Astros Fall Out of Playoff Picture 72 Games After Winning the World Series

It’s not 2020 but the feelings are all the same. 72 games into the season and if the season ended today, the Astros would miss the playoffs. This is arguably worse than ending the season with a losing record three seasons ago because at least they still made the playoffs. Thankfully the Astros still have 90 games to remedy their season and chances are they’ll still make the playoffs but fans should brace for impact because the AL West is all but guaranteed. But how can this be? How can the defending world champions suffer such a drawback without any significant losses in the offseason? What happened?

Disaster struck right when the Astros reached the promised land. Before they could celebrate their victory the story already shifted to then-General Manager James Click. Rumors circulated that Click’s job wasn’t as secure as it seemed but surely the team that just won a World Series won’t do something as drastic as firing the guy that brought them there, right? The ghost-firing* of Click wasn’t only a surprise but also a statement: owner Jim Crane was eager to turn back the clock.

Manager Dusty Baker Jr and Click were seemingly in an implicit feud during each other’s tenure in Houston. In 2021, Click wanted Chas McCormick to play more often as he was overperforming Myles Straw but Baker Jr refused and erred on the side of seniority. Straw was here first and he’s had his time on the bench so with George Springer leaving, he’s the starter and Baker Jr had no intentions of shaking that up. So Click traded him for Phil Maton and Yainer Diaz, a trade we can now look back on and thank him for.

In 2022, Martín Maldonado was a liability. Well, he was always a liability at the plate but we let it slide so the older generation of fans can fantasize in their folk tales of him being some defensive legend. But with the bat of Carlos Correa missing, the Maldonado sized hole in the lineup was magnified. Click tried to trade for Willson Contreras who was one of baseball’s best defensive catchers at the time in exchange for Jose Urquidy whose most impressive trait is his team control. But Baker Jr shot the trade down. Click ended up trading for Trey Mancini and Christian Vazquez to carry the weight of Maldonado and Yuli Gurriel. Again Baker Jr refused to deviate from his regulars.

The house was divided and in order for it to remain standing, Crane needed to make a choice. He chose to throw back the front office and that offseason Baker Jr signed an extension and the two alongside Jeff Bagwell were at the helm. Baseball’s best team brought up by analytics suddenly went vintage. No one knew what they were going to do but in hindsight it shouldn’t be surprising that they overpaid for a reliever (giving relievers contracts past two years is frowned upon in the analytics community), signed a veteran (the expectations were high for Jose Abreu even from an analytical viewpoint back then but age was always a concern) and re-signed a player on the upper end of the age spectrum with injury issues (I mean this was just confusing regardless).

Now the Astros are suffering the consequences and then some. It’ll be foolish to ignore the role that injuries played this season. When your injured list includes names like Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez, you’re missing a chunk of talent. And numerous players on the Astros simply aren’t playing like they used to, the most notable being Abreu.

Kyle Tucker started slowly but he’s begun to trend back to last year’s production. The ultimate hope, of course, is that he trends back to where he was in 2021. Amongst the Astros in the chart, Jeremy Pena was the only one who saw improvements from last season but even then, a .722 OPS is rather fair.

Player performance is a slow issue. Fixing it will probably happen but it won’t happen overnight. The larger disease looming over the Astros is their insistence on running their ballclub the old-school way. There’s a cure for this disease but there’s no guarantee that they’ll take it. If anything, they likely won’t as doing so starts with firing Patient Zero and that’s Baker Jr.

Baker Jr was hired because the baseball world loves him and the Astros needed his publicity in a time of turmoil with the press. Well they don’t need it anymore. They don’t need his stubborn refusal to move on from the starter if the starter is past his prime. They don’t need his crusade against analytics. They don’t need him.

In many ways, Baker Jr has been a hidden thorn in the Astros’ side but none shines more than his favoritism for Maldonado. In the aforementioned shot-down trade the Astros would’ve acquired a significant upgrade behind the dish with comparable run-game numbers in Contreras. There was no reason to shoot it down other than Baker Jr knowing he’d either refuse to start Contreras which would’ve wasted the team control he had left or knowing he’d have to move on from his prized machete and use Contreras instead. And when Vazquez was acquired, he shared his struggles at the plate but that can be attributed to the lack of regular playing time as his season total in offense was still a nice increase over Maldonado’s. If only he’d been utilized more.

This year it’s far more inexcusable because not only is Diaz a far better hitter than Maldonado, he’s better defensively as well and Baker Jr is yet again smothering the youngster’s potential. Before the injury to Alvarez, Diaz had 80 plate appearances to Maldonado’s 151. And coming off a four-hit game, Baker Jr benched him in favor of starting Maldonado. It took an oblique injury to the best hitter on the planet for Diaz to finally see some regular time as the DH but even then he’s seemingly splitting that position with Corey Julks. It doesn’t make sense. A clueless manager could randomly pick a catcher every game and give Diaz a more appropriate sample behind the dish.

Baker Jr isn’t clueless. He knows what he’s doing. He knows his management is hurting the team and without the disguise of generational talent playing like they do, his decisions are suddenly in the spotlight of the baseball world and the current playoff picture is the perfect X Ray of the internal disaster within the Astros organization. A pill exists to start combatting the old-school disease but it’s a tough one to swallow.