Most Current Playoff Look: 2024 (Misplaced ALWC to Tigers, 2-0)
Simply barely lacking the playoffs one season doesn’t a chilly streak make. However it’s laborious to take a look at the 2025 Houston Astros and resist the tempting query: Is the period of Astros dominance over? Has the stalwart, implaccable power of the AL West, the guardian of the ALCS gates, actually develop into simply one other group?
Contemplate the personnel that introduced this Houston franchise to dominance within the mid 2010s. The entire high leaders have moved on—GM Jeff Luhnow (out of MLB), Supervisor A.J. Hinch (Tigers), Scouting Director Mike Elias (Orioles), and Farm Director Pete Putila (Braves)—in addition to many if not most of their lieutenants. A few of these departures have been casualties of the group’s dishonest scandal, however extra have been victims of the membership’s success, employed away for promotions.
Maybe it’s affirmation bias to assume one dangerous 12 months is an indication of the tip instances. However the change in management is nonetheless placing. With expiring contracts within the entrance workplace and dugout on the finish of the 2026 season, the turnover might effectively kick into a brand new stage.
Not like the mid-2010s group, the present group will not be being fed with a decade of high-round draft picks. It’s now a farm system we rank twenty seventh finest among the many 30 groups. They used a franchise-record 36 totally different pitchers in 2025, and had solely two pitchers cross the 90 IP mark. And but it was their offense that doubtless harm them extra, scoring the Twenty first-most runs in baseball, whereas posting their worst offensive numbers (101 DRC+) since 2020. The large sluggers have been harm; the younger hitters have been uninspiring.
However regardless of all of it, this was nonetheless a successful group in 2025, a group simply three video games out of first place and excluded from the ultimate Wild Card spot on a matter of a tiebreaker. There’s lots of inexperienced on that graphic up there. It’s a group we, as soon as once more, forecast to be a successful membership, a group within the thick of the playoff hunt. They’re now not the dominant power of the American League, true, however pity the group that appears previous them on the schedule.
