If Every Day is a New Adventure, Why Does the Astros Season Feel Like Groundhog Day?

The Astros have seemingly found new ways to lose throughout the first 20 games of the season. Yet, each day feels the same. It's supposed to turnaround, but when?

Every day is a new adventure, and that’s one way to understand the Astros season so far. They seem to find a new and different way to lose each day.

And yet, every day is Groundhog Day. No matter what happens throughout each game, the Astros will come out on the bottom at the end. And then we wake up the next day, and have to go broadcast festivities in Punxsutawney, and repeat that for years on end until Andie McDowell falls in love with you.

The Braves series certainly fits in this category. In Game 1, the bats struggled but the Astros got a good performance from their middle relievers to keep the game close until the ninth inning, when Josh Hader gave up 4 runs and ended any chance of a comeback.

Game 2 featured an turnaround start from Hunter Brown, as he collected his first quality start of the season, giving up only 2 runs in 6 plus innings. The bats struggled, but hope existed for a late comeback until the back of the bullpen—Shawn Dubin and Forrest Whitley—gave up 4 runs and ended any chance of a comeback.

In Game 3, the starting pitching again held first against the Braves strong offense and the Astros handed a late lead to their three-headed bullpen monster, who blew the save when Ryan Pressley gave up a long double to Austin Riley and an error by Jose Abreu allowed a key run to score. The Braves scored their zombie runner in the 10th while Jeremy Pena hit into a game-ending double play.

Three games—three different ways to lose, seemingly.

Of course, this sweep was quite different from the sweep in Kansas City last week, in which the Astros starting pitching was torched and the team fell behind big. And that was different from the sweep by the Yankees, in which the starting pitching got leads to the bullpen , who blew all four games.

It feels like the Astros are finding a new way to lose every day.

And yet, there is a very consistent theme to the Astros season—they get beat like a drum late in the game. As Brian LaLima pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the Astros have been outscored 29-4 in the 8th and 9th innings of the 20 games this season.

It is, as LaLima writes, unbelievable. It would be for just about any baseball team, but especially so for the Astros who strengthened their already strong late-inning core by signing Hader in the offseason to go with Bryan Abreu and Pressly.

Collectively, the Astros three high leverage relievers have combined to allow 21 earned runs in 23 innings on the hill. That’s a 8.22 ERA. They have allowed 30 hits and 5 homers in those 23 innings. The good news is that they have struck out 33 batters. Which is good evidence that Hader, Abreu, and Pressly all still are effective on the mound.

One of my pet peeves is when people assume small-sample trends in baseball will continue indefinitely. Overall, the Astros have been terrible so far this season and the high-leverage relievers have been a big reason for that terrible play. But the relievers, and the rest of the team will find their level over the course of a long season. That will be the case if for no other reason that it’s really hard to be this bad for so long.

As Tony Adams points out in the tweet below, the Astros went 7-13 in their worst stretch of play in 2023. They then went 13-7 over their next 20 games.

tony tweet

There is no guarantee that the Astros will go 13-7 over their next 20, or even the 14-6 they need to get back to .500. But it’s a reminder that bad stretches of play happen, even to teams that make deep playoff runs. We just hope this terrible opening to the season is just a distant memory when we get to the end of the season.

After all, every day is a new adventure. Today, the Astros can’t lose—they don’t play. And maybe they’ll win tomorrow when the start a new series in Washington against the Nationals.

But I’m quite worried that when I wake up tomorrow, the alarm will be playing “I Got You Babe.”