Astros fans placing blame on injuries are ignoring the real 2025 nightmare

During the final weekend of the regular season, the Houston Astros' slow fall out of the postseason picture reached its apex when the Astros were bounced from contention thanks to the Guardians’ walk-off win over the Rangers. It placed Astros fans in the unfamiliar territory of having no playoff baseball to follow, and instead, they were left wondering what went wrong.

While injuries played a huge part in the Astros' struggles, some recent comments from Carlos Correa shed some light on the real problem that may be right in front of everyone’s face. 

The Astros' lack of minor league depth was a huge problem in 2025

In a new story for The Athletic (subscription required), beat writer Chandler Rome got some insight from Astros brass into why Houston fell short this year. And the story came back to the same theme — the Astros don’t have nearly enough minor league depth. 

“The organization’s top two prospects are a left-handed hitting outfielder, Jacob Melton, and a second baseman, Brice Matthews. Both have taken more than 300 plate appearances in Triple A and made unimpressive big-league debuts this season. That [general manager Dana] Brown acquired their facsimiles afterward highlights what multiple people, both inside and outside the organization, maintained throughout the season: no position player prospects within Houston’s barren farm system are ready for prominent roles on the major-league team, which forces the front office to spend in free agency to address deficiencies,” Rome wrote.

Both Jacob Melton and Brace Matthews were forced into major league action this year thanks to the Astros’ injuries, and neither one of them did anything special. Melton hit .157 in 78 big league at-bats, while Brice Matthews hit .167 in 47 at-bats, though he did slug four home runs in that span. 

And things look even more bleak after them. After those two, the Astros don’t have an infield prospect with a major league ETA of 2026, per MLB Pipeline. Caden Powell (who finished the season at Single-A) is the next closest prospect with an MLB ETA of 2027. 

It remains to be seen how the Astros will fill that depth. They were buyers at the trade deadline and brought in veterans in Jesús Sánchez, Ramón Urías, and Correa while dipping into the (little) minor league depth they have. 

“It’s part of baseball,” Correa said of the team’s injuries. “That’s where the depth of an organization comes into play.”

Right now, there’s not a lot of depth. While the Astros could always consider trading a veteran like Issac Paredes, Christian Walker (who has a no-trade clause that limits trades to six different teams) or Josh Hader, they don’t have a major league-ready replacement for any of them. 

It’s baseball’s worst catch-22. 

Even if the Astros’ injury situation won’t be as bad next season (in part because there’s no way it can be worse), it’s hard to see a world where they’re a contender if they don’t spend the offseason addressing their depth issues.