Astros' struggles somehow avoid MLB execs' attention, but the reason why is depressing

The Houston Astros fans have been disappointing their fans for a while now. The club's 31-35 second-half slide resulted in their first playoff-less October since 2016. If that wasn't bad enough, the Astros have stumbled out of the gate with a 12-20 record that has them tied with the lowly Los Angeles Angels for last place in the AL West. The closing window seems as if it has been slammed shut.

With a veteran-laden roster, Houston wasn't anticipating being this bad this early. But when MLB.com polled a group of baseball executives about the league's biggest disappointments so far, the Astros were nowhere to be found.

The five clubs receiving votes were the New York Mets, the Boston Red Sox, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Seattle Mariners, all deserving of the disappointment label. The Astros missing the cut is not some sort of silver lining; instead, it's a damning indictment that no one outside of Houston is surprised that they're this bad.

The MLB world isn't surprised by the Astros' plight, and that's a really bad thing

In a way, the Astros are worse than expected. During spring training, Mike Petriello of MLB.com placed them in the ".500 zone" in his MLB tier rankings. The point there was that it was hard to tell what direction Houston was heading. Now, .500 looks like a dream, and this executive survey indicates that the rest of the league did know what direction the organization was heading, and that direction was down.

To an extent, it's not a surprise. The starting rotation has been a mess, and we aren't surprised. With the plethora of options that battled for rotation spots this spring, what was clear wasn't that the Astros had a ton of depth, but rather, that they were soaked in uncertainty.

Of course, it should have been expected that guys like Lance McCullers Jr. would disappoint, but the X-factors that could have changed the complexion of the unit have both gone bust. Coming in with just 99 career innings pitched, Mike Burrows was more of a wild card than the team would've liked to admit. He's been bad this year, which, while disappointing, wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

The real issue has been Tatsuya Imai, who looked totally lost before going on the IL. Then it came to light that he's struggling to adjust to life in the U.S. in all facets. Now, he's blowing up in rehab starts. Of course, there's a reason why he had to settle for a contract that was nearly a third of the original $150+ million he was predicted to land. Again, it seems like the rest of baseball knew something that the Astros didn't.

Things have been more stable on offense, but with putrid pitching, Houston still doesn't have enough firepower to win slugfests. There are pleasant surprises like Christian Walker, but there have been equally stunning disappointments, like Isaac Paredes. Overall, the lineup has been mostly better than expected, but Yordan Alvarez has done almost all of the heavy lifting.

Finally, even after making changes to the training staff, injuries are still a major problem. Again. At a certain point, you have to just recognize that there are issues of durability with certain players when the same problem arises once again. That's not an easy fix.

All in all, it seems that most of the rest of the teams around baseball knew the Astros were declining. It's just that Houston either was too obtuse to see what was in front of its face or was far too optimistic to not realize that without major personnel changes, they'd encounter the injury bug once again. With that, disappointment was a guarantee, not a question.

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