On May 20, the Houston Astros were 20-31. Sixteen players had cycled through the injured list. The rotation was a daily emergency. The AL West already looked out of reach.
They have gone 18-12 since. They have won three consecutive series for the first time this season. They are 38-43 at the halfway point, 3.5 games behind Seattle in the AL West, sitting fourth in the division behind the Mariners, Athletics, and Rangers—and very much alive.
The story of the first half is simple enough: The best offense in the American League propped up a rotation that spent much of the first half in survival mode, and the result was a team that kept finding ways to stay in the room. The story of the second half is more interesting, because the variables are finally starting to move in the right direction.
The Offense
Houston leads the AL in runs scored and ranks near the top of the league in batting average, on-base percentage, and OPS. The new hitting staff, installed after the dismissal of Alex Cintrón and Troy Snitker following 2025, deserves real credit for that. This is not a fluke.
At the center of all of it is Yordan Alvarez, who is having a season that belongs in a different conversation entirely. He leads the AL in home runs with 25, leads all qualified major league hitters in OPS and slugging percentage, and ranks second among qualified AL hitters in batting average and on-base percentage. He has drawn a majors-leading 10 intentional walks. He is the leading vote-getter among AL position players in All-Star balloting and turned down the Home Run Derby without a second thought. No AL hitter has won the Triple Crown over a full season since Miguel Cabrera in 2012. Alvarez has played his way into that conversation.
The outfield has been the soft underbelly. Houston’s outfielders entered this week with a combined .660 OPS, among the worst marks in baseball. That has not sunk the offense only because Alvarez, Christian Walker, Jose Altuve, and Isaac Paredes have carried more than their share.
The Rotation
Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, Ronel Blanco, and Lance McCullers Jr. have all missed significant time. Spencer Arrighetti held things together through May before hitting a rough patch in June. Peter Lambert has been quietly excellent. The rest has been managed chaos.
Here is what matters now: Brown is back. Javier is on a rehab assignment and appears on track for a late June return. Blanco is targeting July. McCullers makes his first rehab start this week. If even two or three of those pitchers return healthy and contribute, the rotation that faces the second half looks meaningfully different from the one that stumbled through April.
The Astros have not needed a great rotation to get to 38-43. But they will need more from it to get where they want to go.
The Path Forward
Seattle is 41-39. The Athletics and Rangers are each 38-41. No team in the AL West is above .513. Three and a half games with 81 to play is not a death sentence—it is an opportunity.
The Astros need the rotation to stabilize, the outfield to find one reliable bat, and Josh Hader to keep doing what Hader does. They need Peña healthy. They need Alvarez to stay Alvarez. If those things happen—and there is genuine reason to believe some of them will—this team gives itself a real chance to get back to the playoffs.
If they don’t, this was a season that showed what the offense can be, mourned what the pitching wasn’t, and left a lot of questions for Dana Brown to answer in the winter.
The second half starts now. Against all odds, the Astros are still in it.
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