The Astros are entering the last 6 weeks of the season as they begin their series Tuesday with the Los Angeles (Isosceles Tri) Angles of Anaheim or some such location.
In honor of those last 6 weeks, here are 6 critical items for Astros success down the stretch.
1) Yordan and His Power Stroke. On the negative side, Yordan has one homer in his last 16 games. For someone who was hitting a homer on average about 1 every 3 games before that – this is quite a bit of a power outage. He is still hitting for average – .293 BA in those 16 games, but the Astros need more than singles out of the man. It is important that he again starts putting the ball in the outer regions with mates aboard. (And yes, I know he does not always get something to hit).
2) The Table Setter. Jeremy Pena is having a terrific season (on the whole) with a .288 BA / .343 OBP/ .820 OPS. But in August and particularly in his last 11 games, he has been putrid – slashing a minuscule .106 BA/ .160 OBP/ .373 OPS. No, Pena on base means Yordan has no one to drive in and no one to make the team think twice about putting him on – since they would not be moving someone into scoring position. He has to go back to patient Pena and not the one diving at sliders 2 feet wide.
3) Help down the line. Outside the top three in the lineup – Pena, Alvarez and Isaac Paredes – the rest of the lineup has been very hit-and-miss and a revolving lineup card under manager Joe Espada. Even with his recent walk-off home run, Christian Walker has had way too many games like Sunday (0 for 4 with 3 Ks) to be depended on. Jose Altuve has warmed up a tad, but when is the last time he had a significant extra-base hit? Since coming over from the Blue Jays, Daulton Varsho has been hitting (.136 BA) below the Zach Cole or Lucas Spence neighborhood. The two catchers – Yainer Diaz and Cristian Vazquez are both below .700 OPS. Taylor Trammel, after a bit of a spurt, has been sinking back down.
Maybe the one true chance for assistance outside the top three is Cam Smith. In the last 28 days he is slashing .288 BA/ .338 OBP / .899 OPS and has looked a lot more like the player he was in the first half of 2025.
4) Starting with the end in mind. Somehow – someway – the team has to figure out five pitchers they can rely on to start games. They have been skating by with sure things Hunter Brown and Peter Lambert, maybe a third in Hayden Wesneski, possibly a fourth in Cristian Javier and auditions for the last spot. They have been helped by a series of timely days off including one coming up next Monday, but then they play 13 days in a row and they could be in trouble with a short or very short start every few days. They have cycled through the new guys (Ryan Weiss, Tatsuya Imai, Kai-Wei Teng, Mike Burrows) , through those returning from the injured list (Ronel Blanco, Lance McCullers Jr.), through those who have had previous success (Spencer Arrighetti, Jason Alexander) and from call-ups from their thin minor leagues (Colton Gordon, Cody Bolton) – but they are floundering. Rumor has it that prospect Ethan Pecko will be the next to tap dance onto the stage for Wednesday’s game. Something/somebody has to stick.
5) Nursing the bullpen. Steven Okert is on pace for 79 appearances; Enyel De Los Santos is headed for 70. Bryan King seemed to already have flamed out this season from overuse. A.J. Blubaugh is on pace for 97 innings out of the bullpen. Bryan Abreu is on pace towards 62 appearances. Luckily, they have been able to keep Josh Hader fairly rested after his late start to the season. But due to the problems with item 3) above – the bullpen has been close to over-use. The team likely needs to keep using Blubaugh and Tatsuya Imai for multiple-inning spots and pray that the starters find their footing and contribute more innings down the stretch.
6) A better cup of Joe. The Astros’ margin for error is slim. As Dennis Hopper famously told Keanu Reeves in the classic movie Speed “Don’t attempt to grow a brain”. In game 3 of the series with the Mariners, Joe rested his 23-year-old right fielder Cam Smith, who 1) had been a very hot hitter and who 2) was getting a day off with the rest of the team on Monday. It was a game they really needed, and they lost 3-2. Oh, and Joe used his brain to have Cam come in and pinch run for the best hitter in baseball, Yordan Alvarez, who almost missed batting in the ninth inning. Joe – I know you don’t have that much to work with, but quit making decisions that hurt your team’s chances.
Anyways, these are important things to me for the stretch run. What items are prime in your mind for the next 37 games?
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
26 responses to “Top 6 for the last 6”
3. Got to play Cam everyday and hope he hits. We already know pretty much what most everyone else is going to do. Varsho should give us a little more than he has. Pena has to. By the way, Varsho’s arm might be as bad as Jakes.
4. Hopefully Wesneski can recover. But with everyone, including Brown, it’ a crap shoot. Pecko? Not very impressive numbers at Sugar Land. But why not?
5. Can Santa and or Ullola help? Seems at some point we should find out.
6. I know I’m picking on Joe at this point. I’m not buying 120 plus different line ups. That said, he just does not have the resources he needs. But he sure has made me look up from the couch more often lately with his in game decisions. He’s seems to be puckering up. And that’s just going to make his team pucker up.
I just want our guys to play good baseball games. If they have good at bats instead of terrible at bats with the bases loaded and fail to get a run in, I’ll live with it. If they don’t get picked off and can execute a bunt and don’t make errors on routine plays, then I’m okay if they lose this thing. I just don’t want them to give it away.
LikeLike
daveb
LikeLike
What is wrong with the Astros’ offense?? Too many 6 – 9 pitch innings while they are batting.
LikeLike
This is just not a very good team. Maybe .500 at best. No sense in beating the dead horse.
LikeLike
Dave – It’s probably been invisible to most because he has been so good at punishing everything else but the slider at his feet from righties has been killing Yordan all year. Go back and watch the at bat against Watson, he threw him 5 in a row before striking him out on the 6th pitch with a fastball. For some reason, he can see the movement when its center plate or outside, but when it comes in on him I don’t know if his mind says he can hit this a long way or if that particular start point and end point look like a fastball to him. Whatever it is, teams know now. And you are seeing a steady diet of low inside breaking stuff. It’s why his numbers have taken a little bit of mortality in the last month. Still good, but merely mortal. And in a critical at bat like last night, the Angels knew just what to do.
Sarge – its frustrating. Klassen threw 80 pitches in 7 innings and handed it straight to leverage guys. People maybe wondering why a guy you picked up off waivers was used as a leverage guy, but he was brought in to get Yordan out because he commands the slider. Well, his is more of a slurve, but he can spot it. Watson would struggle against some of our hitters (I expected a better AB from Paredes in that spot) but he is Yordan kryptonite. The Angels manager had himself a game last night. But the point is if you can’t force pitches you can’t get to some of the middle guys in the bullpen and its going to be a long night. And I don’t think too many hitters in baseball have anything but a wing and a prayer against Joice when he is spotting 103.
LikeLike
Dan – Varsho’s arm is about the same as Meyers. He did have shoulder surgery in the offseason 2 years ago and it’s probably sapped that old catcher arm. But he has never been a hitter. And if you bring him here for his glove but then instead of letting up on it and holding a guy to a single he lets a ball by diving after it, well, what you were brought here for you just blew up. I’ve always known he can’t hit, my kids a Jays fan – we’ve driven the Alaska highway through Canada a couple of times – and he just loves everything Canada now. So I watch some with him. It’s the only other team I can name the 26 man of. And Varsho is the ONE guy I wanted from that roster the least. And he is the one guy they got. Only Dana Brown.
But hey, if you ever get a chance to drive the Alaska highway, its so long it will take you about 3 days to drive it but it’s breathtaking. Even on trips 2 and 3 it was amazing. But don’t pass by an open gas station, it’s pretty sparsely populated and you can go 100-125 miles without passing through a town.
Burrows can’t be worse than what we’ve seen. I guess we get Pecko tonight? I didn’t stick around for the announcement. And look, I suspect the Astros think that Mike Burrows might still be a part of this teams future. He hit 97 a few times in that rehab start. He throws strikes. I can’t blame what I suspect may have been a phantom injury, because I watched him pitch, and injuries don’t make you leave a 95 mph fastball in the heart of the plate. What I saw was a guy that didn’t know how to pitch on the edges with marginal stuff, he has good enough stuff, but not Hunter stuff, so he needs to learn to pitch sequencing and placement better.
LikeLike
Steven, that one hopper down and in on Yordan Sunday night was the worst pitch he’s gone after all season. As you point out, it does seem to be the one place some guys can make him look pretty bad if they locate well. Maybe he can adjust and at least lay off the ones outside the zone. And as frustration grows, he’s swinging too much at that stuff out off the plate. He badly needs help from Pena too.
I got a kick out of Julia’s brief pre-game chat with Joe. Joe noted the team needed to get back to being more selective. Then Varsho went out there in the first and swung at a 3-1 pitch a foot below the strike zone and followed that up by striking out on a ball that bounced a foot in front of the plate. At least we didn’t have to deal with another dreaded first inning bases loaded situation.
Of course we had our quick inning in the bottom of the third too. As Reptil was huffing and puffing in the dugout after another high pitch count third, our guys went down on 7 pitches forcing Javier back to the mound after 4 minutes.
It was one more game that we lost early, allowing a guy without any pedigree to set the tempo and make it look easy along the way.
LikeLike
Thoughts
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some teams are built to win. Other teams are built with the hope that if things go just right they all get hot the first week of October and somehow come away with a championship. I kind of get it. Brown couldn’t makeover the team in the offseason. The best he could do was shuffle a few interchangeable, flawed players around. That’s no excuse for the trade deadline though. I’m sure Daulton Varsho is a really nice guy and all, but there was no reason to make the trade. I feel like we’re stuck with him hitting high in the lineup so he can collect a few extra RBI due to opportunity and Brown can put this down in his end of year evaluation for Crane as a reason to keep writing him checks.
LikeLike
And Z – this is exactly what I was worried about in June. This team is not bad, it’s just not good. You can’t rely on the rest of your division stinking to win. The Astros have to figure out how to make all 9 spots in the order, or at 7 of them, threatening. I don’t mean Yordan threatening. I mean threatening in the way that they can put good at bats up consistently.
I’ll give an example that I already mentioned – Nathan Lukes. Like I said, I watch a lot of Jays ball. This guy, no superstar. Probably will finish the year around .265-.270, somewhere around 10 dingers, but its just he doesn’t chase, and he doesn’t strike out a lot. He didn’t even make it to the majors until he was 28, and he is not really a full time guy. But what do you get? Good at bats. Is it really that hard to find some Nathan Lukes out there instead of Taylor Trammell or Daulton Varsho? I would argue that LaWalk Wade at least gives you a quality at bat in terms of pitch selection, you just wish he did more with strikes a little more often. Given the state of the offseason Wade is the one guy I would bring back though from that kerfuffle of mediocrity.
But my point is – this team fooled itself into thinking its good. It’s not. So instead of using Pena and Yordan and Hunter to rebuild their minor league system and go find some guys we doubled down on a team with 3 good at bats, and a pitching staff that has the same chance to go 6 innings of 2 run ball as they do of starting off with 2 innings of 6 run ball. 3 good bats and a crap shoot for a starting rotation is how you end up at .500, because those three at bats are pretty darned good at bats and 1 pitcher is being consistent. Maybe .500 wins the division, but it will come with a first round exit.
Maybe they should have reset. They may not have an offseason to try and deal Pena, or they may end up with an abbreviated 2027 that drives the value of Pena down. Now was the time. That time has passed. Now teams are going to try to send you the same kind of marginal prospects we sent out for JV or Cole or Greinke because of the impending free agency. And if there is baseball in 27, does anyone really expect 1200 PAs from Yordan in 27 and 28 before we can’t afford to resign him?
LikeLike
I’m about ready to give Biggio his shot. Trammell has given us his best at bats. Varsho should not be playing everyday. Biggio will at least work an at bat. He probably won’t hit much either, but maybe we’ll get even a brief spark.
Steven, I think we’re 5 and 8 since the deadline. Ideally the deadline provides some kind of spark for a club. We were playing pretty well. We are not now.
Unfortunately, our flawed, frustrating to watch group will be stumbling through game 162, likely still in the hunt or even leading the pack. Implausible and annoying.
Everyone here knows what my preference would have been. But it simply won’t be possible as long is our owner runs the operation.
LikeLike
4 out of 15 teams in the AL are above .500. We’re sitting at .500. This is absurd. 9/15 teams in the NL are above .500. I only mention this because it’s not like we’ve played good teams since the break.
LikeLike
Thoughts
LikeLike
Pecko just reminds me of a left handed Gordon with that delivery and the ball trajectory. Maybe a tad more velo. But he definitely doesn’t have Colton’s strike zone. He uglied his way to a meh start.
Felt like it was 2 on 1 last night, the Astros against the Angels and the Umps. Every marginal call went LA’s way. Individually it was hard to argue against the Umps decisions but collectively it just looked like we had a target.
Haven’t heard about Pena yet. If we are going to do anything when we accidentily make the playoffs it will require Jeremy Pena to be on fire, not absent.
Other than that, ho hum game but you have to win some ho hummers.
LikeLike
Looks like Ethan Pecko will get another shot. He was relatively composed. And he might have gotten screwed out of a run.
I still don’t understand how the umps could give the guy on first three bases on the fan inference call. Even with Lowe going on the pitch, he slowed up at second. If that ball comes off the wall clean, he is not going to be sent.
Joe does not have a real genuine ability to get thrown out. He just does not have enough anger in him. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.
A bit of a laugher would be helpful tonight. Bullpen needs a rest before the weekend. Can we hit?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pecko did a decent job for a first start – but if he was special he probably would have been here sooner. But if he could give us 5 innings – 2 or 3 runs we would take it. Not sure what will happen when he is a little less amped up. Maybe better control, but maybe less velocity? And will they scout him and figure him out?
But right now we are living game to game with the starters.
Yeah Daveb – that call is never ever made – there are a lot of times when a ball is gapped and bounces over the fence and the runner would surely have scored and they always send them back to third.
On the radio they talked about the person who did the interference and was removed – they were from Australian and had never been to a baseball game. (They joked he might have thought it was ICE removing him).
LikeLike
And a couple other things
Steven – Are you worried like I am about Pena’s injury especially when they almost immediately found nothing on the X-rays? How many times have they found nothing on the X-ray and after the player is struggling with recovery – then they scan them and find something?
Daveb – Joe is just not a hat throwing, dirt kicking, nose-to-nose screamer. I know that behavior is kind of frowned upon and not in his nature, but I think I would like to see him really riled up once or twice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dan, I like a good, loud, get in the umps face kind of manager as long as he’s got a good point, and maybe Joe is a bit too docile at times for this team, but that won’t get him fired. It would be other stuff.
LikeLike
Dan, Joe should have just gone kicking and screaming about the runner from home going after LaMonte Wade instead of first base.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dave, you are correct. That hitter turned baserunner did run out of the basepath just a little, didn’t he???
LikeLike
What a sad, sad lineup for the Astros tonight (8/20/26).
LikeLike
This is actually on Crane, Brown, Espada, and the players. All are cupable in this disastrous season. I know one thing. I won’t be subscribing to mlb/Astros next year.
Crane who thinks he can make a contender out a bunch of older has beens. Brown who obviously is not what we were led to believe. Espada who was given a hodgepodge of has beens with a couple of good players not being able to make chicken soup out of chicken $&!@. Finally, players who have no business being everyday players on a major league roster. It’s all so sad.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I sure am early today. At the airport heading home.
Our Astros could certainly own the A’s this weekend and reclaim the cushion they had a week ago. But maybe more realistically, they’ll be out of first place.
Everywhere we look, it’s a faltering club. The boost from Blanco and Javier did not happen. Who are our reliable starters? Lambert is cooked whether he’ll admit it or not.
Pena is battling a slump and another sore something. We simply don’t have enough major league hitters. Yordan would do absolutely remarkable things in a stacked lineup up. Maybe we let him go.
How long can Okert hang on? King has been used up. Blaubaugh might be next. There are no real bright spots on this 26 man. Altuve, Walker, declining, Vazquez gutting out what he’s got left. Varsho seemingly has nothing left.
Abreu and Hader can’t win the division.
Z, you’re fully right. We’ve got a batch of hoodwinkers running this ball club.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not much to say about last night. I turned it off when it 8-2. Apparently didn’t get better.
Part of me wishes the Rangers would get hot and just take it. It would show this front office that this is a clownish batting order. LaMont Walk Jr. opens with a, suprise, walk (I love this guy) and Yordan has Rodriguez completely ignore the scouting report and throw 3 fastballs in a row out of the zone, get a strike, then another fastball out of the zone. Paredes lazies one out to CF so runners have to hold a second and we get bases loaded. I looked at my wife and said this will not come out a big inning. Sure enough it takes the Angels gifting us 2 errors just to get 2 runs. No rbi. Because there are no run producers after the 2nd and 3rd spot in the order. And then what happens? The box score tells me a guy named Grayson Rodriguez threw 99 pitches to get through 7, but the Grayson Rodriguez I am familiar with would never accomplish that.
This is the world we live in.
I would agree with you Dave. I would like to have seen Espada have a Martinesque flame out to get tossed there. Those umps had made every questionable call go the Angels way the entire series, and this team needed a flame out, even if just to see their manager show some fire at that ump crew. The no call on runner interference was insane, the runner basically ran a b line to Wade. Just ridiculous.
Lambert is going to need a breather. Its usually a lot more difficult to discern on TV but even on TV I could tell his fastball wasn’t fastballing and his command was gone, from the first pitch. I would like to see him head to the 10 day IL for a blister or something, just give that arm a rest. He has been carrying this staff all year and now they let one game blow up his ERA because some idiot thought it was a good idea to give King inherited runners.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It reminds me a lot of watching high school baseball from only being able to score when the defense give you runs to the manager putting guys in situations they’re unlikely to succeed all the time.
LikeLike
Thoughts
LikeLike