Up until about three weeks ago, it was the Texas Rangers' year.
A combination of prodigious free-agent spending and prospect development had given them baseball's best lineup, coupled with a rotation recently topped out by three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer. They were up 3.5 games in competitive AL West, with the best run differential in the AL and on pace for their best regular-season record ... ever.
Those days fully faded into memory Wednesday, when the Houston Astros completed an unholy shellacking of their in-state rivals destined for the record books.