It Looks Like Rumors of the Astros’ Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated
But it still took a historic turnaround to save their season.
Back in late April, I had a burning question on the brain: Are the Houston Astros in big trouble?
At the time, it sure seemed like they were. Houston had numerous injury problems, particularly on the pitching side, which led them to start the year with one of MLB’s worst staffs by Wins Above Replacement. Their defense was uncharacteristically porous, many of their top stars were playing below their capabilities, and they just didn’t look like the same team that had either won the AL — or came within a single game of it — six times over the previous seven seasons.
Around the time of that post, the Astros would fall to a 7-19 record, fully 12 games below .500. During its aforementioned domination of the AL from 2017-23, Houston was never worse than 3 games below .500 at any point during the regular season — and that was for only 5 total games out of a possible 1,032 (or 0.48% of the time). This year’s team went into Wednesday spending 70 out of a possible 92 games (76.9%) with a record worse than 3 games below .500, and 80 of 92 below .500 overall.
This was quite uncharacteristic, to say the least.
After a brief period of winning, Houston found itself 12 games below water again on May 8, at 12-24. At this point, FanGraphs’ “coin flip” odds (which treat every game as a 50-50 proposition — a good way to look at the severity of a team’s situation in the standings, irrespective of talent priors) gave the Astros just an 8% chance to make the playoffs and a 4% chance to win the AL West. There was even a narrative quality to Houston’s arc: A quasi-dynasty1 that had been less dominant than usual last season, with a roster on the older side, was finally falling apart completely, much to the thrill of its many haters.
But a funny thing happened while we were all burying the Astros: They started winning again.
Going 13-9 the rest of May, they gained some ground relative to their nadir. Then, in June, they had the best record in baseball (17-8), and they entered Wednesday 2 games over .500 so far in July as well. If we’re counting things up, that means the Astros went an MLB-high 35-20 — or 15 games over .500 — after going 12-24 through May 8, erasing their entire deficit relative to a break-even mark.
On Wednesday, my composite forecast model gave Houston a 48% chance to win the AL West over the flagging Seattle Mariners, who were 8-12 in their previous 20 games going into Wednesday’s action, and a 60% chance to make the playoffs overall.
If they pull off either feat, the Astros will find themselves among historic company. Only six teams have ever won a division title after being as many as 12 games below .500 at any point earlier in the season, and only 10 teams have ever made the playoffs at all under those circumstances:
Even if they aren’t as talented as they were just a few seasons ago, when they were perennial World Series fixtures, the Astros were always probably too good to look as bad as they did earlier this year. You still have to live with early-season losses, though, and Houston was certainly banking a lot of them away. But the MLB season is long, with many ups and downs, and sometimes a team that digs a hole in April still has enough time to climb out of it.
That’s why the 2024 Astros currently look like a lesson in prematurely burying a team that had won a lot in the past — and still had the big names to scare the rest of the league going forward.
Filed under: Baseball
Your mileage will almost certainly vary on this one. We need a word to describe a team that dominates its conference/league and wins the title sometimes — but not all of the time — that doesn’t quite rise to “dynasty” status.
Four quick points. They appear eerily similar to the Champion 2019 Nationals - who were 19-31 at the 50 game mark. Second, the exit of GM James Click after the 2022 season (and the subsequent baseball media pearl clutching) appears in retrospect to have been highly overrated in terms of impact...particularly, when you consider the downward trend of Toronto since his arrival. Next, a part of their turnaround is related to dropping Abreu and not wasting more time when it clearly wasn't working. Those sorts of quick decisive moves in recognizing mistakes and minimizing them are the hallmark of a winning organization. Finally, I view the Astros recent history as a distinct "era." Not just from the cheating scandal, but more their revolutionary analytical and organizational approach to the game.