Houston Astros struggles continue

Since the conclusion of the non-waiver trade deadline, the Houston Astros are 3-6 and have been outscored 60-44. Pitching woes continue to plague the team as they march towards October.

Sometimes getting a huge divisional lead extinguishes a team’s competitive fire. This can be especially true in baseball, when there are games every day and the wear and tear of the season’s grind definitely starts catching up.

Injuries caught the Astros earlier in the season, with Collin McHugh just making his return from the DL while Dallas Keuchel, after missing nearly two months, has also returned. Lance McCullers has taken up residence on the disabled list, and it appears that Jeff Luhnow has made the same mistake two deadlines in a row in an effort to not repeat his previous mistakes.

Back in 2015 when the Astros were taking the world by storm and eventually wrapping up a Wild Card spot, Luhnow paid a hefty price for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers, sending Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips and Josh Hader to Milwaukee as the big pieces in the deal. Santana has started making a name for himself with the Brew Crew, Phillips has been up and down as he awaits a full time spot opening up and Hader has been stellar out of the bullpen, giving the fans a glimpse of what to expect when he presumably joins the rotation next season.

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The following offseason Luhnow traded for young Phillies closer Ken Giles, who struggled mightily in his first season with the club but has turned things around this season, albeit still not reaching the potential of the player that he was in his first two seasons. Thus far that deal hasn’t bit Luhnow as hard, though giving up Vince Velasquez, Mark Appel and three other pieces for a reliever seems odd with how unreliable relievers are from year to year.

At last year’s deadline, the Houston Astros traded away Scott Feldman and Josh Fields and days later McCullers landed on the DL, ending his season and Keuchel didn’t make a start in September. That’s the team’s two best starters not being available down the stretch and ultimately the team fell five games shy of a wild card spot. They sure could have used some extra depth.

After this year’s non-waiver deadline, McCullers again landed on the disabled list, but this time it wasn’t a couple of days later, but a mere hour after the deadline that the team announced that their second-best pitcher was headed to the shelf.

Keuchel had just returned from the DL days before deadline, and after tossing 78 pitches in three innings, it’s easy to err on the side of caution and say that’s just one bad start and he hasn’t pitched since the beginning of June, but with the benefit of hindsight, which includes his ERA on the season ballooning from 1.67 to 2.87 in the span of three starts, maybe the team should have done more.

Collin McHugh has likely been bumped by Brad Peacock on the playoff depth chart, but his 5.32 ERA isn’t going to help ease the burden on the bullpen in the lead-up to the postseason, while their ERA has risen month to month since the beginning of the season. They have the relief arms, they just don’t have the starters that are keeping those arms fresh. Deadline addition Francisco Liriano is supposed to help that cause a bit, but he has totaled 1 2/3 innings pitched in three outings, so that hasn’t been the case just yet.

If you take their -16 run differential over the span of the nine games since their effectively quiet at the deadline, that means they’re losing by 1.77 runs per game, and if you take out their two blowout wins of 14-7 and 16-7, that’s a run differential of -4.57 runs per game. Yes, this is skewed both due to the small sample size and their two biggest blips on the radar being wiped away, but it also shows that if they aren’t scoring double-digit runs, they’re being dominated themselves, and that’s not exactly a winning formula come October.

Over the past two games the Chicago White Sox, sans Jose Quintana, Melky Cabrera and a bullpen, have beaten the best team in the American League and have roughed up both Keuchel (4 IP, 10 hits, 8 ER, 3 BB, 2 K) and McChugh (5.1 IP, 9 hits, 7 ER, 3 BB, 5 K). On the bright side, the bullpen has been solid in their relief work.

Things like this happen in baseball every year, where the worst team beats up on the best team, because that is just part of the fun and unpredictability of the sport. But with the team’s lack of moves, their struggles as a whole and McCullers on the DL, this has the feel that something more could be up.

Next: Cleveland adds thump to their lineup

The Astros are going to have to wake up from their slumber at some point soon. The Cubs went through a lull last season and everything turned out just fine, and this Houston club has the tools to achieve the same outcome.

But if the malaise that has seemingly engulfed this club continues for the remainder of the regular season, not only will their aspirations of playing deep into October fade, but more and more questions about how Luhnow handled this deadline will begin to arise.