For the first time in nine years, the MLB qualifiers will not include the Houston Astros.
The Astros were eliminated post-season claims on Saturday, the penultimate day of the regular season, after the Tigers and Cleveland Guardians Strait won. Their elimination officially puts the land of the playoffs, the duo of Al Central each obtaining a place in the playoffs.
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Development ends the fourth longer post-season sequence in the history of the MLB and the second longer active sequence after the Los Angeles Dodgers (13 years old).
This is a position that most fans would have thought unthinkable a few months ago. As soon as July 6, the Astros led the Al West by seven games. Even if this advance has decreased a little, the franchise obtained an emotional boost with the return of Carlos Correa on the deadline of the MLB Trade, among other purchasing movements.
The team has taken a significant step back since then, while the The mariners of the Al West Seattle champion caught fire After buying Big on the deadline for trade. Among the astros currently on the injured list: Star Slugger Yordan Alvarez, the launcher Luis Garcia, the closest Josh Hader, the Copstrack Jeremy Peña and the starting launcher launches McCullers Jr.
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Houston struck his Nadir this month, with losses in six of his last seven games to give in the division to Seattle. This included a three -game scan by the navy to send Houston in shock, and he could not recover during a last series against the Los Angeles Angels.
The start of the season leaves the astros with a lot to understand this offseason, especially what to do about the start -up launcher Framber Valdez, who will be a free agent. There are even more important questions to which an organization is known formerly for talents at all levels and a ruthless front office.
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Astros have been losing talent since before the 2022 World Series – and they don’t replace it anymore
The recent history of Astros can mainly be told through three managers general.
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There was Jeff Luhnow, who created a coherent winner until World Series 2017 but also favored a culture that gave birth to the volley scandal of the team signs, in the middle other bad glance.
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There was James Click, who was brought from Tampa Bay Rays after Luhnow was ousted and saw some of the most talented players in the team – Correa, George Springer, Gerrit Cole – Leaving but continued the analysis of the front office to win the world series 2022 with a new wave of talent. He was dismissed just after this title in 2022, following Clashes reported with the owner of the Jim Crane team.
And now there is Dana Brown, whose rental has been specially designed to move away from analysis towards scouting. There is also a little GM shadow situation because the main advisor Jeff Bagwell has a direct line to Crane and indicated very clearly that he did not appreciate the era of the analysis of the team.
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Since the ouster of Click, the team has continued to lose big names in Justin Verlander (twice), Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker, with Valdez likely to join them. The main reason why the brown focused on scouting came on board was to find the young talent to help compensate for these losses, but that did not materialize.
The astros were n ° 29 in MLB pipeline organizational rankingsAnd it is not because the team had a lot of impact players graduates of minors in the past two years. By calculating the war by Fangraphs, the astros were in the last five in MLB among players 25 and under.
Meanwhile, each of Houston’s large free agent’s signatures under the current administration has exploded on his face. Hader (five years, $ 95 million) is injured and posted an ERA with the astros half a worse than the rest of his career. Christian Walker (three years, 60 million dollars) reached. 236 / .296 / .410 This year, his first in Houston. José Abreu (three years, $ 58.5 million) was an unmized disaster. Rafael Montero (three years, $ 34.5 million) posted an MPM of 4.81 during the contract and now plays for tigers.
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Astros once had something that worked. They have something different now, by choosing their property. So far, this does not work.
For the future, even if Valdez leaves, Houston will have a reason for hope next season, with a little more health and a full season of Correa. But this is what the decline teams look like: some good players (Hunter Brown, a Luhnow draft, is already one of the best baseball launchers), but without the intermediate level depth that allows a team to stand out from a 162 game season.
The Astros won 106 games in 2022, 90 games in 2023, 88 games in 2024 and are guaranteed to come below it in 2025. At one point, another dismantling / reconstruction could be more attractive than the soldier.
