30 MLB Teams in 30 Posts - 2022 Edition: #11

Welcome back to the next post in my 30 MLB Teams in 30 Posts countdown (plus the contest - see the bottom of the post for details on that).

#11:  Houston Astros (Previous Rankings - 2019, 2020: #2, 22)

Ah, the Houston Astros.  Once upon a time, my "adopted" favorite team.  With fun players like Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa (plus stalwarts like Justin Verlander), this team was super fun to watch on a nightly basis...

...and then...

The cheating allegations turned into actual proof of cheating.  The once shiny sheen on the team became tarnished in no time at all.  A few trash cans later and then the Astros dropped from #2 all the way down to #22 in my rankings.

Now, the Astros are moving back up.  I still like Dusty Baker (nice to see him get win #2,000 the other night).  I also still (kind of) like Jose Altuve - I still have a small PC of him that I couldn't get myself to part with a few years ago.  I can understand why plenty of people would have the Astros in their bottom five on their rankings - but with allegations also thrown around of lots of other teams (including the almighty Yankees), I'm more of the opinion that there was probably rampant cheating amongst many teams and it was the Astros who just so happened to be better at it.  I'm not excusing it, but I also have to recognize that it was part of that era of baseball (cue steroids talk of a lot of 90s baseball).  

Moving away from the cheating Astros, I need to end this post with the answer to the trivia question from my previous post.  As a reminder, the question was "With which team did Rockies manager Don Baylor win a World Series?"

The answer:  the 1987 Minnesota Twins.  

I enjoy trivia on my baseball cards!

My 2022 MLB Rankings (so far):

#30:  St. Louis Cardinals

#29:  New York Yankees

#28:  Boston Red Sox

#27:  Washington Nationals

#26:  San Francisco Giants

#25:  Chicago Cubs

#24:  Milwaukee Brewers

#23:  Miami Marlins

#22:  Atlanta Braves

#21:  Texas Rangers

#20:  Arizona Diamondbacks

#19:  Philadelphia Phillies

#18:  New York Mets

#17:  Baltimore Orioles

#16:  Los Angeles Dodgers

#15:  Los Angeles Angels

#14:  San Diego Padres

#13:  Oakland Athletics

#12:  Colorado Rockies

#11:  Houston Astros

#10:  ??

Contest entries to date (see here for details):

Fuji 28

Brett Alan 26

Crocodile 26

John Sharp 24

bbcardz 22

hiflew 20

Matt 20

The Lost Collector 19

Night Owl 11

Mike Matson 7

Jafronius 4

Wilson 3

Nick Vossbrink 4

Adam Kaningher 2

Alan Deakins 2

madding 1

Wrigley Wax 1

Next time, we move into the Top 10!  The team in spot #10 on my rankings are a team that I've seen play in person but never in their home ballpark (chalk up another bucket list item for myself).  With so few teams remaining, that might be enough of a clue to have people correctly guess the team!