It’s hard to repeat in baseball.
The last team to repeat as World Series Champions were the New York Yankees when they won three-straight from 1998-2000. Teams have tried and failed, including the Chicago Cubs in 2017.
But the Houston Astros think they have a legit shot at repeating in 2018 and along the way, pitcher Dallas Keuchel took a shot at the Cubs. In an interview with the Washington Post, Keuchel discussed how it felt to win the World Series and when it all really hit him.
He also talked about the Astros chances at repeating in which he took his shot. Here’s what he said via the Washington Post:
“We’re not the Cubs,” Keuchel fired back when presented with that example. “I firmly believe we have better players.”
The Cubs won the 2016 World Series with their young core of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, Willson Contreras, Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Hendricks and Albert Almora. They fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games in the NLCS.
Houston beat the Dodgers in the World Series to claim their first World Series title ever.
We get Keuchel’s point. What’s he supposed to say? We aren’t as talented as the Cubs?
Houston has a very good team and has a shot at repeating. They too have a young core with Keuchel, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correra, Alex Bregman, George Springer, Lance McCullers and newcomer Gerrit Cole who they acquired from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Add in veteran Justin Verlander and the Astros are the favorites to win it all again.
But don’t count out the Cubs. They made a move to land pitcher Yu Darvish and give themselves one of the best rotations in all of baseball and return a very good offense.
As for the Astros repeating? Hopefully we will get to see a Cubs-Astros matchup for all the marbles.
Well, they should have better players. They tanked harder to get a bunch of #1 overall picks. The only #1 the Cubs got was Kris Bryant. Oh, wait… He SHOULD have gone first overall.