The Vibe and the Odds, Part 2
It sure feels like the sky is falling if you watch the Astros every day. But they're performance is good enough to get to October and see if they can get on a run there.
On Saturday, the Astros won 11-0 over the Rangers. It broke a 2-game losing streak. But more importantly, it moved the Astros to 5 games up on the Rangers kept them a 4.5 games up on the Royals, who moved into the 7th spot in the AL yesterday. With 19 games left to play, the Astros are all but guaranteed to go to the playoffs. The win also kept the Astros 3.5 games up on the Mariners. Again, they are in a strong position to win the AL West.
In short, the odds are good for the 2025 Astros.
And yet, yesterday’s win seemed like an anomaly to many Astros fans, a surprising win in a sea of losses for a team besieged by injuries and poor offensive play.
The standings tells us that the Astros are a playoff team and one that will have a chance in October. Our feelings tell us this is the worst season in a decade and that the might be better off just packing it in and moving on to 2026.
In short, the vibes are bad for the 2025 Astros.
I’ve discussed this contrast before, and it continues to dominate by thoughts on the 2025 theme. Astros fans are reacting as though the sky is falling for the local nine. Yet, the team remains atop the division and on the way to October, one again.
A .500 Team in a .500 Division
The Astros season reached its high-water mark on July 4, finishing off a sweep of the Dodgers to put the team 20 games over .500. It was followed up by the worst week of the season, dropping 5 of 6 at home to the Guardians and the Rangers going in to the All Star Break. It put the Astros at 56-40, up 5 games in the division.
Since then, the Astros have been a slightly below .500 team, going 22-25. This is obviously the center of the frustration for Astros fans. The team is not playing well. It seems to be sleepwalking through the second half of the season. The good news is that the team seems to be matching its losing streaks with a subsequent winning streak. And the bad news is that matching is needed.
Yet, it is not a big deal that the Astros are sleepwalking through the second half of the season from a standings perspective. The rest of the AL West is not putting any real pressure on the front running Astros. The Mariners have gone 23-23 since the All Star break. They are currently only a single game up on the Royals (?!?) for the final Wild Card spot in the playoffs. The Rangers are 1.5 games behind the Mariners after last night’s loss.
Heck, best team in the AL West since the All Star break has been the Yolo County A’s, who are 25-20 since then.
One may think the Astros are only winning because the rest of the division is terrible. And that’s fine to say. Because the goal is to win a division. The Astros are doing that. They can’t control how bad the Mariners are. Though we can enjoy it.
The Everyday and the Long Term
There is a definite tension between following a baseball team on an everyday basis and the long-term perspective needed to understand baseball and how it works. Watching every day can create myopic focus on this game and this moment. Every loss seems magnified because you’re literally watching it as it happens.
Baseball has the longest season of any major sport and is played just about every day. We know that even the best teams will lose 50 to 60 games and even the worst teams will win 50 to 60 games. But of course, we don’t know which of those games are destined to be the guaranteed wins and which are guaranteed to be the guaranteed losses.
Regular season baseball lacks urgency, unless we provide it. It is necessary to do so—the Astros won the 2023 AL West by one game. Which of their 90 wins was decisive? At some level, all of them were. But by providing urgency, we get too into each game.
Do that today for the Texans. They only get 17 of them.
The Season Will Be Determined by October
One obvious source of frustration for Astros fans is that this team isn’t as great as it used to be. From 2017 through 2022, the Astros played at a 101 win pace. They won 100 games on 4 occasions, and their one terrible season was quickly forgotten because they went on a playoff run to the ALCS after a shortened season in the middle of the year we are all trying to forget.
From 2023 to the present, the team is playing at an 88 win pace. In fact, they are one pace to win 88 games this season, just like they did in 2024. The Astros are no longer a super team, seemingly clinching the AL West in the middle of June and playing out the string.
Comparison is of course the thief of joy. The team is not what is was from 2017 to 2022, but then again, it is more remarkable they had that run. The franchise had only one 100-win season in its history before that.
The team is still in its golden age, headed to the playoffs, tormenting its rivals, and befuddling fans across baseball.
So that means the fate of the 2025 season will be determined in the same place where all recent Astros seasons are remembered—the playoffs. 2017 and 2022 are the team’s glory seasons . 2019 is the one that got away, and 2020 was the statement that this team is who we think they are. And 2024 was a massive disappointment. It’s all because of October.
The bad news is that the Astros are not playing at a high level so far this season, and especially in the second half. The bats have declined. And the bullpen has issues with both Josh Hader and Bennett Sousa—the team’s second and third best relievers—on the shelf and questionable for October. It got worse on Friday as Kaleb Ort—the team’s 6th best reliever—went on the IL for “elbow inflammation.” This team will not be a favorite in many series in the playoffs.
And yet, the playoffs are a set of short series of baseball. The World Series is usually won not by the best team, but by the team that gets hot in October, especially because its bullpen performs better than it did in the regular season over essentially 2 weeks of games.
Anybody can get hot for 2 weeks. That’s how the Rangers bullpen pulled them to a title in 2023. It’s how the Dodgers won last season. Sure, it helps to have superstars. But they won through their bullpen shouldering a huge amount of innings. And it’s how the Astros won in 2022. Their bullpen was excellent in the regular season (2.80 ERA) but even better in the playoffs (0.83 ERA). And that was particularly helpful as the Astros went 5-1 in one-run games that postseason.
Can the Astros do that in 2025? It’s not likely, but that’s because it’s not likely for any team. But somebody will. To do that, you have to have a chance. And the Astros are giving themselves a chance to do that.
The odds show that is possible. And the October vibes are the ones that interest me.