HOUSTON -- The last team to make the playoffs when they won the American League West title on the final day of the regular season on Sunday, the Astros were the first team to be eliminated from the 2026 postseason.
In a game that was emblematic of their season, the Astros nearly overcame a four-run first-inning deficit by hitting three solo home runs, but Chase Meidroth slugged a three-run homer off reliever Bryan Abreu in the sixth inning that sent the White Sox to a 7-3 win on Wednesday evening and a sweep of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series at Daikin Park.
“Baseball’s over. It sucks,” right fielder Cam Smith said. “I don’t like to get emotional about it, but I love these guys. We’ll be back.”
Inside a hushed clubhouse, players packed their equipment bags and exchanged handshakes and hugs. The Astros could look much different when they take the field next year.
“It’s tough,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said. “We set our goals in the beginning of the year. The goal was to win the division and get to the playoffs and make a run. We felt short of that.”
The loss was the Astros’ ninth in a row at home in the postseason and marked the second time in three years they were swept in the AL Wild Card Series (also by Detroit in 2024). That ended an up-and-down 2026 season in which Houston overcame a rash of early injuries and a 20-31 start to advance to the playoffs for the ninth time in 10 seasons, despite an 81-81 record and parting ways with general manager Dana Brown in August.
“I'm just proud of how we fought the whole entire time just to get to this point,” said Astros manager Joe Espada, who’s in the last year of his contract. “This looked completely different in May, and the way we got back and we fought back and we set our goal to win this division and we accomplished that. We wanted to play deep in October. We came short on that. But just the way our guys stayed together and were able to get this far, extremely proud of our team.”
Astros starter Hunter Brown couldn’t make it through the first inning, which put Houston’s pitching staff in a tough spot considering it had used eight pitchers in a bullpen game in Tuesday’s 6-3 loss in Game 1 -- two days after it used six pitchers in the regular-season finale.
Brown faced nine hitters, gave up four runs (three earned), five hits, walked one and was the victim of some poor defense. The Astros made a pair of errors behind him and Yordan Alvarez, starting in left field, couldn’t catch what appeared to be a playable fly ball.
“I feel like everything that could have went poorly did and I didn’t overcome the whole inning, really,” Brown said. “I felt like, looking back, it’s hard to say I don’t take anything back, but I feel like pitches that I threw I was confident and I threw them to the best of my ability. Just didn’t come out on the right end of it. Unfortunately, that’s the way it went, and they were able to slap a crooked number up there on the board.”
Brown needed 16 pitches to get one out, 30 pitches to record two outs and left the game after 36 pitches with the bases loaded and a 4-0 deficit. AJ Blubaugh, who started Game 1, got Sam Antonacci to ground out to escape the jam and give the Astros a chance to mount a comeback.
The Astros, who led the Major Leagues in home runs in the regular season, got back into the game with a leadoff homer by Peña in the first, a Statcast-projected 440-foot homer by Smith in the second and a solo homer in the fourth by Jose Altuve. Altuve’s 28th career postseason homer put him one behind Manny Ramirez for most all-time and cut the lead to 4-3.
After Astros reliever Peter Lambert threw three scoreless innings, the Astros threatened in the fifth. Lefty Anthony Kay came into the game and got Alvarez to line out to left with runners at first and second. After walking Isaac Paredes to load the bases, Kay got Altuve to fly out to right to end the inning. Alvarez went 1-for-8 in the series with a single.
“They made sure they came in with the objective of not letting Yordan beat them,” Espada said. “If I'm on the other side, I would have come in here with the same game plan, not letting Yordan beat you. But I thought they executed really well. We couldn't get our bats going. We had some opportunities but just couldn't get that big hit [0-for-9 with runners in scoring position in the series].”
The White Sox struck quickly in the sixth. Lambert walked the first two batters he faced in the inning, ending his relief outing after 48 pitches, and Meidroth slammed a three-run homer off an Abreu slider to put the White Sox ahead, 7-3. The Astros didn’t manage another hit and went quietly into an offseason full of questions about the club’s immediate future.
“I think this is overall a sad day for us,” Altuve said. “It’s hard to think about today’s game because it was the game that eliminated us. I’m still thinking about that.”