Yes, the window is closed. The Astros didn't get unlucky. They finished 81-81, got outscored by 32 runs across a full season, backed into a division title because nobody else in the AL West could clear .500 either, and then lost both games of a best-of-three to the White Sox. A .500 team is wearing a division champion's hat only because the room it was in happened to be empty.
Start with the numbers that can't be spun. Houston set the record for the fewest wins to reach the postseason in a 162-game season, and became the first team in MLB history to make the playoffs without a winning record over a full year. The final AL West standings read like a warning label: Astros 81-81, Rangers 80-82, Mariners 76-86, Athletics 64-98, Angels 62-100. Not one team in the division finished above .500. Not one had a positive run differential. Houston was the best of a bad lot, and the best of a bad lot still has to go play real teams in October.
They did, on Wednesday, and it went about how you'd expect. Hunter Brown, the ace, got two outs before Joe Espada had to go get him, with the defense already handing the White Sox a four-run first inning on two errors. Brown had been 6-0 with a 2.39 ERA in six career starts against Chicago before that. Houston clawed back with three solo home runs, which is a lovely way to lose, and then Chase Meidroth put a three-run shot on Bryan Abreu in the sixth to make it 7-3 and end it. That was the ninth straight home playoff loss for a franchise making its ninth October trip in the last ten years. Three years ago these games went differently. They don't anymore.
A team that's reached the playoffs in two of the last three seasons is still doing better than most of baseball, and one early exit isn't grounds for a teardown. Except Houston didn't reach the playoffs the way good teams do. They climbed out of a 20-31 hole, which was genuinely impressive, and then needed to win their last two games of the year just to touch .500. They haven't won a playoff game since Game 5 of the 2023 ALCS. The Rangers, whom they lost that series to, went on to win the World Series and have a more recent postseason win than Houston does. The core that terrorized the American League for the better part of a decade is visibly older and visibly worse, and the results have caught up to the roster.
Jim Crane is who's actually responsible. In the middle of the season, with his own team tied for first and sitting under .500, the owner parted ways with general manager Dana Brown and installed himself over baseball operations "through the transition period." The day-to-day got handed to a trio of assistant GMs and senior adviser Jeff Bagwell, a Hall of Fame bat with no GM experience and a history of public skepticism toward analytics. Houston heads into an important offseason with no permanent GM, a committee holding the wheel, and a manager in Espada whose contract is up and whose future is unresolved. You don't fix a declining roster by firing the person in charge of fixing it and replacing him with a conference call.
Cam Smith said it after the sweep: "Baseball's over. It sucks. I don't like to get emotional about it, but I love these guys. We'll be back." I believe he means it. I don't believe the people running the team have given him a reason to be right. The Astros spent years as the thing the rest of baseball organized its hatred around. That takes being good. They aren't anymore, and the man who made sure of it sits in the owner's box, doubling as the general manager.
