The Year of the Turnaround

The disastrous start required the Astros to turnaround their season and made it a different experience watching them in 2024. They've been the best team in baseball since then.

For the 4th straight season, and for the 7th straight full season, the Astros won the American League West. It’s the 8th straight season in which the Astros have made the postseason, which is the 4th most in Major League Baseball history.

This is of course a story of the Astros long standing dominance; the abilities of long-time stars Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman; the scouting staff that found diamonds in the rough like Framber Valdez and Yordan Alvarez; the player development machine that extended the window by crafting Kyle Tucker and Yainer Diaz into lineup cogs; and the continued ability of the farm system to develop mid-round picks like Hunter Brown and Spencer Arrighetti into rotation staples.

But the story of the 2024 Astros is the story of the team’s remarkable turnaround. The team started out the season disastrously, going 7-19 in its first 26 games.

At that moment, the Astros were already 6.5 games back in the division. In fact, if you look at the AL standings on April 26, you can see the season already shaping up. The top 5 teams in the AL standings on that date are 5 teams currently in playoff position. The standings today look a lot like the standings on April 26.

With one exception.

Since that date, the Astros have won 79 games and lost 53. That’s a .598 winning percentage, which is a 97 win pace. It’s the best record in the major league since then.

In writing about the disastrous start, I said “It’s possible for them to make up the ground they have lost already, but to do that, they will need to play as well as they did in some of the best seasons in franchise history.”

They did. Only 5 teams in Astros history have won more than 97 games.

A Different Path to the AL West Title

Over the golden era, the team’s pattern has been to to take a big lead early in the division race and coast to the title. The image below shows AL West division race charts posted on the website of Astros fan Greg Stoll.

One of these is not like the other.

In 2017, the Astros got off to a hot start and had essentially clinched the division by the middle of May. In 2019, the As’s played as well as the Astros in the 2nd half of he season, but could not overcome an early lead by the Astros. Even in 2021, when the Astros won 95 games and the division by only 5 games, they essentially put the Mariners away early in the season and led the division every day of the second half of the season.

Not every AL West title made the chart—there’s too many. But the story is essentially the same. The Astros were the best team in the division; everyone knew it; and it was clear in the first half of the season.

The 2024 season is thus distinct. The Astros had the disastrous start to the season and were in last place in the division through early May. A win streak put them into 3rd place, but then they stalled, playing .500 ball from mid-May through Mid-June while the Mariners played their best ball of the season, pulling out to a 10 game division lead on June 18.

Fangraphs gave the Astros 10.8% odds to win the division. And for obvious reasons, it’s hard to overcome a 10 game deficit.

Unless you play very good baseball. The Astros proceeded to win 42 of their next 62 games. The Mariners won only 25 in the time frame. The division race was over.

It was a different experience to be an Astros fan for the first five month of the 2024 season—the team dug itself a huge hole in the division race. The hole was so big that it raised legitimate worry that it could not come back from deficit.

Unless you are one of the best teams in baseball. Which it turns out they were. And thus, September felt like every other September—the team itself focused on playoff preparation.

It wasn’t business as usual. And then it was.

Couldn’t Have Done It Without You

When someone has a big accomplishment, it is standard to realize one did not do it by themselves, but needed help from others to achieve their goals.

So it is in that sprit of gratitude and humility that I would like acknowledge the contributions of the 4 other AL West teams to the Astros 2024 division title.

Assuming the Astros split their final 4 games of the season, they’ll finish the season with 88 wins. It’s their lowest win total since 2016, which, not surprisingly, is the last time they did not win the division.

The Astros disastrous start left the division for the taking by another AL West squad. And it’s notable that they did not take advantage of it.

The Angels and A’s suffer from having especially terrible owners, more focused on meddling in baseball operations and destroying their team’s awesomely cool legacy in their home city to produce a winner.

The Rangers were beset by injuries to their veterans, a lack of development from their young players, and underperformance across the team. This season was a reminder that Bruce Bochy has a losing record overall as a manager.

The Mariners should have won the division. But their team’s inability to get almost any production from their hitters and their ownership’s insistence on trying to win the division on a budget crippled that franchise. Once again.

Wild Card Round as Punishment

As noted, the Astros have the best record in baseball since their early season disaster. But the MLB standings count the whole season, so that 7-19 start still counts.

The biggest effect it has in the end is that it made it essentially impossible for the Astros to earn one of the top two seeds in the American League playoffs, which will go to the Yankees (almost assuredly) and the Guardians.

As a result, the Astros will have to play in the best-of-3 Wild Card round, against either the Royals or Tigers most likely. As a will remind you constantly over the next several weeks, the postseason is a crapshoot. Some team will get hot over a 2 week period and that team will win the World Series. It can absolutely be the Astros.

But like every other team, they can have a bad game or two and suddenly be out of the playoffs. One bad series and the season is over.

The Astros don’t usually have bad series in the early rounds of the playoffs. But the do have to go through an extra roll of the dice in the postseason crapshoot. It reduces the Astros chances of getting the dice to come up their way in the end.

As such, that’s the punishment the Astros have received for their disastrous start to the season. Win the Wild Card Series and it won’t have much effect moving forward. Until then, it has an effect.

But the important thing is that the Astros are alive and playing in October once again. They have a chance, and after April, that’s all you can ask for.