SI Cover Predicting Astros World Series Champs in 2017, Proven Right

If you make enough predictions, sooner or later one of them will turn out to be right. Sports Illustrated makes a lot of predictions. In 2014 they predicted the Astros would win the World Series in 2017. On Wednesday night, that became reality.

The Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 on Thursday night, securing the first championship in Houston franchise history. The matchup between the Dodgers and Astros was also a huge win for Breitbart Sports. On August 5th Breitbart Sports’ John Pudner predicted that the Astros and Dodgers would face each other in the Fall Classic.

Indeed, the two teams seemed on a collision course for each other, as each chewed through the competition in their respective leagues. However, that SI cover in 2014, called the event and the champion, three years in advance:

Here is the story that ran with our Astros cover back in 2014 https://t.co/gf3OOpNFDC pic.twitter.com/f9aQtnmudM

— Ben Reiter (@BenReiter) October 22, 2017

But why? What did they seen three years ago which made them believe that a franchise that had never won anything, would emerge from multiple 100-loss seasons to win it all?

Writing in Sports Illustrated, Ben Reiter explains, “SI’s editor Chris Stone and I, along with baseball editor Emma Span, had consulted on the proper year to choose. We settled on 2017 because the Astros’ young nucleus would by then be reaching its prime, because it seemed to more or less hew to the front office’s own timeline—which, they promised, would eventually include a payroll hike—and because three years, in baseball, is actually not the blink of an eye.”

Indeed it’s not, especially for the fan base in Houston who had to sit back and watch multiple, established franchise players like Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Carlos Lee, and others, get traded away for some of the prospects who would eventually become the core of the Astros team.

However, as Wednesday night’s proved, it was worth the wait.