BREAKING: Shocking Disaster in Houston Astros over Head coach’s Decision.

Life’s been good for the Houston Astros for an awful long time. Arguably American major pro sports’ first truly successful “tank” job, the club has been a dynasty by virtually any standard. They won a pair of World Series in 2017 and 2022, but that is only a secondary measure of their greatness. The piece de resistance – seven, count ‘em seven consecutive ALCS appearances. To do that you have to be good enough to withstand the 162-game grind for even straight seasons and then possess the lineup strength, pitching depth and all-around moxie to win multiple rounds of playoffs. These guys, even after potentially taking some “shortcuts” along the way, have got the goods.

Given their awful start – they lost 20 of their first 30 games to stand dead last in the AL West, behind even the moribund Oakland Athletics – they’re going to need to turn things around in a big way to keep their ALCS streak going.

Before we dig a little deeper into where they stand presently, let’s briefly discuss where they’ve come from. They averaged a mere 54 wins per season from 2011-13, and after the first of those three seasons Jeff Luhnow replaced Ed Wade as General Manager. The tank was on, as the club tore things down to the studs, gamed the amateur draft, and to their credit hit on a high percentage of the premium draft picks generated. Hello, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, George Springer, Kyle Tucker and others. By 2015, their sub-.500 days were over, save for a fluke 29-31 record in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when they still managed to reach the ALCS.

The Luhnow-led club broke new analytical ground, to be sure, but let’s not forget the scouting successes along the way. The previous regime had signed an undersized second baseman named Jose Altuve way back in 2007. Almost a decade later, after things had begun to turn around in earnest, they swung a minor trade for a raw 19-year-old slugger signed only a month-and-a-half earlier by the Dodgers. His name? Yordan Alvarez. Just a year before that they inked a couple of older, relatively inexpensive pitchers out of the Dominican Republic for pennies on the dollar. A couple of guys named Cristian Javier and Framber Valdez. Yup, this is about a whole lot more than analytics.

And while the Astros have had to make some difficult choices along the way, allowing former core pieces like Correa and Springer to depart via free agency, they have carried on. They didn’t miss a beat as they cycled from Luhnow to fellow numbers guy James Click in the GM chair, and then made a major philosophical shift in transitioning long-time scout Dana Brown into the role in January 2023. In the short term, it honestly didn’t matter who was sitting in that chair. But as time passes and big picture decisions have to be made, will the Astros remain at the top of the league?

The jury is obviously still out, but the early 2024 returns certainly haven’t looked good. Offensively, the main strugglers in the Astro lineup have been Bregman and 1B Jose Abreu. The latter was signed during the 2022-23 offseason, but BEFORE Brown was hired. You can’t pin this one on him. Honestly, I really liked this signing when it happened. Sure, he was aging, but his batted ball metrics looked good, he used the entire field and made plenty of contact for a power hitter. A Chris Davis-esque collapse didn’t appear to be in the cards.

Offensively, Bregman has always been a guy who has done it with mirrors. He makes tons of contact but doesn’t hit the ball hard, though he has been a master of selectively pulling in the air for distance. It also didn’t hurt that his stroke was tailor-made for Minute Maid Park. And here we are a month into the season with Abreu batting .099 and the two combining for a single home run.

Somehow, someway, offense overall has not been the problem for the Astros this season. They lead the AL in batting average and are 2nd in OBP and SLG. They haven’t hit well with men on base, and currently stand only 8th in runs scored, but they still have the ingredients to have one of the better offenses in baseball.

Pitching – well that’s been another story. They currently rank 13th in the AL in ERA, and have walked the most hitters in the league while ranking 12th in strikeouts. They’ve been saved by another low-dollar Dominican signee from just a year after Javier and Valdez, Ronel Blanco. Otherwise, their staff has been ravaged by injury and ineffectiveness. Justin Verlander (shoulder soreness), Javier (neck discomfort) and Valdez (elbow inflammation) have each missed time, but should make the rotation whole before long. Hunter Brown and J.P. France have been utterly ineffective after pitching well last season. And it hasn’t helped matters that closer Josh Hader mixed in one of his occasional lost months in April.

So is this merely a slump or is the dynasty on life support? A preponderance of evidence points toward the former. Their offensive fundamentals should begin translating to more runs before long. Tucker’s been great, Alvarez could catch fire at a moment’s notice, and Bregman simply can’t be this bad. Hader should be fine, and a healthy rotation would move them to at least the middle of the AL pack in run prevention.

But we are going to find out a lot about Dana Brown and his front office in the coming months. Convincing Abreu to accept a demotion to High-A ball to find his stroke is a positive sign. It’s not every day that a former MVP willingly accepts an assignment to the nearly fan-less Florida State League. Brown and France – or at least one of them – needs to find their groove as well, and the major and minor league coaches involved, as well as the Astros’ analytic team, will be on the spot here. They also need top prospect Joey Loperfido to step up and fill some of the power void created by the ineffectiveness of Abreu and Bregman. Overall. the club’s prospect depth is nowhere near what it was back in the tanking days.

I’m not writing these guys off for 2024 just yet. I still think they’ll make a strong run at a playoff spot, though their rough start leaves them little room for error. Long term, I’m not so sure. The new management team is still living off of the nucleus they inherited. The Houston Astros are clearly on the downward slope, and decisions made in the next year or so – including Bregman’s approaching free agency – will determine whether their next cycle will be similarly successful.