AL West Preview – Astros Prognosis, Orbiting the Drain

The Astros aren’t dead yet.

It felt like the AL West would run through Houston forever. The Astros won seven consecutive division titles in non-COVID seasons, collecting three pennants and two World Series’ trophies between 2017 and 2024. Few teams had ever been more successful, and few teams had ever been more relevant. They were a mix of intoxicating tropes: the classic Worst To First, the contemporary Pioneers In Economics, and the forever elegant I’m Not Aware Of The Allegations. From doubted to destined to despised.

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To denied, in 2025. The Mariners yoinked the throne from behind over three nights in Houston. Their buttocks now shape the seat, paranoid thoughts of usurpation already taking hold. Who should dare challenge their new title?

Well, perhaps still the Astros. They enter 2026 in the death throes of dynasty, but still contained within their hulking frame. They are projected 12th in the majors by FanGraphs Depth Charts, well behind the Mariners, but still above average, and very much in striking distance.

The lineup is familiar. Jose Altuve is in the compiler stage of his Hall of Fame career, continuing to post solid but diminishing seasons, hoping to amass just enough value that future voters might look the other way. The same could be said for Carlos Correa, who was returned to sender (in a fair amount of bubble wrap) at the last trade deadline. Yordan Alvarez is back in action — his injury saga perhaps the difference in the AL West in 2025 — though he’s relinquished his status as the best left-handed hitter in baseball. Jake Meyers continues to roam the space where Tal’s Hill once lay, and Isaac Paredes continues to pepper the Crawford Boxes. Jeremy Peña should join them shortly. Really, it’s not that bad. No, seriously, the stain isn’t noticeable at all, don’t even worry about it.

The pitching is less familiar. This is not the vaunted staff of Astros’ past, nor even the tepid encore of 2025. Hunter Brown and Bryan Abreu are great, but everyone else is hurt or unknown or lost to free agency. It’s tough to see the upside; it’s very easy to see the downside. The thing about pitching, of course, is everybody’s down side is the same.

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Premonitions have followed the Astros their entire competitive cycle. They’ve had projection lulls before and found new life. But where 2025 was the first year they weren’t obvious favorites, 2026 is the first year they’re projected below .500. It’s not clear where they plan to find more wins.And so they teeter, and so the totter, on the precipice of oblivion. Nobody knows what comes next. -RB

2026 FanGraphs Depth Charts projections: 80.5-81.5, 3rd in AL West, 35.0% playoff odds

2026 PECOTA projections: 85.0-77.0, 2nd in AL West, 53.3% playoff odds

If it all goes right

The Astros were a joke in 2012. But they weren’t laughing; they were planning. When their rise began in earnest in the summer of 2015, many of us still found it hard to take them too seriously. But by 2017, nobody could deny that they were a force to be reckoned with. For years after that, they were impossible, aggravating, and ever-present. They seemed wrapped in teflon, with scandal after scandal outraging so many of us but resulting in essentially no consequences.

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Then, there was a moment. For one moment, it felt like it might finally be over. It was still a close race, but the Mariners came storming in and took the division crown, leaving the Astros out of the playoffs. Yet they finished 87-75, led the division deep into the summer, and weird circumstances intervened in ways that felt more like luck than justice. Certainly the 2025 Mariners division win was thrilling, but they were an imperfect vehicle for hope. We got the result we wanted, but not the reckoning. The Astros lost, but retained their core talent and hardly conceded.

Their comeback shouldn’t have felt as gobsmacking as it did. They were always lurking, and clearly a threat. But even though it was an obvious possibility, it was a little too horrible a thought to engage with. We wanted a little too badly to just move on.

But wanting it isn’t enough when the enemy has amassed too much power. Their 23-win April was immediate, horrifying, and inevitably powered by the guys who never had to face the music: Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa each had the best month of their careers, totaling a nauseating 16 home runs and 68 hits between them. The whole season was over before you could even catch your breath. The rest of the summer was a tour of vengeance, with Yordan Álvarez and Jeremy Peña taking the lead. Yes, the 2025 Astros had lost, but injuries to their core played too big a role to ignore in retrospect. Peña’s fractured rib wasn’t a reckoning, just a setback. It didn’t stop him from coming right back and putting up a full season at the 135 wRC+ he had in his partial season. No one was safe. Julio, robbed of four hits in the same game; Muñoz, taken deep three times to turn wins into blown saves; Woo, taking a 105-mph comebacker off his hand.

We’d seen it all before of course, and there was some emotional armor from that experience. But where worse came to worst was that it all looks so permanent. Hunter Brown, the heir to Verlander, opened Game 1 with six perfect innings before settling into a two-hit complete game, utterly dismantling the Dodgers—the best resistance the rest of MLB could put up. The extension he signed the day after he hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy will keep him in Houston for an additional six years. For a moment, it seemed like it might be over, but it hasn’t even started.

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We’ll carry on. The Mariners will too, continuing to put up their best. Because what other choice is there? But it’s the Astros’ world again, as it’s been for a decade, and after this, it feels like it will be forever. —ZAM

If it all goes wrong

When did the Roman Empire end? Was it Marcus Aurelius’s death, which ended the run of the Five Good Emperors? Was it the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome went through 26 emperors in 50 years? How about the death of Theodosius I, when the Eastern and Western Empires permanently split? Or perhaps when Aetius was murdered, leading to the Vandals sacking Rome within a year? By the time the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a Germanic chieftain, there was nothing left of Rome to fall. It was a climactic event, but things had been over for a while. It clarified what in retrospect should have been obvious.

With the Houston Astros falling to fourth place in 2026, the question is the same: when did it end?

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The franchise once famous for taking nameless minor leaguers and turning them into stars just couldn’t pull it off anymore. Gone were the days of replacing Carlos Correa with Jeremy Peña. Instead, the franchise was replacing Kyle Tucker with Cam Smith. Smith’s rookie year was easy to write off, especially given how young he was. But his 41 wRC+ in the second half was the signal, not the noise, and by the 2026 All-Star break, he was back in AAA, where he carried a strikeout rate north of 30%.

The franchise once boasted the most fearsome rotation in all of baseball, with a front three of Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Zack Greinke. But 11 guys made more than five starts for them in 2025 and it only got worse this year. A mid-June labrum tear for Hunter Brown shattered the rotation into a mishmash of spot starts and bullpen days. NPB transplant Tatsuya Imai was the only player to make at least 20 starts, and while Joe Espada was grateful for the innings he ate, Imai’s ERA approached 5. Lance McCullers Jr. finally pitched again, but only for four innings before heading right back to the IL. It was a team that really could have used Framber Valdez, but they let him get scooped up by Detroit on a deal they could have afforded if they hadn’t spent so much on Christian Walker.

The last members of the dynasty—Peña and Yordan Álvarez—were the bright spots. Álvarez stayed on the field for a career-high 150 games, and Peña put together a second consecutive 5-WAR campaign. But the old hands showed their age, with Altuve batting under .250 for the first time in a full season and Correa having an on-again-off-again relationship with the IL and offering streaky performances when available.

It was so clear that these Astros were going nowhere that they did something they haven’t done in more than a decade: sell at the deadline. Mariners fans had a thrilling weekend when it looked like Seattle might be the team to get their best chip, Bryan Abreu—a moment to savor the true transition of power. But it’s hard to blame the Mariners for not wanting to give up the reported ask of Michael Arroyo for a rental. Ultimately, since Abreu hit free agency at the end of the year, Houston only got one backend top-100 prospect for all their trouble. So Mariners fans can take comfort in not having helped restore Houston’s farm system.

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For four offseasons in a row, the AL West mantra has been: the Astros are both very good and also worse than they’ve been since 2014. Eventually, that worse and worse and worse boiled over. Headed into 2027, the new line is: the Astros are not very good. It’s been headed this way for a while, but only now is it finally clear. It’s finally time for the autopsy. —ZAM