome, in 1965. The franchise has never won a World Series, but did represent the National League in 2005 before losing to the Chicago White Sox.
The Astros moved to the American League in 2010, and have mostly been rebuilding until 2015, when they reached the first round of the playoffs.
This season the Astros led the American League in runs scored, batting average and slugging percentage while allowing only 700 runs – fewer than all but eight teams.
The Astros defeated the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in the playoffs en route to the World Series.
Sports Illustrated’s 2014 prediction will come to fruition if the Astros can beat the Dodgers