It’s official, the 2017 Houston Astros have won the first world series in franchise history with its 5-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in game seven of the World Series. The victory was the completion of a the franchise’s rebuild that took several years and many, many losses.

Game seven was the anticlimactic end to a absolutely chaotic and entertaining World Series. George Springer took control of the series finally with a double on the third pitch he saw in his game. Houston would score two runs in the first and three runs in the second to give the Astros’ their final margin of victory.

Los Angeles would score one in the second, but the Dodgers were unable to score against the well managed Astros’ bullpen.

For the second time during the World Series, Yu Darvish struggled mightily in a surprisingly short start that only lasted one and two third innings. Darvish struggled to produce outs as the Astros picked up three hits during that time frame, along with one walk, to account for all five runs the champions scored. Fortunately the bullpen was able to clean up the mess while preventing Houston from scoring anymore…but the offense couldn’t produce runs despite earning ten hits.

The fifth and second games of this series will go down in baseball history as some of the most dramatic moments the sport has ever seen. With multiple lead changes, well timed home runs, and extra innings those two games were full of heart stopping moments for those who did (and did not) have a rooting interest in the series. It shouldn’t be surprising that both of those games were crucial to Houston winning its first championship.

My favorite part of the Astros winning the series is that Sports Illustrated looks absolutely genius for the below coverage from 2014.

The article laid out the rebuild process that the franchise was going through and served as a reminder that there was a method to the mounting losses that Houston encountered during the rebuild — three of the four last seasons ended with more than 100 losses.

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