ARLINGTON -- Having been on the 2011 Red Sox team that blew a nine-game lead in the American League Wild Card race in September and missed the playoffs, outfielder Josh Reddick said Sunday he doesn't feel the struggling Astros are headed for a similar fate.
Reddick said the Astros, who lost 16 of 27 coming out of the All-Star break and had seen their 18-game lead in the AL West shrink to 12 games entering Sunday, have to put their funk behind them and continue to push forward.
"It's probably a good thing we're getting it out of the way here in August," he said. "Another positive we can look at, the lead we have in the division -- we've given ourselves pretty much a bit of a cushion to deal with a struggle like this.
"I don't think anybody would want to deal with it and we're all ready for it to come to an end, but if you can look at one positive side, we played so well and have a huge lead that we can afford a scuff like this. Fortunately for us, it happened in August and not May where it would be magnified 10 times more."
Reddick, a nine-year veteran, is as outspoken as it gets in the Astros' clubhouse, but he said he's not one to call a team meeting to rally the troops. He said if fellow veterans Carlos Beltran or Brian McCann called a meeting, he would definitely speak up.
"I don't think we need a team meeting or anything," Reddick said. "We don't need any kind of motivation to get this more magnified. I feel like if we get a team meeting, it's making us focus on the struggle more, when in reality, we have to put it behind us and keep it behind us."
Reddick said it would have been hard for the Astros to keep up their 108-win pace they maintained for much of the season, but he knows the team will turn it around soon.
"It's something we've got to learn to get over and get through," he said. "We'll be fine. We're just tired of waiting. We need that one big hit, one big bloop to fall in for us and get us going, and then we'll be jumping on the train and moving it forward."