Astros manager Joe Espada hasn't let any frustration show in the first 20 games of the season.
Astros manager Joe Espada was adamant and direct when asked if he were concerned about players turning on each other as the losses continue to pile up, with the latest delivered by the Braves in a three-game sweep at Minute Maid Park.
“Not in this clubhouse,” he said Wednesday.
The rookie manager has done a good job of not letting frustration over his team’s play show in his media sessions.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
The marathon-not-a-sprint cliché is legitimate in MLB. And the Astros have built such a winning culture that there is little fear in-house that they won't be good over the long haul.
Therein lies the hope for a turnaround, as opposed to a meltdown for a team that is off to a 6-14 start, its worst in eight years, and has been swept three times already.
It is only mid-April, and the Astros are just five games behind the Rangers in the American League West. Last year, the Astros trailed the Rangers by 6½ games in late June yet won the division.
Espada will remind his team there is no need to press this early in the season. But he has to figure out a way to get the Astros to lock in. They aren’t lackadaisical, just not dialed in, and certainly not playing up to their capabilities.
As Jeremy Peña says, if there is any team that has the mindset not to panic, it is the Astros.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
While the Astros are indeed led by veterans who have seen almost everything in baseball, not many of them have experienced this. The last time Houston was 6-14 through 20 games was in 2016, when the vast majority of their players had not made their major league debuts.
Peña, Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Yainer Diaz, Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers, Mauricio Dubón, Jon Singleton, Victor Caratini and Grae Kessinger have never even been on an Astros team that had a losing record through its first 20 games.
José Altuve is the only position player on the roster who has.
Altuve was lighting it up at that point in 2016, and he is playing even better this year, leading the Astros in batting average (.388), on-base percentage (.462) and slugging percentage (.675). His average and 1.137 OPS are the best in all of MLB.
José Abreu played on White Sox teams that started poorly. Most finished that way as well. Last year, the 11-year veteran’s first with the Astros, was only the second time in his career he was on a winning team.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Unlike Altuve, Abreu has been horrid. He is last on the team in every major offensive category and has been so off that “Yuli” has been trending on the social media platform “X.” Thirty-nine-year-old Yuli Gurriel, who started at first base for the Astros from 2017-2022, signed a minor league deal with the Braves last weekend.
Gurriel is not the answer. Is Abreu?
Espada says the back of Abreu’s baseball card suggests he will come out of the slump. The 2020 AL MVP and three-time All-Star has been too good for too long.
Getting eaten up by a vicious, unforeseeable spin of a ground ball as he did Wednesday against the Braves is one thing. Getting manhandled by every pitch thrown by every pitcher he has seen this season is another.
April is Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month, and Abreu, who is hitting .078 with just four hits compared to 17 strikeouts, is having the worst statistical month of his career. (Three of his worst five months have come since he joined the Astros.)
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
A running joke among some fans is that the back of Abreu’s baseball card says 2024 is the year he lost it.
Espada has to help him find it or look for an alternative. Soon.
Losing can be draining. While to many observers it feels like this has already been a long season, we’re just three weeks into it.
There is a lot of baseball left. The question is whether it will be good baseball. Right now we don’t know.
The Astros have been sloppy and inconsistent, with letdowns coming from many directions, even areas that were projected to be strengths.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Were their issues limited to a single aspect of the game, the solutions would be obvious. With across-the-board failures — starting pitcher one day, poor baserunning the next, lack of hitting the next, back end of the bullpen the next, etc. — one wonders if the team simply wasn’t ready to start the season when it came out of spring training.
The team bosses argue it was. They don’t argue that complacency might have something to do with the slow start.
A team that has had so much success and expects so much can fall into a rut of expecting good things to happen rather than making them happen. But these games won’t win themselves.
In spring training, the Astros talked about getting off to a good start. They talked even more about winning the World Series.
It’s a challenge to think one pitch at a time, and not look ahead, when you know every year October is calling. But Game 1 of the World Series is a full six months from now.
The Astros haven’t played good enough baseball for that to even be discussed. In this weekend’s three-game set at Washington, they’re just hoping to pick up a couple wins against a team projected to be one of the worst in baseball.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
