HOUSTON — Before their dreams died, the Houston Astros announced a lineup change, apt for a star-crossed season careening toward catastrophe. According to Baseball Prospectus, no team in the sport has lost more value to injuries. Few could field a better ballclub with players who reside on the injured list.
On Sunday, soreness in All-Star shortstop Jeremy Peña’s left oblique prevented him from playing in the most pivotal game of Houston’s plateauing playoff push. “We just decided it was best to give it a day, give it some rest and go from there,” he said. “I don’t feel too bad.”
In response, manager Joe Espada constructed his 148th batting order in the season’s 156th game, shifting longtime leadoff man Jose Altuve back into a familiar role. Earlier this season, Altuve asked Espada to move Peña to the top of the batting order. Thrust back there Sunday, Altuve accepted the assignment as only he can.
Ambushing is an art form for a player with 583 career first-pitch hits. Altuve’s latest landed inside the left-field foul line, breathing life into a ballpark silenced for so much of this seismic series.
The Seattle Mariners never trailed Friday or Saturday, turning Sunday into a must-win for Houston to stop Seattle’s takeover of the American League West. Altuve’s leadoff double delivered a chance to capture momentum. He never moved from second base while it was wasted.
“I think we did try our best,” third baseman Carlos Correa said. “They were just better.”
The Mariners’ three-day manhandling of the Astros made that apparent. Seattle led for 26 of the 27 innings played. The other, Sunday’s first inning, ended in a scoreless tie. The Mariners scored seven times in the second.
The next seven frames felt funereal. So many of the 41,893 fans in attendance stuck around for some sick reason, perhaps for one final glimpse of the 2025 Astros, a team currently out of the AL playoff picture and already bracing for a fate few before it have felt.
Houston’s eight-year reign atop the AL West is nearing an end. Sunday’s 7-3 loss left the Astros in a three-game deficit with six to play. For the Mariners, three of those are against the Colorado Rockies, one of the worst major-league teams ever assembled.
Because Seattle owns the tiebreaker, any combination of three more Mariners wins or Astros losses will hand the Mariners their first division title in 24 years. FanGraphs gives them 98.3 percent odds to win it.
“Not the ideal situation,” Espada said. “Not what we were wanting or expecting out of this series.”
Expectations each February are for the Astros to, at minimum, win a division they’ve dominated during this golden era. They have fulfilled them in every 162-game season since 2017. Seattle helped the pursuit last season by squandering a 10-game lead it built in mid-June.
That Mariners team still managed an 8-5 record against Houston. So did this one, complete with a cost-controlled starting rotation, productive deadline acquisitions and two bona fide superstars under team control through 2030.
Both of them, Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez, clubbed critical homers during a weekend that invited wonder about whether this is a changing of the guard instead of an impressive season.
Cal Raleigh rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run, his 58th of the season, off a thigh-high changeup in the second inning. (Thomas Shea / Imagn Images)
“We didn’t have much to counter,” Espada said after a series in which Houston was outscored 17-7 and witnessed its starting pitchers surrender 14 earned runs.
Sunday’s starter, Jason Alexander, yielded seven of them. Alexander embodies the entire Astros’ season. Houston claimed him off waivers from the Athletics in May during a never-ending search for starting pitching depth. When it dwindled to the point of desperation, the Astros summoned someone more known for sharing a name with a sitcom star than anything he’d done in sports.
Alexander morphed into something so much more than his “Seinfeld” sobriquet. Houston won 10 of the first 11 starts he made, a stretch in which Alexander posted a 2.89 ERA. He had not pitched in the major leagues since 2022 but still stabilized the starting rotation of a first-place team.
Alexander did so without anything near the stuff of his rotation-mates. As a result, commanding it is crucial. Sunday, he did not. J.P. Crawford crushed a hanging sweeper for a second-inning grand slam. Raleigh’s 58th home run came on a thigh-high changeup.
“The right pitches just didn’t get made when they needed to,” said Alexander, who secured just four outs. “I was trying every way I could to get out of it, minimize the damage and give the team a chance to win.”
To do so, Alexander would’ve needed to be near perfect. On Sunday, Houston’s lineup scored fewer than four runs for the 79th time in 156 games. It finished the series 2-for-20 with runners in scoring position.
Since attempting to address deficiencies during the trade deadline, the Astros are averaging 3.95 runs per game. Only four offenses have a lower OPS since the All-Star break than the .684 mark Houston has mustered.
No American League lineup sees fewer pitches per plate appearance, a flaw showcased by Sunday’s first inning. Isaac Paredes is supposed to solve it but is still recovering from the type of injury that has torpedoed this season. Paredes leads the sport in pitches seen per plate appearance.
In the first inning, Paredes popped out on the first pitch Seattle starter Logan Gilbert threw him. Correa preceded it with a three-pitch groundout. Jesús Sánchez followed with another, continuing his brutal introduction to an almost indifferent fan base.
Sánchez is hitting .198 since Houston acquired him at a trade deadline that is trending toward a flop from third-year general manager Dana Brown. One of his other acquisitions, Ramón Urías, hasn’t taken an at-bat since Sept. 13. Correa, it should be noted, is slashing .285/.342/.425 since his arrival.
“We have to go out there and win — that’s what we have to do better,” Correa said. “Go out there and figure out a way to win. It doesn’t matter if it’s pretty or ugly. At the end of the day, it’s about the ‘W’ in the end.”
The toll injuries have taken can’t be overlooked. Three-time All-Star Yordan Alvarez has appeared in just 48 games. Peña, Paredes and resurgent center fielder Jake Meyers all spent substantial time on the IL this season. But the depth of struggles beyond that must prompt some broader questions about philosophy or the type of hitters Houston employs.
“Injuries always are hard. We have Yordan, and he was hitting pretty good, and unfortunately, he got (his ankle sprained). He’s our best hitter. We miss him,” Altuve said. “Obviously, it’s going to be hard, but somehow in these last six games, we have to win games. We have the opportunity to make it to the playoffs.”
It is a good one, too. Six games remain against the dregs of this division: the transient A’s and the terrible Los Angeles Angels. Winning both series is the bare-minimum expectation — perhaps dangerous for a team that already didn’t meet one of those.
“They played better than us,” Altuve said.
(Top photo of Jose Altuve striking out to end the game: Tim Warner / Getty Images)
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