HOUSTON \u2013 Joe Espada didn\u2019t mince words, setting the standard and tone for the Houston Astros\u2019 season.<\/p>\n
The manager and his baseball team endured a slow burn of frustration last season as a series of injuries to key players ultimately derailed a once-promising campaign.<\/p>\n
Instead of their traditional postseason run, the Astros\u2019 streak of eight consecutive playoff appearances came to an abrupt halt. Seven American League West crowns during that span, seven championship series in a row, four pennants and two World Series champions sets an extremely high bar.<\/p>\n
And the ambitions are just as high for this season.<\/p>\n
The Astros want to capitalize on a deep, talented squad filled with power hitters, speed and a solid pitching staff headlined by ace Hunter Brown and newcomer Tatsuya Imai, an established Japanese star who joined the team in the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot letting 2025 define who we are,\u201d Espada said during spring training. \u201cLeave that in the past. We are a great team. We learned from the past, we\u2019re going to adjust and we\u2019re going to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advancing this season requires an upgrade of health and adequately replacing Framber Valdez, who left in free agency after operating as the opening-day starter the past four seasons.<\/p>\n
Now, that job goes to Brown. And having Imai and new pitching addition Mike Burrows should bolster the pitching rotation, a major initiative of the organization this winter to complement closer Josh Hader.<\/p>\n
If the Astros get a full season out of Yordan Alvarez, an accomplished slugger limited to 48 games last season after four consecutive 30 home-run years, that should provide a huge boost to the batting order.<\/p>\n
Carlos Correa enters the season with the Astros after rejoining them last summer in a three-team trade.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Pe\u00f1a has recovered from a fractured right ring finger, homering in an exhibition game against Triple A Sugar Land.<\/p>\n
Jose Altuve remains a constant stalwart as the most experienced player on the roster.<\/p>\n
And the Astros should get some pop from the lineup from Yainer Diaz and Isaac Paredes. Paredes dealt with injuries last season, too.<\/p>\n
The Astros should be a higher-scoring outfit.<\/p>\n
The Astros are looking to regain the American League West title after the Seattle Mariners won their first division title since 2001 last year, led by switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh and all-star center fielder Julio Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
\u2018The bar is always high,” Astros general manager Dana Brown told reporters during spring training. \u201cWe get criticized because the bar is high and we want to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The outfield needs to gain experience, but there\u2019s talent and athleticism with Joey Loperfido, Cam Smith and Zach Cole.<\/p>\n
The Astros don\u2019t like to hear any talk about a contender window closing. If anything, they believe they\u2019re built to win. If they don\u2019t, there could be significant changes. That includes the job security of Espada and Brown, potentially. Astros owner Jim Crane is accustomed to winning. He doesn\u2019t tolerate excuses, or losing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur job is to walk in everyday with a winning attitude,\u201d Espada said. \u201cWe are going to do whatever it takes to put ourselves in a position to win today and not talk about yesterday. This is just baseball, sometimes it\u2019s about who wants it more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always tell our players that we are the ones who have the hands up holding that window open. It\u2019s no one else. I always tell our team that the only team that can beat us is ourselves. When we stay within ourselves and we stay together and we do what we do best, we control the window.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aaron Wilson is a KPRC 2 reporter and click2houston.com<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Joe Espada didn\u2019t mince words, setting the standard and tone for the Houston Astros\u2019 season. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,5918,4],"class_list":["post-643907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-joe-espada","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116293530079667719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}