There was a familiar scene inside Minute Maid Park on Tuesday night as the Houston Astros won their seventh AL West title in the past eight seasons. Fittingly, the clinching game was against the Seattle Mariners whom the Astros were chasing for much of the season after Houston's abysmal start.

The Astros trailed the Mariners by 10 games on June 18. A month later they were tied for first place. After some back and forth, Houston took a lone position atop the division on Aug. 12 and hasn’t dropped since. Tuesday's win guaranteed a similar collapse won’t happen for the Astros.

Despite that large gap in the standings and a plethora of injuries throughout the season, the Astros never lost confidence. First-year manager Joe Espada kept reminding his team they were still in the race.

“‘We got this,'” he recalled telling the players, per The Associated Press. “‘We are a good team. We've just got to go on a hot streak and we'll turn this around.'”

“I never lost hope,” Espada said. “But when it comes to winning, you know how to win and you've got the right ingredients to win, you don't mess that up. You've got to protect it, and that's what we've done.”

Perhaps no team in baseball over the past decade has shown it knows how to win more than the Astros. 2024 marks their eighth straight trip to the MLB playoffs. Houston has reached the ALCS in seven consecutive seasons, winning four American League pennants and two World Series.

After completing a remarkable turnaround in the span of three months, the Astros have another chance to add to their trophy case.

Houston locked in as AL's third seed

Houston Astros relief pitcher Josh Hader (71) , catcher Yainer Diaz (21) third baseman Alex Bregman (2) and first baseman Victor Caratini (17) celebrate defeating the Seattle Mariners and winning the American League West at Minute Maid Park
Thomas Shea-Imagn Images
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With the division locked up and not enough games for the Astros to catch either the Cleveland Guardians or New York Yankees, Houston secured the No. 3 seed in the American League playoff picture.

That sets the Astros up for a Wild Card Series at home against the sixth seed which has yet to be determined. With five days left in the regular season, four teams are separated by 2 1/2 games for two American League Wild Card berths.

The Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals currently occupy those two slots with identical records, while the Minnesota Twins and Mariners are on the outside trying to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Regardless of who they play, the Astros will enter the postseason with confidence and experience many teams would dream of. They went through the wringer early in the season but have been among the best teams in baseball since June.

“We started off super slow and we had to grind for it all year long,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “And the guys just put their heads down, never stopped believing and kept faith and kept going.”

The grind doesn’t stop at a division crown. The Astros are more than capable of winning another title this year and they're sure to have a target on their back despite entering as the worst record of the three division winners in the American League.