Houston Astros missing the MLB playoffs for the first time since 2016.
The team overcame departures throughout its run, but ran out of gas in 2025.
Astros won World Series titles in 2017 and 2022.
They fired manager A.J. Hinch and dynasty architect Jeff Luhnow after a grim sign-stealing scandal, chased off Luhnow’s successor, James Click, after winning a World Series – and qualified twice more for the playoffs.
But the bill has finally come due for the Astros, whose empire finally crumbled.
The Astros will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2016, a fate sealed Sept. 27 when the Cleveland Guardians eliminated them with a walk-off win.
It’s an outcome that won’t produce many teardrops beyond Texas.
Springer and Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve still get booed wherever they go, the shouts of “Cheater!” likely to follow them on the road until their playing days end. Yet put aside the beyond-the-pale cheating scandal, and the Astros still provoked ire in the industry.
Luhnow’s disruption (hey, it was the early 2010s) of the Astros specifically and Major League Baseball in a broader sense went down poorly in the industry, accompanied as it was by a side of smarminess. Exacerbated by the fact the Astros just kept on winning, and winning, and winning.
But owner Jim Crane finally met his match this winter.
The man who nearly tanked the organization after sending Click on his way and then signing veterans like Jose Abreu to disastrous contracts looked like he pulled off yet another corporate downsizing this winter.
The Astros played footsy with Bregman, yet never came forth with an offer commensurate with the two-time champion’s value – particularly in the clubhouse, as the Red Sox have happily discovered this season.
And rather than mess around with a soon-to-be free agent he might not have had any intention of retaining, Crane traded slugging outfielder Kyle Tucker a year early, ostensibly fetching replacements for Tucker in rookie Cam Smith and Bregman in veteran Isaac Paredes.
They were not up to the task.
Smith flashed stretches of brilliance and should have a bright future, but ultimately posted a .668 OPS and nine homers. Fine numbers for a 22-year-old who will get better, but not necessarily if you’re hoping to stretch a playoff streak toward a decade.
Paredes, playing for his fourth team in five seasons, was in fact a fine match with the left field Crawford Boxes, smacking 20 home runs with an .811 OPS. But injuries limited him to 101 games.
Did someone say injuries? For the second consecutive season, Houston’s playoff hopes were jeopardized by odd and poorly explained mishaps. This time, it was All-Star DH Yordan Alvarez, sidelined for four months with a hand injury that was later revealed to be a finger fracture. When he finally returned, a nasty ankle sprain on Sept. 15 ended his season.
In 2024, it was Tucker who was mysteriously sidelined for three months, before it was finally reported that he suffered a shin fracture. The Astros won the AL West but were forced into the wild card series. Hinch regained some measure of redemption in sweeping the Astros out of the playoffs.
While they were eliminated on the penultimate day of this season, it symbolically ended Sept. 2, when ace Framber Valdez threw a pitch that struck catcher Cesar Salazar in the chest.
It immediately smacked of an intentional cross-up, Valdez frustrated immediately after giving up a grand slam. He denied it was intentional.
Regardless, Valdez is a free agent and, after that episode and Crane’s hesitance to pay top dollar to retain his own players, surely looks like a goner.
They’ll still have a 36-year-old Altuve and a legit ace in Hunter Brown and Correa, reacquired in a Minnesota salary dump, and All-Star Jeremy Peña on the left side of the infield.
But they’ll also, for the first time, take the field as just another team hoping to win 84 to 88 games and grab a playoff spot, rather than the swaggering, powerful, deep, sometimes dastardly Astros of the past.
Those guys are almost all gone. And so is that era, probably for good.