Houston Astros MISS Postseason

Houston Astros MISS Postseason

But I’m on the Welcome back to Banging the Can, the Houston sports show that does not apologize for championship rings and tings. Presented by Bowling Media with new episodes dropping every Monday and Friday. I am Ross Bolan and for the first time since 2016, your Houston Astros are not in the postseason. Sad. The Astros finished the regular season with 87 wins and 75 losses and actually tied the Detroit Tigers for the last wildcard spot. But unfortunately, Detroit had the tiebreaker over the Astros. So, for the first time in nearly a decade, we are on the outside looking in. But I’m on the Feels weird, doesn’t it? Feels weird. I will say though, I think it’s kind of nice. We needed a break. I’m not even doing a spin zone here. I’m being serious. Every October since 2017 has been incredibly stressful, incredibly stressful for Astros fans. So, it’s kind of nice to take a breather, to just enjoy playoff baseball without any real emotional stakes. It sucks, don’t get me wrong. It definitely sucks. We’ve been one of the most spoiled fan bases in Major League Baseball for damn near a decade. One of the two most spoiled fan bases in baseball since 2017. And we’ve become accustomed to winning. We’ve become accustomed to seeing our team make deep runs in October. So deep. Put your ass to sleep. So I’m not saying I want to make a habit of missing the postseason, but once a decade to have a breather ain’t so bad. But what went wrong this year? Well, friends, I’d hate to break it to you, but it’s not as complicated as a lot of you are trying to make it. If your team puts more players on the injured list over the course of the season than any team in the history of Major League Baseball, your odds of going to the postseason are going to plummet. And in many ways, it’s as simple as that. Here is a list of the injuries sustained by the Houston Astros this season. Josh her missed the final two months of the season and probably ended up being the most devastating loss this season aside from Yordon. Spencer Erigetti only made seven starts this season. Rennell Blanco had Tommy John surgery after nine starts. Luis Garcia only made two starts after his return from Tommy John before reinjuring his elbow. Hayden Wesneski had Tommy John after six starts. Brandon Walter had Tommy John after nine starts. John Rooney had elbow surgery after one appearance. Bennett Susa missed the final six weeks of the season. Caleb Ort missed the final month of the season and was injured for another stretch of the year as well. Lance McCuller’s Jr. had a bevy of IIL stints. Shawn Dubin spent time on the IIL. I’m not even sure what happened to JP France. And that’s just the pitchers. Yordon Alvarez only played 48 games due to hand and then ankle injuries. Esso Perez missed two months down the stretch due to a hamstring. Jeremy Pñena missed over 30 games. Jake Myers missed two months. Chaz McCormack missed six weeks. Zack Dinszo missed four months. Brendan Rogers, Jacob Melton, Taylor Trel, and that should do it. It was a [ __ ] nightmare season from an injury perspective, which forced Dana Brown and Job Spot to rely on minor league talent to fill out their roster pretty much all season long. 18 wins above replacement lost to injuries for the Astros in 2025. I’m not making excuses for the team, but you set the MLB record for IIL stints in a season and you’re going to have a hard time making the playoffs, especially when your farm system isn’t exactly chalk full of prospects who are ready for the MLB. So, it’s important for us all to accept up top that injuries played a massive, massive role in the Astros breaking their eight season streak of postseason appearances. And yes, the front office should obviously absolutely evaluate the medical and training staffs this off season and they should absolutely make sure they are doing a better job moving forward of evaluating when their players are ready to return from injury because clearly that was a huge issue. But yeah, if Yon Alvarez had played closer to a 100red games or Josh her didn’t miss the final two months, we’re probably still playing baseball right now. If those two things alone went differently, hell, if Udon just slides into home plate instead of slipping like a giant goober, we are probably in the postseason. So, if you’re overlooking the plague of injuries this team suffered from and and you’re saying things like Jim Crane should fire Dana Brown and fire Joe Espatada and then sell the team, you need to chill out. Pump the brakes, friend. Calm yourself down. 10 years ago, we would have sucked an entire bag of dicks just to be in postseason contention the last week of the season. So, this organization has come a really, really long way under Jim Crane’s ownership. And I have no doubt he’s extremely disappointed with the way things went this season. He certainly still needs to look in the mirror, Jim Crane does, in terms of abandoning the system that turned this team into amongst the most feared in baseball. But when an 87 and 75 season in which you missed the wild card due to a tiebreaker and you sent more players to the IIL than any team in history feels like a massive failure, you are doing something right, like it or not. So goal number one for next season is obviously keep your most important players healthy or at least healthier. Goal number two is probably to figure out what’s going on with the offensive approach at the plate. Offensively, we were a mess much of the season. We finished 21st out of 30 teams in runs scored, 17th in home runs, 26th in walks, which is a direct result of approach and discipline, 24th in strikeouts, 13th in batting average. None of their offensive rankings are good. Suffice it to say that. Injuries aside, this team has to be better with runners in scoring position. They have to have less selfish at bats. They have to play more small ball. They desperately need to start working counts and forcing pitchers to throw more pitches. There is a lot that needs to improve from a strategy standpoint offensively. Only the Colorado Rockies, the worst team in baseball with 43 wins, the next closest team having 17 more wins. Only those Colorado Rockies chased more pitches outside the zone than the Astros this regular season. When the Astros scored four or more runs, they were 64 and 15. 64 wins and 15 losses. When they scored four or more runs, when they scored three or fewer runs, they were 23 and 60. That tells you a lot of what you need to know right there. Offensive production was a major major issue because of the ridiculous amount of Tommy John surgeries and Framber Valdez becoming a free agent. Shoring up their pitching rotation is probably goal number three this off season. If everyone is healthy, we have a really solid pitching rotation. But nobody except Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez stayed healthy. And Framber was obviously not his best the back half of the season. And yeah, man, just everyone was [ __ ] hurt. Everyone was [ __ ] hurt. Developing the farm system is probably goal number four because aside from Zack Cole exploding onto the season uh the final month of the season after spending the bulk of the year in DA and playing just 15 games in AAA, guys like Jacob Melton and Bryce Matthews were clearly not ready for prominent roles in the majors and we just don’t have that many prospects in the farm system that can fill holes if guys go down to injury. So that’s probably a priority as well. But look, this team has cornerstone talent in all the right places. Between Hunter Brown, who should be a Sai Young candidate for years to come, Yordon Alvarez, who remains one of the most effective hitters in baseball, when he’s healthy, Jeremy Pñena, who was a gold glover at shortstop and had the best offensive season of his career. None of those guys are even 30 years old yet. Then there’s Iso Perez, who was a beast when he was healthy. Carlos Kareah clearly still has some juice and proved to be a very solid third baseman as well. Jake Meyers was having a career year when he was healthy. All these guys are still under contract next season. The cornerstone pieces are there. So, the Astros are not in a rebuild situation. This is not a tear it down and start over situation. This is a figure out how to keep your cornerstone guys healthy and build around them situation. This is a stock up the farm system situation. I want to talk about Framber Valdez because he’s obviously the biggest free agent uh that we could potentially lose this off season. And considering how things went the past few months for Framber, it’s a complicated situation. But here’s the thing that has made me change the way I’m looking at Framber Valdez and perhaps uh reanalyze how much of the the annoying Framber qualities, how much I’ve been allowing them to outweigh the good Framber qualities. We all know when you get good Framber, you’ve got one of the best left-handed pitchers in the game. Okay, we all know that. And the dude stays healthy. He does not get hurt year after year, season after season. Framber is going to give you a [ __ ] ton of starts, a lot of which will be quality. Framber definitely cost himself somewhere between like 10 and $50 million in contract money this this last few months where he was a bit of a mess. And no doubt some of the mental lapses that we have seen from Framber in the past started to crop back up and you could see he was losing focus. Uh whether it was the pressure of a contract season or the pressure of being one of two guys on the team who was a reliable starter. I don’t know exactly what it is that that happened with Framber. I’m not sure anybody does. I’m not sure Framber even does. I’m not sure his sports psychologist even does. But Framber Valdez has over this past, you know, 48 hours looked more and more to me like a piece that maybe this team can’t afford to lose. And in his postseason presser exit interview type thing, Framber expressed a desire to remain in an Astros jersey, which is not a thing that I can remember any of our big uh free agents who who were on the way out doing recently. Not I don’t think Carlos or or Breggy or like these were guys that knew they were going to go try and get these big eight 10-year contracts or whatever, right? Um certainly not Garrett Cole. So, so I’m I’m interested to see what happens in terms of conversations between the Astros and Framber Valdez. I still don’t put the odds very high at us bringing him back, but I will say this, I would be fine with bringing him back, if not happy that we brought him back because he’s invaluable from the standpoint of how he is able to be a consistent top two pitcher for your team. All right? He doesn’t get hurt. He stays healthy when he’s locked in and he’s got his good [ __ ] He’s among the best in the game and and at this point with the way things went injury-wise for the Astros pitching rotation this season, he’s not really a guy we can afford to let walk away anymore. So, I have completely changed my position in terms of Framber Valdez. I think three weeks ago, I literally said out loud on the show that I would be happy to see him go. I have seen enough and I’m done. Having had time to reflect on the season on the whole and having had time to evaluate Framber with less of an emotional uh uh grudge, I think I think you if you can if you can make the money work, I think you bring Framber back. Now, not a crazy long deal, but maybe if you know he can test the market and we can offer something competitive in terms of two, three years, then maybe maybe something can work out. I don’t know. I’m just looking at what happened with our pitching this year and I’m trying to imagine what our pitching will look like next year without Framber and it’s [ __ ] terrifying. Now, Dana Brown has already said in his postseason exit interview that they are going to look to bring at least one arm in, one starting pitcher and and yes, that’s great. But even if they bring Framber back, they still probably need one more arm. So, we’ll see what happens with Famber Valdez. Look, he was a huge part of this last what, five, six years in terms of uh the Astros and how competitive they’ve been able to be every single season. I would hate for it to end the way that it did this year. I would like to have a couple more years of Framber at a minimum, uh, as long as he is able to to stay at the top of his game, obviously, which is a risk you take when you when you sign a guy to a to a new contract. So, that’s where I’m at with Framber Valdez. If you feel differently, let me know in the comments section. I understand there are a lot of you who will feel differently, but I think we need Framber. Weighing the good of good Framber and bad Frammber, I still think we need Framber. Victor Keratini is another guy that’s a free agent. A big piece that was extremely productive for us this season and probably would have been more productive if he was allowed to sort of fill the role that I think they had in mind for him before so many people got injured. But as far as being a backup catcher to Yanni Diaz, he’s extremely valuable. He is one of the few guys I could trust to have a good approach at the plate pretty much every single at bat. Uh he did a great job driving in runs with runners in scoring position. So Victor Keratini is a guy that Dana Brown has also expressed a lot of interest in bringing back already and I would like to see Victor back in an Astros jersey next year. Blue Balls number 69 is another guy that uh we obviously have locked in for now. Uh not a free agent, just to be clear, but he’s another dude that uh should find his way into the starting rotation for next season, and I’m very curious to see how Blue Ball does um in a starting role next year. I I do expect that to be the case that he will be a starter. So, as far as like Dana Brown as the general manager and Joe Espatada as the manager, look, I think I’ll start with Dana Brown. I think he could have had a better um trade deadline. You know, it it but I I just feel like it’s really hard to put this season on Dana Brown’s shoulders or blame his trade deadline acquisitions for not panning out the way they did. And yes, he probably should have gone after another pitcher instead of just bringing in, you know, Koreah was a great pickup. I love having Carlos back on the team. I think that worked out for us. It’s a blessing that the Twins were blowing it up and and dumping a ton of contract and they paid a bunch of Carlos’s salary. There’s not a single Astros fan in the world who’s unhappy to have Carlos Koreah back on this team. And I think Kareah proved over the last couple months of the season that he still has juice in the tank. He proved he could be a damn good third baseman, far above average, and that offensively he can still hit, you know, and he he is a guy that in terms of an approach at the plate, you never really see have a terrible at bat. It happens on occasion when he just gets owned by somebody, but everybody has that happen to them as a hitter in Major League Baseball. The pitching is just that good. But for the most part, Koreah always has a good approach to the plate. Raone Urias as a pickup, I mean, I I kind of get it. He’s great defensively. He was great at second base defensively. He’s okay as a hitter. It seemed like he never really found like, you know, his rhythm as an Astro. Um, and then, you know, Jesus Sanchez was a bit of a mess offensively. Like, he went through a stretch where he was redot, but he went through two stretches where he was absolutely not, where he was as cold as you could possibly be as a hitter. I really like Jesus. I think he seems like a really fun guy. I like the way he treats baseball like it’s supposed to be fun and he’s smiling and laughing out there. But at the same time, when you’re not producing and you’re smiling and laughing, it starts to be like, “Okay, buddy, maybe lock in, get your [ __ ] together, and be be serious until you can get things rolling in the right direction.” All that to say, the trade deadline didn’t do a lot to improve our chances of making the postseason. I I it just didn’t. And and whether or not that’s on Dana Brown, I can’t really tell. But again, I would point to the insane amount of injuries this team dealt with and say that like no matter what Dana Brown did at the trade deadline, we were probably up Shitz Creek without a paddle. So, I am not one of the people who thinks Dana Brown has done a bad job. I thought he did a really good job this season keeping us at least in a position where we could fill out the roster considering how many injuries we had. Considering that the farm system has been depleted for years, I think he kind of did what he could with the prospects that we have. Now, no doubt one of Dana’s biggest jobs moving forward, if he remains general manager, which I believe he will, is going to be to shore up the farm system to find ways to bring in more prospects and get more talent in the double A and AAA teams. Um, but I don’t think Dana Brown should be fired. I do not in any way blame this season on him. I still buy into the reasons that we were the things that we when we were sold Dana Brown as a GM. They told us he was good at at scouting. He was good at finding prospects. He was good at evaluating Major League talent in a way that very few GMs in Major League Baseball are. I still have no reason to doubt that bill of sale. So until there’s something more egregious, you know, I’m still in on Dana Brown and Joe Espado. What did you want him to do, man? Like Joe made a few mistakes here or there, but every general manager does. It’s certainly one of the biggest, you know, black eyes on the season for Joe Espatada is going to be that he shouldn’t have thrown Josh her as many innings as he did. He shouldn’t have done the Josher doing two outs in the eighth and three in the ninth thing. Josh her needs to be the ninth inning closer and not step foot on the field until the ninth inning. If it I if it’s a situation where we want to go with our star closer. Um you know what I mean is if we’re down seven [ __ ] runs, you probably don’t need to bring in hater. If you’re up seven runs, you probably don’t need to bring in hater. They need to do a better job of protecting their most important pieces of which it became abundantly clear that Josh her is one of this season. Prior to getting injured, Josh Prior to getting injured, Josh her was having an incredible season. He was a very pivotal piece of this Astros team. And when he went down, boy did it show. Cuz at that point, you’re putting Abrau in a difficult position where you’re making him be the closer where clearly he was not as comfortable. He is the setup guy. And when we’ve got Abrau and hater healthy, we have a very, very dangerous bullpen as long as it is managed correctly. And I think for the most part, Joe was spotted did that, but there were those few decisions he made where he put hater out there for longer than he’s used to. And they clearly got too comfortable with that in the 2024 season cuz they did that a few times with hater and thought maybe we could do that a little more. No. So, I’m not saying Joe Spot didn’t make some mistakes. He definitely did. But there’s not a manager in Major League Baseball who doesn’t. They all make goofy mistakes. There are a lot of moving pieces. They have to push a lot of buttons every night. And sometimes they push the wrong ones and that’s just the way it goes. I don’t think Joe did enough to be fired. I don’t think Joe did enough to be in a hot seat. And again, I have to point to the cards that Joe was dealt as manager. And in the case of this season, holy [ __ ] that was a bad hand. He was dealt an awful, awful hand, arguably the worst hand in the history of baseball because we had more IIL stances than any team in the history of baseball. And you can’t discount that when you’re evaluating management. You just can’t. As much as you might want to and everybody wants to be able to point the finger and people want to see heads roll and everybody expects that Jim Crane is going to go nuts firing everybody because he, you know, he fired James Click the weeks after we won a World Series in 2022. But that was a difference of personality and and a clash of alphas that did not work out. I don’t think that’s the situation we have with Dana Brown or Joe Espatada and Jim Crane. So, I expect both those guys to be back next year. It’s entirely possible that they won’t be because Jim Crane has been known to make rash decisions before in terms of management. But, I don’t know how you could possibly look at those two guys and think they were the problem. They were not the problem. Injuries were the story this season. It sucks, but it also happens. And it’s so weird because it seems like in baseball less than in like basketball or football, fans have a hard time rationalizing the impact that injuries have on a team. But like to put it this way, you know, if Kevin Durant gets hurt and the Rockets miss the playoffs, nobody’s gonna say fire Emma Udoka or get rid of Raphael Stone. Okay. If CJ Strad goes down with an injury and the and the Texans miss the playoffs, nobody is going to say, “Fire Demo Ryan’s and and fire uh whatever the [ __ ] our general manager’s name, and I can’t remember his name right now, but he’s got he’s got aderall eyes.” No. Cacerio. Nick Cacerio. If you lose the most important piece of your team in basketball or in football, fans understand, well, that’s gonna that’s probably going to wreck the season. We lost every important piece at different points in this baseball season. How the [ __ ] are you blaming the management? Like, look, the list of injuries was absolutely batshit insane. Every single one of our best producers on offense went down for long stretches. our best one in arguably Yordon Alvarez missed a [ __ ] over a hundred games, man. Over a hundred games. Pedes was our best offensive producer with Yordon out. Then he went down for months. Pena was our best offensive producer behind those two. He went down for however long it was. We can’t survive. Jake Meyers batten over 300. He went down for months. You can’t survive that usually. It is It does happen. It is possible. I believe actually the the team with the most IIL stints prior to this season when it became the Astros was the Yankees in like 2019 and I think they won 103 games that year. But that’s just a matter that’s a fluke. That’s not a thing that typically happens. Injuries can wreck a sports team. It happens and it happened to the Astros this season. So, it sucks, but like, you know, I don’t I don’t know how you could give up or say the window is closed or that the golden era is over when clearly this was like an anomaly. Now, the one thing I will say to give some credence to the people who think there are serious issues within like the medical staff or the training staff, we had a lot of injuries last season. We all thought last season sucked from an injury standpoint. Boy, did we not know how good we had it. You never know you’re in the good old days until they’re gone. Um, this season was so much worse. So, having two years in a row where there are a lot of injuries and with Yordon in particular, it becoming kind of a pattern at this point, like that is concerning. The amount of Tommy John’s we are watching pitchers have to endure is obviously concerning. So, I do hope the team finds ways to invest more in the medical and training staff and figure out more effective ways to bring guys back from injury and figure out more effective ways to manage the workload that pivotal cornerstone pieces of the organization have, such as Jordon, such as Josh her. Uh, you know, Pena’s little injuries were more fluke stuff like he got hit in the ribs with a baseball or, you know, got his oblique got jacked up or whatever. Like, I don’t blame the Pena stuff as much. The Perez thing was a freak hamstring injury. You can’t really blame him for that. But like they need to figure ways to manage Yordon Alvarez’s workload and Josh her workload and probably some of the pitching staff that’s not named Hunter Brown or Framber Valdez if he’s back because we just had too many injuries, man. And it’s crazy. And and you have to chalk some of it up to bad luck. No doubt. I can’t tell you what percentage we should be blaming bad luck on. Like if it’s 10% or 20%, I don’t know. 50% I don’t know. But yes, they need to look at these things as an organization and make sure that these aren’t shortcomings in the medical or training staff department that are leading to us having this [ __ ] beaten and broken roster to work with. But I don’t think this ride is over. two World Series titles, four appearances, eight consecutive postseason appearances, seven straight trips to the American League Championship Series, seven AO West titles, 99 playoff games. What a run. And in my opinion, it isn’t over. The window is not closed. It is not time to panic and blow it up. You have to be realistic with what happened this season. And I hope Jim Crane is able to do that because overreacting and getting rid of like you if Jim Crane fires Dana Brown and Jo it tells me that he no longer trusts his own judgment because he’s the one who hired these guys. I if he fires them now it tells me he doesn’t think he’s good at what he’s doing anymore. And I have Jim Crane got cocky for sure somewhere around after that 2022 World Series win when he fired James Click. I think he got cocky. I think he saw himself as somebody who knows ball more than any other owner in the league. And I think he got cocky and I think he made some rash decisions that he probably shouldn’t have. That’s why toward the top of the show I say you probably shouldn’t have abandoned the formula that got you here. Because when Jim Crane took over the franchise and we tanked and he made all the changes that he did to the front office, he put us in a position where we were looking forward 20 years into baseball’s future and seeing how guys how teams would be managed, how guys would be evaluated. And that put us in a position that took us on the run that I just outlined. the run that in my opinion is still not over. And I think Jim Crane needs to take some of the blame there in terms of the uh you know u changes in management and and general management over the past several seasons. Like it’s just been too much chaos for my liking. But at the same time, Jim Crane is clearly a competitive owner who is he’s willing to spend even if a lot of you don’t see it for some reason. We have like a top 10 payroll every year. He’s willing to spend. He’s willing to spend on free agents. It’s just that he himself should not be the one evaluating which free agents or which big names we should be going and signing or trading for because when him and Bagwell were at the wheel, they flip the [ __ ] car off the road. Okay, they made bad decisions and the Astros as a result are hampered by some really shitty contracts like Raphael Monto. I think Jose Abrau is finally coming off the books this year. But they made some bad decisions in terms of guys they were going to give a lot of money to and they need to be a little more careful with that moving forward. I don’t want Jim Crane making any decisions himself. I think he should trust the people he’s put in the positions to make those decisions and I hope he trusts Dana Brown enough to continue to let him run this ball club and do what he thinks is best for it. But it is not time to panic and blow it up. And look, this Astros team has meant more to me personally as a fan than any team in my 38 years on earth. As a huge Houston sports fan my whole life and as a guy who prior to this Astros run was always just a little bit more invested in the Houston Rockets than I was the Astros or Texans. I put them all in pretty much the same category at this point. Like I love all three teams. I’m super invested in all three teams, but like I I feel like I went through an entire era of my life with this Astros team. Actually, more realistically, I’ve gone through at least two eras, maybe three eras of my life. I went from like a 20-some kid who had no idea what he was doing in this world to now a grown man who has kids and is a father and runs his own business. It’s like I went I’ I’ve gone through really really dark times that the Astros actually helped me get through and and the city has gone through really dark times that the Astros actually helped all of us get through. The team means a lot to all of us and as a result of that coupled with the fact that we have been crazy spoiled for damn near 10 years as Astros fans, it puts us in a complicated position when something like this happens. when we missed the postseason for the first time since 2017. When you look back at this run and it and it really hurts cuz you know you should have gotten at least one more ring. You should have gotten at least one more ring, you know, at least one, probably two. And it hurts and it sucks and it makes us all emotionally reactive. And that’s why you’re seeing a lot of fans with these terrible takes about what they think we should do. And thank God that our management doesn’t seem to care what the fans think because y’all have some [ __ ] terrible ideas. But in my opinion, [ __ ] happens. Life is not always rainbows and flowers and picnics, man. Sometimes you crap the bed. Sometimes life craps on you. Sometimes [ __ ] just happens, man, and things go wrong. And you have to have the strength and wherewithal to recognize like, all right, I’m getting pounded right now. And this sucks, but I know it’s not going to last forever. That all things come to an end. And this pain and suffering is not going to be forever. And it’s about mentality and attitude. And it’s about perspective. And I’m praying that the guys in our front office and ownership Jim Crane most of all have a good perspective of where we are at and what happened this season. And for the most part, as I have repeatedly said, what happened this season is that way too many guys got injured and were out for long stretches. And there’s just not many teams who could overcome that. There’s not. And the Astros at the end of the day were a game short of overcoming that. Okay. So, I think the opportunity here is to take this season as a learning moment, if you will, a teaching moment for Espada. Part of the takeaway should be that every single This is why when people are freaking out about games in June or whatever, and everyone else is like, “Come on, guys. The beginning of the season, who cares?” Like, it’s like, “No, every game matters. Every single win is important. And when you fall one game short like we just did, it becomes all the more apparent. But frankly, I think it’s important that Joe Espatada also take a good hard look in the mirror in terms of like strategy and what’s going on with the hitting coaches and and approach at the plate because as I said, regardless of falling one game short and the fact that no doubt injuries are the number one thing to blame, offensive approach was this was also really damning. And when we’re talking about every single game mattering, you can’t get swept by the Guardians after you sweep the Dodgers. You can’t get swept down the stretch uh by the Athletics when you’re in a position where you’re trying to make the postseason. And you’re getting swept in those games because your offense didn’t do their jobs because you’re not scoring enough runs. And to refer back to the stat I dropped earlier, look, you don’t need that many. Score four runs, you’re winning a 100 games. four runs a game. You’re probably winning a 100 games with this team. And you’ve got the bats if you’ve got them healthy between Yordon and Pedes and Pñena and Koreah and Altuve whose name I haven’t even said today. Like you have and Jake Meyers and they’ve got Keratini. They’ve got the bats. They had the bats. The bats were not doing what they needed to do when it mattered most though. And with runners in scoring position, we weren’t great. we weren’t even good most of the season, the back half after the All-Star break especially. So, yeah, Joe Espatada’s got some things to focus on, some things he needs to get better at or help the team get better at for sure. For Dana Brown, I’m not it’s a it’s a lot more complicated of a situation, but I still think you can take this season as a lesson and and try to do some things a little bit differently in terms of how you handle the trade deadline or which areas of the team you’re trying to address. Um, I still it sucks because it’s like in hindsight, yeah, I should have gotten another pitcher at the trade deadline, but like considering what I just said about the offense, would that have saved us? Probably not. How many How many Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez starts the Astros lose down the stretch? That’s a lack of offensive production for the most part, minus the six or seven games where Framber was just not himself. But like that that’s when you’ve got those two guys on the bump down the stretch last month of the season with the playoffs on the line, you better stack some [ __ ] wins and they just didn’t do it. And that was a a lack of offense I blame more than anything. So there are things to take away for the Astros. And I think for some of the younger guys like Cam Smith, uh like Zack Cole, uh it’s there’s not that many of them. It’s an aging roster, no doubt, but like we’ve got younger guys who we need to see show some growth. And hopefully for a lot of these minor leaguers that that ended up not really being able to uh to produce a lot this season like Bryce, you know, or who whoever, like hopefully this was a learning opportunity for those dudes, too. They have time to grow in the offseason and can get better. Um, but you don’t blow this up, man. You you don’t blow it up. Go look at the roster on paper. There’s not that many guys leaving. Even if they lose Framber and Keratini, I I think I think we’re okay here. It sucks. It hurts not to be in the postseason. You love having those bragging rights like eight years in a row. Being there every season, seven straight ALCS appearances was so much fun. Four World Series appearances, two wins. I get it. You want to win the division every season. I get it. But the Mariners, frankly, stayed healthier and they did a better job of bolstering their lineup where they needed it at the trade deadline. And frankly, I can’t even blame Dana Brown for that because like what area of the lineup did not need to be bolstered? It was all of it. We needed more pitching. We needed more hitting. I think he did what he could with what he was given and we fell just short. And it is what it is. But, you know, like I said, feels kind of nice to have a breather. And again, I didn’t see this team in its current state doing much in the postseason anyway because there’s just some things that need to be tweaked or fixed or worked on. and offensive approach is definitely one of them and keeping guys healthy is definitely another. And if they can do those things this off seasonason, address some of these areas of concern, there is no reason these dudes shouldn’t be right back to competing for an AL West title next season, competing in the postseason in October and attempting to make another championship run. There’s no [ __ ] reason that shouldn’t be the case. And and and one more thing I’ll say for all the uh for the very negative Astros fans out there who have a lack of appreciation for what this team has been able to accomplish. Look at the Texas Rangers. They got a World Series win, they missed the playoffs two years in a row. A lot of teams win a World Series or get to a World Series or compete in the postseason for one season and then they’re, you know, not talked about for years as they have to rebuild because that was kind of all they had. It was a flash in the pan, lightning in a bottle. They’re not built for this to use the Astros hashtag for this season. By the way, how ironic is it that our hashtag for this season was built for this? This turned out to be 30 injured list stances. So, uh, but yeah, my point is it is very difficult to have longevity in any of the major big professional sports, major league baseball, hockeyy’s a little bit different. Uh, but the NFL, the NBA, it it is tough to stay on top. Baseball more than any other sport in my opinion. It is really, really tough to stay on top and to stay hot. And you look at teams like with the biggest payrolls like the Yankees and when they haven’t done dick in 20 years. The Dodgers have got a couple of rings, but like considering how much they’ve choked in the playoffs, even with their insanely uh beefed up all-star team of a roster, like it’s difficult to win in Major League Baseball. And the Astros, even with everything that went wrong this season, felt just one game short of at least having a shot in the postseason. I think we still need to remain extremely thankful for Jim Crane. I think we need to have the correct perspective on this team and what happened this season and and not just give up or act like this is some [ __ ] terrible situation where we’ve got bad management or ownership or not enough talent. Like I don’t think it’s any of those things, man. Sometimes life just takes a dump on you and that was kind of that as far as this Astros season. So I am excited to see what they do this offseason. the biggest off season in Astros baseball since 2016 in terms of really making sure they can steady the ship. I’m excited to see what happens and I’m excited to see the Astros play next year. That will do it for today’s show. Remember, we have new episodes dropping every Monday and Friday on the podcast platforms and YouTube.com/bangingthecan. If you are watching on YouTube right now, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, turn on notifications so you know every time we drop a new episode and leave me a comment with your thoughts on this Astro season, a rebuttal to something I said today or a take that maybe I didn’t touch on that you feel is important for us to acknowledge. Do all those things uh there on YouTube. It helps us out a lot. If you’re watching or listening on Spotify, give us a fivestar rating very quickly. That helps us a lot. If you’re on Apple Podcast, give us a fivestar rating and write a quick review about why you like our show. That helps us a lot. If you want to make sure this show is around for next season to talk more Astros baseball, please do all those things I just said and share the most unapologetic Houston sports show in existence with your friends and family. If you haven’t noticed, what I try to do here is bring a fans perspective to talking Astros baseball. I am not a former professional athlete. I am not a former member of a front office. I am not a mathematician. There are plenty of places you can go for the inside scoop on Astros baseball. I would direct you to guys like Chandler Rome, who I think does a fantastic job covering this team, as snippy as he can be on Twitter sometimes. That dude is awesome at his job. He’s written a few great columns about this Astros season already, which you can read on The Athletic. I highly recommend you do that. Support that dude and what he does for this Astros team. I think he’s great. Um, but share the show with your friends and family. Uh, because I want to be back next season to talk more Astros baseball. And in the meantime, we will be talking Texans. And when the NBA season starts up here in less than a month, we will be talking Rockets. We’ve got exciting things happening on both of those fronts. Follow us on social media at bangingthe. We’re on Tik Tok. We’re on Instagram. We’re on Twitter. We are on threads at bangingthe. I’m Ross Bolan. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagrambolan. I will be back next or this Friday. I’ll be back Friday to discuss the Texans matchup with the Ravens which is coming up on Sunday at noon. And I will talk about the Houston Rockets media day as well. Seeing Kevin Durant in a Rockets jersey for the first time. Until next time, Htown, stay down. [Music]

Ross Bolen discusses the Houston Astros missing the postseason for the first time since 2016, what went wrong this year, whether or not Dana Brown and Joe Espada should be on the hot seat, what the team needs for next season, Framber Valdez entering free agency, and whether or not this was the end of the golden era of Astros baseball.

Video Produced by Kade Orris
Presented by Bolen Media: ⁠⁠BolenMedia.com

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