Astros humiliating playoff ticket promotion draws immediate backlash from fans

The Houston Astros playoff odds have dropped dramatically since the beginning of September. Heading into the final month of the season, the Astros' chances of making back to the MLB Postseason for the ninth year in a row were sitting at 88.4% according to FanGraphs. Those odds have now dipped to 43.9%.

The Astros were just embarrassed by the AL West's basement-dwellers, the Athletics, and their hopes of winning the division have all but disappeared. While their chances of playing in October are a little less than 50%, Houston's chances to win the AL West are sitting at 0.1%.

But despite all the signs suggesting otherwise, the Astros social media team decided to send out a post onto X that read, "Tickets for the Wild Card and Division Series are on sale now!" Oh boy! That didn't go over too well with the Astros fanbase.

Astros humiliating playoff ticket promotion draws immediate backlash from fans

The replies to the post, as you can imagine, did not offer much support. In fact, many Astros fans seemed to think that Houston's social media team (or their marketing department) didn't have a good understanding of the facts. The replies ranged from, "Just let me buy tickets for next season already," to "Who's going to tell them?"

For those unaware of how the playoff bracket actually works, the Astros must secure either the No. 4 seed or higher to host a home playoff game during the Wild Card Series. At the moment, the Astros trail the New York Yankees — who hold the No. 4 seed — by five games in the AL Wild Card chase. The Astros do not hold the tiebreaker over the Yankees, and thus cannot host the Wild Card Series.

In order to host the American League Division Series, not only would Houston have to actually get into the playoffs, but they'd have to win a postseason series on the road in order to host Game 3 and (potentially) Game 4 at Daikin Park.

The Astros staff who put this sale and promotion together are simply doing their job, but it's one of those read the room situations, isn't it? This would kind of be like opening an ice cream shop in Canada during the month of January — it just doesn't make sense.

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