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4 things that went horribly wrong for the Astros that cost them the ALCS
There is no shortage of places to point fingers at after the Astros' brutal ALCS loss to the Rangers.
Unfortunately for the Houston Astros, the trend of the road team winning every game in the ALCS did indeed hold firm as the Astros were annihilated by the Rangers 11-4 in Game Seven ending their 2023 season. Cristian Javier only recorded one out despite starting the game, Adolis Garcia was the villain once again, and the Astros simply couldn't get anything going on either side of the ball.
At the end of the day, the Rangers just played better and they do deserve credit for bouncing back from a crummy regular season finish to blast their way to the World Series even if it is painful to say that out loud. However, there were a lot of poor performances and self-inflicted wounds from Houston that helped Texas' cause and made the Astros' goals all the more difficult to achieve.
Here are 4 things that went horribly wrong for the Astros that cost them the ALCS
In a lot of ways, the playoffs are really hard to draw too many conclusions from because it only takes one bad series to cost a team everything. This Astros team is still insanely good on the whole even if they looked tired and defeated by the end of the ALCS, but this is a results oriented business and Houston just didn't get the job done when it counted. Some of that can be explained away by pointing to this being a small sample of seven games, but that doesn't change the fact that some guys failed to step up when the Astros needed them to.
Let's take a look at some of the ways things went wrong for the Astros in the ALCS that ultimately cost them another World Series appearance.
Kyle Tucker was a complete no-show in the ALCS for the Astros
In the postseason, teams need their best players to show up. Period. Sure, their will be unlikely heroes sometimes and those stories are fun to tell, but teams like the Astros need their stars to step up in the big moments to be able to win playoff games the vast majority of the time. Houston did get some big time production from guys like Yordan Alvarez, Jose Altuve, and Jose Abreu. However, one guy that didn't do much at all is Kyle Tucker.
After posting an .886 OPS during the regular season and nearly getting a 30/30 season, Tucker was almost nowhere to be found in the ALCS. In seven games, Kyle had just just four hits including two doubles, failed to drive in a single run, and was a complete non-factor for the most part although the five walks he drew were nice at least.
This was actually indicative of Tucker's performance overall this postseason as Tucker slashed just .150/.292/.225 during the 2023 postseason and that was after struggling last year during Houston's World Series run as well. Comparing his last couple of playoff runs to the strong work he did in 2020 and 2021 is like night and day.
While the Astros are still likely to try and extend Tucker before he hits free agency after the 2025 season, his struggles in the postseason of late should at least give the Astros pause before they hand him the megadeal he is clearly trying to get.
Astros starters simply did not pitch well or enough for Houston to win a long series
The playoffs are a different animal altogether from the regular season. While teams are fairly willing to let starters try to work through jams in the regular season, there is often a very quick hook in postseason games given the importance of each and every game. There is merit to the practice, but starters still need to do their jobs, throw meaningful innings and give their teams a chance and the Astros' rotation simply fell short of that in the ALCS.
Justin Verlander was completely fine here as he threw at least 5.2 innings in both of his starts in the ALCS and averaged three earned runs in each start. Certainly not dominant, but completely reasonable overall. However, Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, and Jose Urquidy all had at least one start in the series where they failed to make it out of the third inning with Javier's implosion in Game Seven being particularly noteworthy.
The results themselves were bad enough as you never want to be in a hole as you are pulling your starter from the game, but the rotations' struggles also put a huge strain on the Astros' bullpen over the course of a seven game series. Astros relievers had to throw a LOT of innings against the Rangers and by the end of the series, some guys like Bryan Abreu, Hector Neris, and others very clearly were not as crisp as they were earlier on in the postseason. Plus, dipping into the bullpen when they, too, are struggling in the postseason (more on that in a bit) isn't exactly a recipe for success.
The bottom of the Astros' lineup were free outs in the ALCS
Roster depth is very often king in the postseason. While we mostly think of pitching depth being particularly important given how much a deep rotation and bullpen can impact the outcome of a series, lineup depth matters a lot as well and the bottom of the Astros' lineup was a legitimate problem in the ALCS.
Aside from Kyle Tucker's aforementioned postseason struggles and Michael Brantley not exactly tearing the cover off the ball, Houston's #8 and #9 hitters, Jeremy Pena and Martin Maldonado, were pretty terrible in the ALCS. Pena, who was fantastic during the 2022 postseason, had just four singles in the ALCS while Maldonado recorded just a pair of hits while getting the lion's share of the playing time at catcher.
Especially in playoff games, opposing teams are going to be very attentive to areas of the lineup where they can use lesser relievers and still get easy outs and in the ALCS, that was Pena/Maldonado which made game-planning against Houston just that much easier for the Rangers. The Astros were also particularly stubborn about Maldonado as they have Yainer Diaz on the roster who is far and away the superior hitter (and defender at this point), but they still kept running Maldy's ghost out there in big spots.
No team is going to have studs from top to bottom in their lineup, but the Astros definitely needed more from these guys to be able to give them the best chance to succeed.
Houston's bullpen got torched when it counted
Bullpens have outsized importance in the playoffs as teams are much more aggressive in pulling starters at the first sign of trouble. This should have been relatively good news for the Astros as their bullpen had the sixth best bullpen ERA in all of baseball in 2023. However, some troubling peripherals and a lack of usage meant that they ranked just 18th overall in fWAR this season and that proved to problematic in the ALCS.
Make no mistake about it: the Astros bullpen was simply not good enough against the Rangers. They gave up eight runs in Game Seven alone and that was after giving up five runs in Game Six and struggling in Game Three as well.
Part of the problem may have been that the bullpen was not used to be used this much this season as the Astros' bullpen had the second least innings pitched in 2023. One would think that that would have meant that they were well-rested for the postseason, but Houston's relievers had to play a LOT in the ALCS and they certainly looked like a group that was pretty wiped by the last two games of the series.
Again, Texas played their part in this as well. The Rangers continued to refine their approach and make adjustments to Houston's gameplan which paid off for them as the ALCS progressed. Great teams make plays when it matters and unfortunately, the Rangers did while the Astros failed to close the deal.
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