The Houston Astros spent the first part of the season looking like a team built on the wrong foundation. The offense was doing its part, with Yordan Alvarez reminding everyone he’s the best hitter alive, but the pitching staff was a mess and had them buried in the AL West basement before Arbor Day. By Mother’s Day, national writers had nearly written the season off.
Now the story looks different. It’s July, the bats have cooled off, and somehow Houston has kept stacking wins anyway. For an Astros team trying to claw back into the race, that’s not a bad development at all.
June was ugly for the lineup on paper. Houston finished the month ranked 19th in wRC+, 21st in average, 20th in OBP, 17th in SLG, and 15th in runs. For a club that was supposed to win with its offense while the rotation was broken, those are the kind of numbers that usually lead to a lost month and a deadline sell-off.
Instead, the Astros went 16-11.
They were outscored in June, sure, but that’s only because the offense wasn’t carrying the load. The wins still came, and they came enough to pull Houston back into the fight.
The Astros entered July just two games out of first place in the AL West, and at one point they were even sitting in a playoff spot. That matters, especially when the lineup was in its worst stretch of the year.
The flip side is what makes this so interesting. When Houston’s bats were carrying the club early on, the pitching staff couldn’t get out of its own way and the Astros went 12-20. That was the nightmare version of this roster: the strongest unit had to be nearly perfect, and it still wasn’t enough.
June was different. The pitching started to look like the group the Astros thought they were getting when the winter came around.
Hunter Brown returned and made three June starts, finishing with a 2.45 ERA. Tatsuya Imai wasn’t flawless, but he only had one bad outing all month, and Houston scored nine in the first inning in that game.
Peter Lambert kept dealing. Josh Hader came back and has been nearly untouchable.
Even more encouraging, the bullpen - which opened the year as one of the worst groups in baseball - posted the third-best ERA in the sport in June.
That’s not just a run of lucky breaks or a few timely hits. That looks like a staff beginning to settle into the shape the front office wanted.
Offenses go cold and hot all the time. Pitching, especially when it involves a rotation and bullpen getting healthy, tends to be more real when it shows up.
And that’s why the June slump on offense may actually be the best sign Houston has gotten all year. This isn’t a team that suddenly lacks hitters.
Alvarez is still playing like an MVP. Jeremy Peña and Isaac Paredes both had huge Junes.
Christian Walker, Cam Smith, Yainer Diaz, and Jose Altuve all have track records that suggest better days are coming. Smith is the exception in terms of resume, but he brings upside and has already shown the ability to get hot.
Put it together and the picture gets clearer. Houston went 16-11 in June after going 15-14 in May, and it did it while the offense was stuck in a rough patch. If the bats simply get back to where the personnel says they should be, and the arms keep holding up, the Astros could finally start clicking on both sides at once.
That’s the point here. The floor rose in June. The ceiling hasn’t even been tested yet.
None of that wipes away the concerns. The Astros are still under .500 more than halfway through the season.
Winning while being outscored doesn’t usually hold forever. The back of the rotation still has questions.
Dana Brown still has a job to save. And the front office has to decide whether to buy into a division that looks there for the taking.
But it’s hard to ignore a team that keeps winning in different ways. Houston survived the pitching collapse.
Now it has survived the offensive slump. That kind of flexibility can make a club a lot more dangerous than one that needs everything perfect all at once.
The June numbers may look bad at first glance, but for the Astros, they might be pointing to the toughest part of the season being behind them.
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FanGraphs still gives Houston a path, but it is a narrow one, with the club sitting at 33.1 percent to reach the postseason and only modest odds to catch the division leaders. The next chance to make up ground comes against Tampa Bay, and the opening game will carry extra attention not just because of the opponent, but because the Astros need stability from a rotation that has had its share of uneven stretches lately. [Read more 🡒]