Astros’ 2025: Why are they headed home?

Before this post addresses that question above, we will take a few moments to thank the Astros for a wonderful eight season run of playoff appearances and the two championships that the team brought to this city.

For a team and a city that suffered through a desert crossing of 19 seasons before their first playoff appearance, 44 seasons before their first World Series appearance and 56 seasons before their first championship, this has been a magical time for the fans and the team with those two championships, four WS appearances and seven consecutive ALCS appearances.

This was a period that the long-suffering fans had earned and was the highlight of most of our baseball loving lives.

But it is over and what we will explore over the next few weeks is not only how the Astros got where they are, but where they may go and possibly where they should go in the future. Does missing the playoffs mean that this dynasty is done? We shall see.

Now let’s look at some main reasons why the Astros are heading home for the off-season rather than heading to New York, Cleveland, Detroit or Boston for a Wild Card round game.

Injuries

This has to top the list of reasons the team ended up 87-75 on the season. One of my work buddies sent me a little graphic that showed how the Astros compared to the rest of the AL West in games lost to the IL.

• Astros – 1927 games
• A’s – 1377 games
• Angels – 1142 games
• Rangers – 1102 games
• Mariners – 907 games

It showed the Astros as second in the majors in games lost to IL, but did not mention who was first, but it was likely either the Dodgers or the Orioles.

When you look at that gap between the Astros and the Mariners, that is quite amazing and very telling.

There is also this article from fangraphs from a couple weeks ago, which surely was still true at the end of the season.

Which Teams Have Suffered the Most From Injuries? | FanGraphs Baseball

The Astros led the majors in potential WAR lost with 17.6. Considering the Astros at that time (in Fangraphs) had a team WAR of 40.1, that is a significant loss and much bigger than other competing teams such as the M’s (8.5).

The Astros did a great job for most of the season, filling in behind the wounded. But the injuries and re-injuries down the stretch may have gotten too much for them to overcome physically and psychologically.

Significant injuries affected the following areas of the team:

• Starting Pitchers – Hayden Wesneski, Spencer Arrighetti, Ronel Blanco, Lance McCullers Jr.. Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia, Brandon Walter, J.P. France
• Relief Pitchers – Josh Hader, Bennett Sousa, Kaleb Ort, Shawn Dubin
• Infielders – Isaac Paredes, Jeremy Pena
• Outfielders – Jake Meyers
• DH – Yordan Alvarez

Raise your hands if you thought the third through fifth-most games started for the team would be by Ryan Gusto (14), Colton Gordon (14) and Jason Alexander (13).

Returning from Injuries

Most of us would think that when players return from injuries, that would be a positive for the team, both psychologically and physically. That is true, if…..they play better than their replacements and if they stay healthy. Let’s look at the main players returning from injury and how they performed after rejoining the team.

Lance McCullers Jr. – 16 games / 13 starts – 2-5, 6.51 ERA, 3.9 innings per start. And two more stints on the IL

Luis Garcia – 2 games / 2 starts – 1-0, 3.52 ERA, 3.8 innings per start. And then went on the IL and will undergo elbow surgery that will knock out the 2026 season and possibly his career.

Cristian Javier – 8 games / 8 starts – 2-4, 4.62 ERA and only about 4.6 innings per start.

Yordan Alvarez – 19 games – .369 BA/ .462 OBP/ 1.031 OPS/ 10 runs/ 3 HRs/ 9 RBIs and the team was 10-9 in those games. He then suffered another injury in mid-September and that was all she wrote.  By the way he was hitting .210 BA/ .306 OBP/ .646 OPS when he was injured the first time.  

Jake Meyers – After returning in September – 15 games / .204 BA/ .271 OBP/ .475 OPS/ 6 runs/ 0 HRs/ 3 RBIs – he was hitting .308 BA/ .369 OBP/ .774 OPS when he was injured.

Jeremy Pena – Returned in the beginning of August – 43 games – .273 BA/ .337 OBP/ .791 OPS – he was hitting .322 BA/ .378 OBP/ .867 OPS when he was injured.

Isaac Paredes – Returned at the end of the season – 8 games – .185 BA/ .241 OBP/ .538 OPS – he was hitting .259 BA/. 359 OBP/ .830 OPS when he was injured.

If we don’t count Luis Garcia, who barely pitched upon returning, the only positive performer upon returning was Yordan, who was tearing it up – but only for 19 games. Pena was good, but not outstanding as he was before his injury. Meyers – bad. Javier – below average. McCullers – very bad.

One must wonder, what would have happened to the team if, say A.J. Blubaugh (1.69 ERA in 11 appearances) had made those 13 starts that McCullers mucked up.

They had to try and incorporate the injured back into the team, but the three pitchers were dumped right back into the rotation and it did not work out well.

Hitting or Lack Thereof

In this strange season of 2025, even though the pitching suffered so many more injuries and lost much more time than the position players did, it was the hitting that took the brunt of the scrutiny and criticism for their losses.

In general, their hitting was very middle of the road –  4.23 runs/gm (8^th in the AL), .250 (6^th), .315 OBP (7^th) and .719 OPS (7^th).

Was it their hitting in more clutch situations? Let’s compare them to the Mariners who scored exactly half a run more per game.

Runners in scoring position – Astros     .245 BA/ .316 OBP/ .720 OPS

                                                          Mariners .235 BA/ .320 OBP/ .736 OPS

2 outs runners in scoring position – Astros       .241 BA/ .318 OBP/ .753 OPS

                                                                    Mariners .230 BA/ .322 OBP/ .710 OPS

The Mariners are just a little better for RISP, the Astros better at 2 outs w/ RISP.

The Mariners were obviously the much better power team as they had 238 HRs vs. 182 HRs for the Astros.

I decided to do a little science experiment here looking at the Astros this year as far as how many times they scored different amounts of runs in a game and their record in those games. For grins I did the same for the Astros two championship seasons, 2022 and 2017.

Runs scored	2025 No. of Games Record	2022 No. of Games Record	2017 No. of Games Record
0	12 0-12	12 0-12	6 0-6
1	23 2-21	12 1-11	11 1-10
2	21 11-10	20 8-12	14 5-9
3	26 9-17	27 17-10	23 11-12
4	17 9-8	22 15-7	15 6-9
5	13 11-2	21 19-2	18 14-4
6	16 12-4	11 9-2	17 12-5
7	9 9-0	9 9-0	18 15-3
8	7 7-0	8 8-0	11 10-1
9	6 5-1	7 7-0	3 3-0
10+	12 12-0	13 13-0	23 23-0

One thing that does not amaze me is the number of times this 2025 team scored 2 runs or less – 53 times or 33% of the time. The amazing point is that they went 11-10 in games where they only scored 2 runs. That is really very good and probably reflects the number of times Hunter Brown or even Framber Valdez (early in the year) gave them an excellent start, even if the bullpen ended up getting the win.

You do notice that in 2017 the team only had 31 games where they scored 2 runs or less and were only shut out 6 times vs. 12 in 2025.

And, in 2017 they had those 23 games of instant wins where they scored 10 or more runs vs. a little more than half that many in the other two seasons.

The other thing about 2025 was the underperformance of so many hitters, who fell below their 2024 seasons. That was led by the drop-offs by expected major players, Christian Walker (.238 BA/.297 OBP/ .717 OPS in 2025 vs. .251/.335/.803 in 2024), Yainer Diaz (.256/.284/.701 in 2025 vs. .295/ .325/ .766 in 2024) and Yordan Alvarez (17 runs/ 6 HRs/ 27 RBIs in 2025 vs. 88 runs/ 35 HRs/ 86 RBIs in 2024). Yordan’s fall-off was due to that months long sabbatical with his hand injury.

Recall that the Astros started the season down the 135 runs/49 HRs/134 RBIs that Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman produced in 2024.

Now the Astros did have some players who did well that maybe were not expected to produce like they did. Paredes was their co-best player with Pena until he went down. Meyers had his best season as an Astro. Victor Caratini was solid off the bench. Carlos Correa hit well after he joined at the trade deadline. But as we discussed above, Paredes, Pena and Meyers accomplishments were watered down by injury. Correa was here for only a partial season and Caratini had limited play as a backup C, DH and pinch hitter.

The bottom line is that the offense had a lot to do with the Astros failure to make the playoffs. In their last 11 losses where they gave up a 4 game lead in the division, they averaged 2.2 runs scoring per game. That was not good enough.

There are other areas that contributed to their failure to make the playoffs that can be explored at another time:

• Fielding problems led by Jose Altuve and down the stretch Jesus Sanchez.
• Failures by the front office prior to the season and at the trade deadline to obtain another top end arm for the rotation.
• Failures with the pitching beyond those caused by injuries (we are staring at you Framber Valdez)
• Coaching failures both with the hitters and on the base paths.
• That 5-8 record against the Athletics really sticks out.

But the three listed here were the most egregious contributors to the Astros heading home in this off season.  

Talk among yourselves.