The Big Long Winning Stretch
The Astros have the best record in the majors over the last 2 months. The pitching has remained excellent, but an offensive outburst explains how the team has improved over a .500 start to the season.
The May 6 loss to the Brewers didn’t seem that out of the ordinary at the time. The Astro lost 4-3 as Hayden Wesneski’s rough first inning accounted for all of the Brewers runs. It was the Astros 3rd straight loss, but that just seemed to fit into the early season pattern of balancing out the Astros record. They have been at or near .500 the entire first six weeks of the season.
But that May 6 game was a watershed. It was the last time the Astros were below .500 since then. They won the finale of their series with the Brewers 9-1 and then the next game at home against the Reds. They won their series against the Reds and the next one against the Royals, putting themselves permanently over .500.
They’ve kept winning. And winning. And winning. And, in Los Angeles over the last 2 games, winning.
Yesterday’s win on July 6 wraps up two months of dominance by the Astros. Since that May 6 loss to the Brewers, the Astros are 37-17. That’s the best record in the majors since then.
It’s also 54 games, which is exactly one-third of the season. This is not a quick hot streak or a good month or just getting lucky that the schedule includes some weak opponents. It’s a winning stretch that has changed the Astros fortunes for the entire season to the better.
After the May 6 loss, the Astros were 4 games back in the AL West. Heck, they were not only behind the division leading Mariners, they were in 4th place, behind the Athletics and Rangers as well.
Since then. Well, the table below shows you what has happened. The Astros have gained 8 games on the rest of the division, and 11 games on the Mariners and Rangers.
Thanks to this big long winning stretch, the Astros now lead the AL West by 7 games. They are overwhelming favorites to win another AL West crown this season.
Dual Aces Leading the Way
How are the Astros succeeding? The answer in 2025 is the pitching. Since May 7, the Astros have an ERA of 3.56, which is the fourth best of any team in the majors. It’s hard to win if you don’t score any runs, and that the issue opposing hitters are having.
Astros pitchers are striking out 27.2% of opposing hitters since May 7. That’s 1.5% higher than any other pitching staff and 3.0% better than 28 other pitching staffs. While striking out batters, Astros pitchers have cut down on their walks. They are walking 7.9% of opposing batters since May 6, which is 10th best in baseball. Astros pitchers are usually in the mid-pack in walk rate.
Put them together, and the Astros have the highest strikeout to walk ratio in the majors since May 7. More strikeouts and fewer walks is an excellent combination and Astros pitchers have done that since May 7.
Leading the way for the Astros pitching has been the two aces at the top of their rotation. Since May 7, Hunter Brown has started 10 games, thrown 61 innings, struck out 77 batters while allowing opposing hitters only a .174 batting average. Framber Valdez has started 11 games since May 7, throwing 74 innings. He’s struck out 78 batters, walked only 26, and allowed opponents only a .201 batting average.
Put it together, and Valdez has an impressive 2.07 ERA. That’s 7th best among qualified pitchers since May 7. And that context is useful to see how good Brown has been. He has a 1.92 ERA over that time period, 5th best among MLB starters.
An Improved Offense
The thing about the excellent pitching is that while it is excellent, it is not the reason the Astros have been on the big, long winning stretch. Through that May 6 loss, the Astros were allowing 3.66 runs per game. Over the 54 games since then, they have allowed 3.63 runs per game. An improvement, but only the slightest of improvements.
It’s the offense that has been different. Over the first 35 games of the season, the Astros scored 3.89 runs per game. They barely were outscoring opponents who were being held down by one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. In the 54 games since, the Astros have scored 4.72 runs per game.
In short, the big improvement in the Astros record comes from a big improvement in the team’s offensive results. They are hitting the ball better.
Through May 6, the Astros were slashing .241/.311/.365 for an OPS of .676. They posted a wRC+ of 91, which means they were 9% worse the average major league team. Since May 7, the Astros are slashing .273/.335/.438 for an OPS of .773. They have posted a wRC+ of 118, which is 18% better than league average. It’s the second best wRC+ of any MLB team since May 7.
Which hitters are responsible for the excellent offense? One answer is pretty much all of them.
The chart below shows the wRC+ from before May 6 to after May 6 for the team’s 9 regular starters since then. One thing the chart shows is that the offensive improvement is across the board. 8 of these 9 hitters have improved since the first six weeks of the season, and in some cases impressively so.
Jeremy Pena has gone from a 110 wRC+ (quite good) to 171 (awesome). Jose Altuve has gone from a below average 87 to an above average 127. It’s a similar story for Cam Smith, who has improved from 91 to 146. Mauricio Dubon is the weakest hitter among the starters, but even he’s made a dramatic improvement from a worrying 48 wRC+ early in the season to a 108, just above league average.
Or perhaps the best way to look at the Astros offensive improvement since May 6 is to look at the one player whose wRC+ has declined after May 6. Jake Meyers went from a 121 wRC+ to a 120. He’s barely declined, and both numbers are a career high for Meyers, whose career wRC+ is 92.
The Astros offense has gone from woeful to whoa! As a result, the team’s record has gone from .500 to the top of the division and near the top of the AL.
The Big Long Winning Stretch Sets Up October…Once Again
The story is pretty simple. The pitching has remained the same—excellent. Before May 6, the pitching kept the Astros afloat, keeping them at .500 despite the slow offensive start. Since then, the pitching has continued to keep runs off of the board. But the offense has improved greatly and started putting up runs.
What happens when you score runs while keeping your opponent from doing the same. One answer is that you win a lot of games. Which is what the Astros have done since early May. As noted above, they have the best record in baseball over the past two months.
Another answer is that you make it so your team can play in October. The Astros big, long winning stretch has been met by below .500 play from the rest of the AL West. As noted, the Astros are now 7 games up on the rest of the division. And that is a big lead now that we are in the back half of the season.
How big? One sense of the lead is provided by the odds to win the AL West posted at Fangraphs. They currently say the Astros have an 84.9% chance of winning the division. To put that into context, the other teams in the division (mostly the Mariners) have the same chance of winning the division as they do of rolling a 1 on a single six-sided die.
Including the Wild Card, the Astros have a 97.9% chance of making the playoffs. They are almost a certainty to play in October. Heck, the Astros big, long winning stretch has vaulted them into the second-best record in the American League. That would bring with it a bye to the Division Series in the playoffs, a big advantage. The Astros currently have a 3 game lead on the AL East leading Blue Jays (!) for that bye. Fangraphs gives them a 64.5% chance of getting a bye.
It’s a long way off from the playoff seeding standings being meaningful. What is meaningful is that the Astros have been the best team in baseball for a big, long stretch—exactly two months. That has put them in great position—with a commanding lead in the AL West and a near certainty to play in October.
It’s been a big, long winning stretch for the Astros. And one that has been quite enjoyable for all of us to watch.