Are the Astros in Big Trouble?
Things don't look great in Houston — but they can't be THIS bad, right?
The Houston Astros of recent vintage have been so consistently good that it became easy to take them for granted. From 2017 to 2023, Houston either made the World Series or came within a Game 7 of it six times in seven seasons, winning a pair of titles and four American League pennants. Along the way, the team had a high-profile cheating scandal, but then achieved a measure of vindication by continuing to win after taking their punishment.
One thing that we’ve seldom seen, however, is the Astros struggling like they are to start off the 2024 season. After being shut out Sunday to punctuate a series loss over the weekend to the Washington Nationals — a shadow-of-their-old-selves version of the team Houston faced in the 2019 World Series — the Astros’ record is now 7-16, their worst start through 23 games since 2016.
A lot can happen in any 23-game segment of the MLB season, including good teams posing as bad ones. But a team’s performance in April does matter more than you might think, especially at the extremes. (This is for the same reason my old colleague Ben Morris found that Week 1 of the NFL season has a surprising amount of leverage on the rest of the season — in addition to the wins and losses counting against your record, they also provide the only information we have about a team that year.)
Based on research I did last season, we would expect a team like Houston — with a .304 early winning percentage despite a 92-win preseason consensus projection — to finish about 81-81 by season’s end. My more advanced composite of different forecasts pegs them slightly higher than that, because it knows about their talent and longstanding track record, but not by much. The take-home point is that this season could mark a real turning point in Houston’s recent mini-dynasty (or whatever we’re calling it).
That point is underscored by the fact that this is also the franchise’s worst Elo rating through 23 games since 2016, roughly 20 points worse than it’s been at this stage of any of the past six seasons in Houston.
In fact, the Astros’ dip leaves them in uncharted territory of sorts. Going back to 1995 and MLB’s post-strike era, we’ve never before seen a team with an Elo this low through 23 games after finishing at or above a 1550 Elo in each of the previous three seasons. (The previous low belonged to the 2005 Yankees, who started 9-14 coming off an ALCS appearance in 2004 and a World Series berth in 2003.)
Maybe the signs of decline were already starting to show last season. Houston’s pitching wasn’t as strong as in 2022 (their rotation Wins Above Replacement fell from No. 1 in MLB to No. 14) and their run differential dipped from +219 to +129. While they still finished first in the AL West, the Astros went from winning it by 16 games to requiring a victory on the final day of the regular season to take the division via tiebreaker.
The Astros’ eventual run to the ALCS — where they led the rival Texas Rangers 3-2 before losing consecutive games to end their season — may have masked deeper problems with the club. Now without the great Dusty Baker in the dugout (he retired after last season) and a roster plagued with injured arms, Houston currently ranks 19th in WAR from starters and 28th from its pitching staff overall.
Add in an uncharacteristically poor No. 21 ranking on defense (Houston ranked 4th as recently as 2022), and the Astros are tracking for their worst total WAR ranking (17th) since 2014 — when they ranked 28th, and their dramatic team turnaround was a mere twinkle in Ben Reiter’s eye.
One encouraging sign for the Astros is that many of the other teams on the list above tended to pick things up by season’s end. (Those 2005 Yankees? They still ended up winning 95 games and making the playoffs.) And even with Jose Abreu and Hunter Brown struggling as badly as anyone in the league, Houston still has Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Pena, Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman and a bunch of other talented names. (For a while there, it looked like pitcher Ronel Blanco would never allow a hit.)
But if Houston is going to salvage the potential of this season, all of those positives need to start translating to results in the standings — and soon.
Filed under: Baseball
The fact that they never really needed the trash cans is part of why it bothers me so much! They were great without the whole scheme, so why risk it??
I don't subscribe to sports team hatred, it's just not how I'm wired. But, if there's one team that I hope never wins anything ever again, it would be the Houston Astros.