The Houston Astros will miss the ALCS for the first time since 2016

The Houston Astros will not play in the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2016 after being eliminated by the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday.

The Astros lost in two games to the Tigers in their best-of-three wild card round matchup.

The Tigers' win is a stunning turnaround for a franchise that was 55-63 as of Aug. 10 following a loss to the San Francisco Giants. The Tigers then finished the season 31-13, securing the final Wild Card spot in the AL. With the Kansas City Royals' victory over the Baltimore Orioles, the two lowest-seeded players in the AL have now moved on to the next round.

The Tigers and Royals' wins continue a trend of lower-seeded teams advancing when the playoffs expanded to 12 teams three seasons ago. No team was an NLCS division winner last season.

Houston won just 88 games in the regular season en route to the AL West title. Excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020, this is the fewest number of wins the Astros have had since missing the postseason entirely in 2016.

From 2017 to 2023, Houston not only competed in the ALCS every year, but also reached the World Series four times, winning twice and losing twice.

The only other team to make the World Series multiple times during that period is the Los Angeles Dodgers, who made it three times and won once in 2020.

The Astros' run of Championship League Series appearances came under the specter of one of Major League Baseball's most infamous scandals.

In 2019, an investigation by The Athletic revealed that Houston coaches had players devise a complicated sign-stealing system to help hitters. Using cameras in center field, players or coaches watching the live broadcast could then use audio cues, such as banging on a trash can, to let the batters at the plate know which pitch was coming.

The Astros were found to have been using the sign-stealing system from 2016 through the 2018 season – which included their 2017 World Series victory.