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Right now, the Houston Astros are not a good baseball team. Even during their best stretches in 2024, the Astros have been mediocre at best and they currently sit six games below .500, nine games out in the AL West, and 6.5 games out of a wild card spot.
As good as this team looked on paper coming into the season, underperformance and injuries have taken a huge toll, and one of the best teams from the last decade has looked old and ordinary.
When a team plays this poorly, a number of things have to go wrong and that certainly has been the case in 2024. Injuries have certainly played a big part, the offense has been inconsistent, and Houston's pitching staff as a whole has been the sixth-worst in all of MLB by fWAR this season. That is not exactly a recipe for success.
However, some Astros fans have somewhat correctly been pointing out lately that Houston's struggles actually go back to last year's ALCS where the Astros melted down and lost to the Rangers.
Team hasn’t shown an ounce of dog since this happened. pic.twitter.com/PBc3PGPZpr
— 🏆🔥 ⚾️ 3RD PLACE COCKENHEIMER ⚾️🔥 🏆 (@astros_dude) June 11, 2024
Was the Astros' collapse in 2023 ALCS a warning sign Houston ignored?
While this is obviously an oversimplification, these fans aren't wrong. While Altuve's walk-off homer in Game 5 of the ALCS looked like an absolute back-breaker of a postseason moment, the series went downhill in a hurry. Instead of the Astros seizing the moment, Texas would go on to demolish the Astros in Houston over the next two games to advance to the World Series where they won handily.
The Astros' starters in those two games were Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier which certainly is interesting given Valdez's inconsistency this season and Javier going down with an season-ending injury. However, some fans think that Dusty Baker's retirement after the season may have been the actual cause of the Astros' crummy 2024 season.
Dusty Baker’s Astros were dawgs. Who is even missing from this Roster other than Brantley and Maldy?
— Black Beth Dutton 🥃 (@Oh_Katie_Babie) June 11, 2024
While the coincidences here are pretty curious, the unfortunate truth is that this is an Astros team that made some notable mistakes (cough Jose Abreu cough), is getting older, and has had some rotten luck come their way. Sometimes, it just isn't your year and 2024 is feeling more and more like it is slipping away.