WEST SACRAMENTO -- The Astros were in a tough spot early in the season. They were 20-31 in mid-May, they had a handful of star players on the injured list, including ace Hunter Brown, closer Josh Hader and star shortstop Jeremy Peña and were scrambling to find players to fill out their roster on a weekly basis.
“Every team deals with adversity at times, and that was just ours,” Brown said.
If you’ve paid attention to the Astros over the last decade, you know never to count them out, no matter what they’re dealing with and especially in a division where no team finished with a winning record. Like it or not, the Astros are back in the postseason after bashing the Athletics, 9-0, in the regular-season finale Sunday after at Sutter Health Park.
The Astros finished 81-81 -- one game ahead of the Rangers, who fell to the Twins, 6-4, on Sunday to seal Houston’s ninth trip to the postseason in 10 years -- but it was good enough to win their eighth American League West title in 10 seasons. The golden era of Astros baseball rages on.
A decade of dominance that culminated with four trips to the World Series and two championships looks to add another memorable October. There wasn’t a person in a champagne-soaked batting cage Sunday who didn’t believe another long postseason run was possible.
“That’s all that’s left,” Peña said. “There’s no other option. Now, we go.”
The Astros will play host to the White Sox -- a team they dominated in the regular season -- in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series on Tuesday at Daikin Park (5 p.m. ET/4 p.m. CT on Peacock and NBCSN). Houston will be looking to snap a seven-game postseason home losing streak that dates back to 2023.
After missing the postseason by one game last year when they lost a Wild Card tiebreaker to the Tigers, the Astros left nothing to chance in the season’s final weekend by outscoring the A’s, 21-2, in the final two games. The win was sweetest for manager Joe Espada, who’s in the last year of his contract with no guarantees about his future.
“Any other team would have folded, but these guys chose not to, man,” he said. “It’s about the characters on this team; they didn’t quit. They fight and stay together. I think about the different players contributing -- young players, older players, guys who had been [designated for assignment], guys that came from the Minor Leagues -- there’s so much contribution from everybody.”
Behind Yordan Alvarez, who slammed a career-high 42 home runs and won his first AL batting title by hitting .316, a breakout campaign from right-hander Peter Lambert, the return of Brown, Peña, Hader and right-hander Hayden Wesneski from the IL, the Astros surged during the summer and took over first in the AL West by going 11-1 from July 20 to Aug. 2.
The one constant was Alvarez, the slugger who was limited to 48 games last season because of a hand injury and a sprained ankle. He got off to a torrid start and was named the AL Player of the Month for March/April and again in July and will likely be the AL’s MVP in 2026. He finished with 106 RBIs, 105 runs, 109 walks and a Major League-best 1.033 OPS.
“Last year, we missed the playoffs by one game and I missed a lot of the season, so I feel very proud of myself to be able to stay healthy this season and be able to help the team get back in the playoffs and win the division,” Alvarez said.
The end of the season wasn’t without turmoil, either. The club parted ways with general manager Dana Brown on Aug. 24 following a disappointing 3-6 homestand, but responded by going 8-5 during a stretch of 13 consecutive games without a day off. That included a series win at Yankee Stadium and winning three of four games from the White Sox in Houston. Houston went 5-2 against the White Sox this season.
“It’s the beauty of this game,” said first baseman Christian Walker, who belted his 29th homer of the season Sunday. “It’s the beauty of what we do. There’s always a chance. We learned that last year, how long the season is, and to take the division like this is big.”
Down the stretch, the Astros got big contributions from rookie outfielder Lucas Spence, who hit four homers in the series against the A’s, and rookie pitchers Ethan Pecko, Miguel Ullola, Logan VanWey and Tatsuya Imai, who combined with Lambert and Bryan King for a five-hit shutout Sunday. Heroes came from the most unlikely places.
But the Astros of the past decade have always been about the stars. Peña is a former World Series MVP, Alvarez is the game’s best hitter, Jose Altuve is one of baseball’s greatest postseason performers and Hader is on the short list of the best closers.
Now that the Astros are back in the playoffs, they’ll go as far as their star players take them.
“The goal at the beginning of the year is to get into the postseason, and for us it came down to the last game of the season,” Peña said. “It was a tough year -- a lot of ups, a lot of down, a lot of injuries -- but we made it through.”