ANAHEIM, Calif. — The standard is straightforward in Houston, where Jim Crane once claimed the championship window “will never close” for however long he owns the Astros. Maintaining it means at least making the postseason, where so many of this franchise’s most famous faces find ways to flourish.
Playing baseball in October became a birthright for this ballclub, one buoyed by an air of inevitability across its eight-season reign atop the American League. The Seattle Mariners penetrated it on Wednesday by winning a division Houston had claimed during each of the past seven 162-game seasons.
C.J. Kayfus’ bases-loaded hit by pitch broke it on Saturday night, finishing a frustrating season that failed to meet this franchise’s most basic objective. For the first time since 2016, postseason baseball will be played without the Houston Astros, ending the fourth-longest streak of playoff appearances in Major League Baseball history.
“Finding a way to accept that we didn’t make it to the postseason this year is something new for this culture, and it makes me proud to be a part of it, that we are so upset,” first baseman Christian Walker said. “I think a lot of teams don’t truly expect to make it. I think it makes me happy and proud and excited to be a part of a group of people that are truly disappointed we didn’t make the postseason.”
Whether this is the narrowing of a championship window or an anomalous season sabotaged by injury and self-inflicted wounds will hover over the franchise across this abnormally long offseason. Last winter presented a competitive crossroads. Another is looming, and it may be more treacherous to navigate.
Since winning 106 regular-season games en route to the 2022 World Series, Houston’s win total has dropped during each of the past three seasons. During the last two, Crane exceeded the luxury tax while carrying the two highest payrolls in club history. Zero postseason wins can’t be the reward he anticipated.
How Crane will react to this foreign circumstance is a mystery. He has not addressed reporters since conducting a news conference on Opening Day. Crane can be prone to drastic decisions — he did once dismiss a general manager days after winning a World Series — but that was born out of stylistic and personality differences with James Click.
Last winter, Click’s successor, Dana Brown, made one of the boldest decisions in the past decade, trading superstar outfielder Kyle Tucker to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for three players. Crane didn’t budge on his six-year offer to franchise cornerstone Alex Bregman, either. Bregman signed with the Boston Red Sox, which will play in the postseason next week. So will Tucker’s Cubs.
Myriad explanations exist for why their former club won’t join them. Some are self-inflicted, such as a lineup that appeared loaded on paper but struggled to score. Just eight offenses produced fewer runs than the 686 Houston scored in its first 161 games. Only three teams swung more, and only one chased outside the strike zone more frequently — two faults Brown addressed with the team’s hitting coaches last season and did not see improvement.
Other factors are part of a season that, at times, felt snakebitten. Twenty-eight players spent time on the injured list, some of whom fell victim to the Astros’ much-maligned “return to play procedure.”
At one point in late July, the injured list group grew to 18. Eight of them were starting pitchers. Two members of Houston’s season-opening rotation underwent Tommy John surgery. Another, Spencer Arrighetti, threw just 35 ⅓ innings.
Using their respective calculations for wins above replacement, both FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus compile leaderboards of teams that lose the most value to injuries.
The Astros (86-75) topped both lists. Baseball Prospectus estimated that Houston lost 12 wins due to the attrition. A FanGraphs study calculated on Sept. 16 found Houston lost 17.6 potential fWAR due to injuries. One evening earlier, three-time All-Star Yordan Alvarez crumpled to the ground after spraining his ankle while crossing home plate.
“We have gone through a lot,” said Espada, who witnessed Isaac Paredes play the final nine games of this season still compromised by a strained right hamstring. “We got guys that have no business being on the field right now, banged-up, injury-wise, but they’re playing through pain and through injuries just because they want it for our city.”
Credit is deserved for overcoming such attrition for so long. A collection of castoffs and journeymen afforded a jolt during a 19-7 June. They spearheaded a sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Fourth of July weekend, after which the Astros rose to 20 games above .500. FanGraphs gave the team 98.3 percent odds to make the postseason. Houston lost 40 of its next 71 games, giving away a seven-game division lead.
“A lot of things went wrong,” said Jose Altuve, who had a “pretty painful” right foot injury for the final two weeks of the season. “Injuries, this and that, but it is what it is.”
Altuve, who turned 35 in May, will finish with his lowest OPS since his age-23 season, one in which Houston lost 111 games. Walker, the touted free-agent addition who will turn 35 in March, led the team in home runs and RBIs, but is bracing for his first sub-.800 OPS season since 2021. They are the only two Astros who have taken at least 600 plate appearances.
Walker and Altuve are two of eight players on Houston’s season-opening payroll that made at least $10 million. According to Baseball Reference, those eight combined to compile 6.6 wins above replacement. Left-hander Framber Valdez is responsible for 3.9 of it. His 6.05 ERA in the season’s final two months helped precipitate Houston’s freefall.
Two of those eight players, slugger Yordan Alvarez and closer Josh Hader, ended the season on the injured list. Another, Lance McCullers Jr., spent 91 games there before being activated for Saturday’s penultimate game. He will start Sunday’s regular-season finale.
Alvarez appeared in just 48 games after fracturing his right hand in May and spraining that ankle. Hader, a six-time All-Star, strained his shoulder capsule while warming up on Aug. 9 and never pitched again. Both absences became immeasurable losses from which the Astros never recovered.
Houston’s bullpen had a 4.83 ERA in the subsequent 46 games. Only six teams had a higher one. Significant injuries to setup men Bennett Sousa and Kaleb Ort didn’t help matters. Nor did Brown’s decision to prioritize offense over pitching during a trade deadline that accentuated everything ailing the Astros.
Brown made three acquisitions: Jesús Sánchez, Ramón Urías and Carlos Correa. During the subsequent 51 games, Houston’s lineup slugged .377 with a .301 on-base percentage. Just four offenses had a lower OPS in that same stretch.
The Astros scored three or fewer runs in 26 of 52 games after the trade deadline. Blaming the deadline itself is misguided, but the players acquired are a symptom of a bigger problem.
Sánchez is a left-handed-hitting outfielder. Urías is a utility infielder who spent most of his time as an Astro at second base. The organization’s top two prospects are a left-handed hitting outfielder, Jacob Melton, and a second baseman, Brice Matthews. Both have taken more than 300 plate appearances in Triple A and made unimpressive big-league debuts this season.
That Brown acquired their facsimiles afterward highlights what multiple people, both inside and outside the organization, maintained throughout the season: no position player prospects within Houston’s barren farm system are ready for prominent roles on the major-league team, which forces the front office to spend in free agency to address deficiencies.
“It’s part of baseball,” Correa said of the team’s injuries. “That’s where the depth of an organization comes into play.”
Whether Houston’s is good enough to compensate for an aging core and a still-bloated payroll is a pertinent question. Solace can be taken in All-Star shortstop Jeremy Peña’s breakout and Hunter Brown blossoming into a Cy Young contender, but surrounding them with more support is imperative.
A long winter looms to choose the most straightforward way. When it began, Correa issued an apology to Astros fans “for falling short” of something an entire city has been conditioned to crave.
“They’re used to watching playoff baseball and they look forward to that every single year,” Correa said. “We were not able to accomplish that this year, but we promise our fans in Houston this offseason is going to be one of a lot of hard work. We’re all going to get better. Next year will be one to remember.”
(Photo of Jose Altuve: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)