Carter Stewart’s post-draft medical drama was ugly, and it was far from the first time a high school pitcher failed his physical for an Alex Anthopoulos-run team. They built a controversial new stadium in a controversial location. (It’s simultaneously freeing and grotesque that such conversations could have occurred regardless of who had won each LCS.) The Braves had an international signing scandal that earned then-GM John Coppolella a lifetime ban he ended up throwing away his career for players who, it turns out, aren’t very good. There looms the possibility that much of the conversation and media discourse during the next two weeks will revolve around the scandals that each franchise has been party to during the last several years.
They surrounded a core of homegrown hitters with pitchers whose stuff and approach to pitching hadn’t been optimized elsewhere, and a 2017 World Series win marked the start of five consecutive seasons in which they reached the ALCS - a run that was tainted not long after. Slowly but surely, the Astros got better. Jeff Luhnow was hired away from the Cardinals front office to helm an intense rebuild that included three consecutive 100-loss seasons, and the draft picks from that stretch produced Carlos Correa, Lance McCullers Jr., Kyle Tucker, and Alex Bregman … as well as the Brady Aiken controversy that would pale in comparison to what lay ahead for the franchise. 500 ten times in eleven years before losing the NLCS to Albert Pujols and the Cardinals in ’04 and the World Series to the White Sox in ’05 and slowly beginning a fall from grace, both on and off the field. Those Astros postseason victories in 2004 and ’05 marked the tail end of Houston’s “Killer B’s” era, dominated by Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Lance Berkman, and others (Billy Wagner, Moises Alou, Octavio Dotel… these teams were absolutely stacked). The arrival of the current core ( Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson, Ronald Acuña Jr., etc.) has put them back on top of the NL East for the last four years, and they’ve slowly crept deeper and deeper into the postseason, culminating in this year’s pennant. It was during this time period that Cox retired and a brief descent to the bottom of the division began. The Freddie Freeman/ Brian McCann/ Jason Heyward/ Andrelton Simmons core drove the Braves to four consecutive 89-win or better seasons from 2010 to ’14, but that group won just two postseason games during that stretch. Fittingly enough, the final two seasons of their division champions streak ended with postseason losses to the Astros, in both the 2004 (Carlos Beltran’s Godtober) and ’05 (Clemens, Oswalt, Pettitte) NLDS so too did their tenure on TBS, which concluded with a 3–0 loss in Houston at the end of the 2007 regular season. The Braves’ 22-year World Series drought hasn’t been entirely hapless, and they have had stretches of contention, making the next six postseasons after their ’99 sweep at the hands of the Yankees, even as some of that core aged and/or moved on. Anyone over 30 saw most of it unfold every day on cable if they wanted to - my ex-brother-in-law grew up in Pennsylvania with Andres Galarraga’s number painted in Wite-Out on his fitted cap - thanks to the club’s presence on TBS. The franchise’s 15-year reign over the NL East, which it won every year from 1991 to 2005 except for the strike-shortened ‘94 season, holds a unique place in the baseball culture. It’s been a mixed, inconsistent decade for Atlanta in the post-Bobby Cox era. Two supremely talented teams are at the end of an eight-month gauntlet - one that began with the singular, casual, quiet pop of catchers’ mitts in Florida and will end in a pressure cooker, with screaming masses and the attention of the sports world, as the AL champion Astros, in their third World Series of the last five years, will face the NL champion Braves in their first since 1999. The Fall Classic is here, the 117th World Series, which will end with the Commissioner’s Trophy and a stage with room for just one victorious organization.