For the first time since 2016, the Astros won’t be part of baseball’s postseason. Houston was officially eliminated from wild card contention yesterday, ending an eight-year run for the club that included two World Series titles, four AL pennants, and seven AL West crowns (plus, since it can’t be overlooked, the infamous sign-stealing scandal). The Astros won their season finale today to finish with a respectable 87-75 record, but a 3-6 record over their last nine games left Houston short of the playoffs.
The franchise doesn’t appear to be taking this near-miss lying down, as general manager Dana Brown told MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart and other reporters. The Astros are planning “a complete look at all of our operations,” with Brown saying “we’ll have a full assessment of what we’re doing in this offseason, and so we’ll take a look and really think about the entire operation.”
While teams routinely take stock in what they’re doing after every season, it will be particularly interesting to see how the Astros respond after their eight-year stretch of October success has been interrupted. This is the same franchise that parted ways with former GM James Click immediately after the 2022 World Series win, so owner Jim Crane is certainly no stranger to shake-ups even when things are seemingly going well.
Perhaps the most inevitable question is the fate of manager Joe Espada. Brown stated that Espada is “under contract” for at least 2026, providing some clarity on Espada’s status since the terms of his deal weren’t made public when Espada succeeded Dusty Baker following the 2023 campaign.
Brown stopped short of confirming Espada’s return, but said “as far as I’m concerned, Joe worked hard through this season….I haven’t sat down and gone through it yet, but from my initial thought process, Joe did a good job. He battled through all of the injuries and pressed a lot of the right buttons.”
Espada has a 175-148 record over his two years as Houston’s manager. The 2024 season saw the Astros win the AL West again, but their streak of seven consecutive ALCS appearances was ended when the Tigers pulled the upset and swept Houston in two games in the wild card round. With that early exit now followed by a playoff miss altogether, it might not be a shock if Crane decided a change was needed in the dugout, even if Espada’s overall record is quite solid.
Moving beyond the manager’s office, it isn’t out of the question that Brown himself could be feeling the heat. Crane is considered to be more hands-on than most owners in baseball operations decisions, and senior advisor and ex-Astros great Jeff Bagwell is known to have an influential voice within the organization.
Houston’s health woes were brought up multiple times by Brown, and it is hard to argue that even an average amount of injury luck would’ve greatly improved the Astros’ season. As it turned out, almost every player on the roster missed at least some time, and the Astros finished the year with a whopping 15 players on the IL. The pitching staff was particularly hit hard, and the position-player mix was finally depleted to the point of no return when Jeremy Pena and Yordan Alvarez were sidelined in late September. In Alvarez’s case, his ankle sprain came after he’d already missed close to four months recovering from a finger fracture.
“Losing Yordan and Peña for those last three series is what I really feel like hurt us,” Brown said, and the health issues as a whole were his “biggest frustration” with the 2025 campaign. “There’s no magic bullet. There’s nothing to point to to say, ’Oh, we got these many injuries because of this.’ We had freak accidents that happened. There’s been multiple reasons why we had a lot of injuries.”
It could be that the Astros will view their health problems as a reason to hold off on wholesale changes this winter, if there’s a sense that fewer injuries will just naturally mean better results next year. However, some of those injuries (i.e. multiple pitchers who underwent UCL-related surgeries) will linger into 2026 or even beyond, and there’s also the natural concern over how well the veteran core can continue to hold up. Returning to the pitching, longtime staff stalwart Framber Valdez is heading for free agency, so that represents another rotation hole and a lot of innings that will need to be filled if Valdez isn’t retained.
Yordan missed 90% of the season and hader missed the second half of the season . Figure out a way to keep them healthy especially yordan who is hurt as often as the sky turns blue & you’ll be back in the playoffs next year.
I’ll do the job for you: they suck
Better start the rebuild
Will Jeff Bagwell waste more of Jim Crane’s money this offseason!
Maybe Alex Bergman really is magic…
That is an interesting comment. A lot of the Sox players have commented on how Alex has not only assisted with their approach in the batters box but also just his general leadership.
I’m not sure Alex’s leadership overcomes Yordan missing 90% of the season, but maybe a game here or there and they make the playoffs again. I know most of us joke about the intangibles, etc, but there does seem to be some merit in some of these instances?
lol the Red Sox finished with 2 more wins than the astros and the Red Sox made the playoffs because of their pitching mostly, doubt bregman has any influence on that.
Astros had their rotation pretty much all hit the injured list plus their star reliever and best bat and still finished close. They don’t need much of a re look, just a tune up and some health luck
Is he related to Ingrid Bergman?
Seems pretty simple, they just had too many injuries to overcome this year. Get full seasons out of Alvarez, Pena, and Hader and I have no doubt this team goes back to the playoffs.
And Paredes.
They lose Bregman and Correa, Altuve is aging and injuries knocked out a few players. You can’t stay on top forever. There’s always next year.
Being cheap along with injuries to star players that somehow take months longer to heal than expected.
Conventional wisdom says houstoun should trade either walker or parades this winter. While that may help the payroll, i dont think either will bring the pitching that is needed. Which is why i think trading pena at his peak is the best plan. Correa can play short and pena is the only reasonable trade piece that would net us good controllable pitching. See if the dodgers would give up sheehan for him. Maybe the yanks tire of volpe and would trade schlitter.
As a Mariners fan, I can think of nothing better than Crane and Bagwell getting more involved in baseball decisions
It’s the Mariners time now
The rotation would be the biggest concern to me, but that’s not to say that the lineup isn’t a concern as well. Yordan is great when healthy, but he’s always had a hard time staying healthy. If he’s not healthy, that lineup really becomes average at best. Altuve isn’t getting any younger either.
As far as their pitching goes, I think they need 2 above average to good starters this offseason just to make up for the loss of Framber. He’s been an innings eater and a top guy for them for a long time.
The problem? This free agent class kinda stinks.