2022 World Series: How have Astros kept winning? Chas McCormick has a guess

HOUSTON — When the Astros drafted Chas McCormick in 2017, on their way to an infamous 101-win season, he expected their winning window to soon close. 

"I thought maybe it'd be a rebuild by the time I got to the big leagues," he said. 

He was wrong. McCormick has now played two major-league seasons and reached the World Series in each of them. Since they drafted him, the Astros have lost two World Series and confronted a scandal McCormick could not have imagined as a 22-year-old senior sign from Millersville University of Pennsylvania, a Division II school. But they have not rebuilt their roster. And McCormick, Houston's center fielder, now hits in the same lineup as José Altuve and Alex Bregman. 

McCormick was not alone in misjudging his employer's staying power. Across the organization, Astros prospects imagined that the cast would turn over by the time they arrived. 

"I think we all felt that way coming up," said former Astros prospect Garrett Stubbs, now the Phillies' backup catcher. "Because I don't know how you hold on to the powerhouse that they've had for as long as they have. But the formula is working over there. And here they are again in the World Series." 

The Astros begin one more run at a championship Friday at Minute Maid Park. McCormick will be facing his hometown Phillies, the team that sparked his love for baseball. He can name every member of the last Phillies championship squad. His favorite player on that 2008 team was Jimmy Rollins. His first jersey bore Ryan Howard's name.

He was 13 then. He had not even imagined playing college baseball. When he began to play college baseball, the majors were still a distant dream. McCormick might be the participant in this World Series who was least likely to get here.

"I was thinking about that the other day: Five and a half years ago, what obscure location in the country was he playing Division II baseball?" said teammate Trey Mancini. "And now he's here. But Chas, he has the perfect personality and temperament for this. I don't think any moment's too big. He just goes out there and plays baseball, whether he was playing a midweek Division II game or he's playing in the World Series."

That McCormick rose fast enough to play alongside Altuve indicates his aptitude for this sport. Even more, it illustrates how the Astros have kept this machine humming since 2015. Most of the 2017 Astros are playing for different teams or playing for no one at all. Carlos Correa and George Springer are gone. There are only five holdovers: Altuve, Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Justin Verlander and Lance McCullers Jr. They are surrounded by a host of contributors developed in-house, and a select few outside additions.

"This team was so good when I was in the minor leagues, and I was like, ‘Oh, God, am I ever (going to) get to play with these guys? It just felt so far away," McCormick said. "I just thought from '17 through my three, four years in the minors, they'd be really good for that time. Five, six years, that's a long time for an organization to be really good.

"It talks about how good this organization is, and how our young guys have developed — especially our pitchers," McCormick said. "You lose big-time hitters like Correa and Springer, but you have (Kyle) Tucker and (Yordan) Álvarez that are big-time hitters.

The 2017 Astros are remembered for their rings and the illicit methods they utilized on their path to acquire them. Concurrently, though, the franchise ran a best-in-class development organization across their affiliates. Their peers had not yet caught up to their technological edge or poached their lower-level coaches. They selected for work ethic and employed coaches and analysts who molded it.

"They've been able to find guys who are willing to put in work and get to the big leagues," Stubbs said.

McCormick is an ideal example. The oft-bullied youngest of four boys, he accepted $1,000 to sign as a 21st-round draft pick. He is so easygoing he sometimes spells his first name with a ‘Z' to make it easier for people to understand its pronunciation.

But he accepted instruction, quickly rose up the organizational ladder and made it to the Astros' alternate site during the 2020 season, where he met the likes of Springer for the first time. The next spring, he cracked the opening-day roster. 

Now, he is days away from playing a World Series game in his hometown. There's nothing he'd rather do, he said, than play the Phillies in the World Series. He is more excited for this World Series than the last one, more excited for these games than any he has ever played.

Philadelphia is home to him, and it is an inspiration to him.

"That blue-collar, gritty mentality — I have it all," McCormick said. "It's in my blood."

So much so that he speaks with concern about the betting markets favoring the Astros.

"When Philly is an underdog," McCormick said, "they have a lot of momentum."

The Astros are not underdogs. They may never be. But their player-development machine has repopulated their roster with more of them than you'd think.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the Dodgers for The Athletic, the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times, and his alma mater, USC, for ESPN Los Angeles. He is the author of "How to Beat a Broken Game." Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.