I would hate to make liars of my colleague, Ben Reiter, and my employer, Sports Illustrated—recall our three-year-old guarantee of a 2017 title. Make no mistake: The Astros are a superlative club. They had the American League’s best offense, scoring-wise, and they seldom strike out. There's no hole in their lineup, which will make New York's pitchers have to work much harder than they did against Cleveland. Houston ace Dallas Kuechel owns the Yankees; just ask fans to recall the 2015 AL wild-card game.
But this is no perfect team, and these Yankees are no cupcake wild-card fluke: By Pythagorean Wins, which measures a team's performance based on runs scored and runs allowed, they were actually a better bunch than this year's Astros.