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For the first time since 2016, the Astros won\u2019t be part of baseball\u2019s postseason.\u00a0 Houston was officially eliminated from wild card contention yesterday, ending an eight-year run for the club that included two World Series titles, four AL pennants, and seven AL West crowns (plus, since it can\u2019t be overlooked, the infamous sign-stealing scandal).\u00a0 The Astros won their season finale today to finish with a respectable 87-75 record, but a 3-6 record over their last nine games left Houston short of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The franchise doesn\u2019t appear to be taking this near-miss lying down, as general manager Dana Brown told MLB.com\u2019s Brian McTaggart and other reporters.\u00a0 The Astros are planning \u201ca complete look at all of our operations<\/em>,\u201d with Brown saying \u201cwe\u2019ll have a full assessment of what we\u2019re doing in this offseason, and so we\u2019ll take a look and really think about the entire operation<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n While teams routinely take stock in what they\u2019re doing after every season, it will be particularly interesting to see how the Astros respond after their eight-year stretch of October success has been interrupted.\u00a0 This is the same franchise that parted ways with former GM James Click immediately after the 2022 World Series win, so owner Jim Crane is certainly no stranger to shake-ups even when things are seemingly going well.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most inevitable question is the fate of manager Joe Espada<\/strong>.\u00a0 Brown stated that Espada is \u201cunder contract<\/em>\u201d for at least 2026, providing some clarity on Espada\u2019s status since the terms of his deal weren\u2019t made public when Espada succeeded Dusty Baker following the 2023 campaign.<\/p>\n Brown stopped short of confirming Espada\u2019s return, but said \u201ca<\/em>s far as I\u2019m concerned, Joe worked hard through this season\u2026.I haven\u2019t sat down and gone through it yet, but from my initial thought process, Joe did a good job.\u00a0 He battled through all of the injuries and pressed a lot of the right buttons<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Espada has a 175-148 record over his two years as Houston\u2019s manager.\u00a0 The 2024 season saw the Astros win the AL West again, but their streak of seven consecutive ALCS appearances was ended when the Tigers pulled the upset and swept Houston in two games in the wild card round.\u00a0 With that early exit now followed by a playoff miss altogether, it might not be a shock if Crane decided a change was needed in the dugout, even if Espada\u2019s overall record is quite solid.<\/p>\n Moving beyond the manager\u2019s office, it isn\u2019t out of the question that Brown himself could be feeling the heat.\u00a0 Crane is considered to be more hands-on than most owners in baseball operations decisions, and senior advisor and ex-Astros great Jeff Bagwell<\/strong> is known to have an influential voice within the organization.<\/p>\n Houston\u2019s health woes were brought up multiple times by Brown, and it is hard to argue that even an average amount of injury luck would\u2019ve greatly improved the Astros\u2019 season.\u00a0 As it turned out, almost every player on the roster missed at least some time, and the Astros finished the year with a whopping 15 players on the IL.\u00a0 The pitching staff was particularly hit hard, and the position-player mix was finally depleted to the point of no return when Jeremy Pena<\/strong> and Yordan Alvarez<\/strong> were sidelined in late September.\u00a0 In Alvarez\u2019s case, his ankle sprain came after he\u2019d already missed close to four months recovering from a finger fracture.<\/p>\n \u201cL<\/em>osing Yordan and Pe\u00f1a for those last three series is what I really feel like hurt us<\/em>,\u201d Brown said, and the health issues as a whole were his \u201cbiggest frustration<\/em>\u201d with the 2025 campaign.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s no magic bullet.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing to point to to say, \u2019Oh, we got these many injuries because of this.\u2019\u00a0 We had freak accidents that happened.\u00a0 There\u2019s been multiple reasons why we had a lot of injuries<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n It could be that the Astros will view their health problems as a reason to hold off on wholesale changes this winter, if there\u2019s a sense that fewer injuries will just naturally mean better results next year.\u00a0 However, some of those injuries (i.e. multiple pitchers who underwent UCL-related surgeries) will linger into 2026 or even beyond, and there\u2019s also the natural concern over how well the veteran core can continue to hold up.\u00a0 Returning to the pitching, longtime staff stalwart Framber Valdez<\/strong> is heading for free agency, so that represents another rotation hole and a lot of innings that will need to be filled if Valdez isn\u2019t retained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Could changes be afoot in Houston after missing the postseason? Visit MLB Trade Rumors for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[733,998],"class_list":["post-100348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","tag-dana-brown","tag-joe-espada"],"yoast_head":"\n