So much has gone wrong for the Astros this year.
Three-fifths of their season-opening rotation is on the injured list, and that doesn’t even count two other key starters who haven’t thrown a single pitch in 2025. Jose Altuve has endured a wobbly start to the season, both offensively and defensively, following his surprising move to left field. Houston’s big free-agent acquisition, first baseman Christian Walker, entered Tuesday with a .619 OPS. And its best player, Yordan Alvarez, one of the most terrifying hitters in the sport, hasn’t played since May 2 due to a fractured hand. This is a team that lost Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker from last year’s team. Things should be falling apart.
They are not falling apart. The Astros, amazingly, are in first place in the AL West, three games up on the Mariners, and are runaway favorites to win their eighth consecutive division title (excluding the truncated 2020 season).
How in the world are they doing this? How is this happening? Here’s how.
Hunter Brown has emerged
For years now, the Astros have thought Brown could be their ace, to the point that he was a key part of their run to the World Series way back in 2022, pitching 20 1/3 innings in the regular season and 3 2/3 scoreless ones in the ALDS and ALCS. But he struggled in 2023 before taking a small step forward last year to become a rotation regular, particularly after he shook off a miserable start. Now he has made the leap.
Brown leads the Majors in wins with eight, but that’s just a symptom of the pitcher he has become. He’s missing a lot more bats and has upped his strikeout rate significantly, while adding pitches and honing the ones he already throws. Last month, MLB.com’s Brent Maguire dug in deep to what has made Brown into this new Brown, but the key is that he has simply gotten better, and more consistent, at everything he was already good at. With the injuries the Astros have had, they needed Brown to step up as an ace. He has absolutely done so.
The bullpen is fantastic
Obviously, with the losses of Tucker and Bregman, there were lots of worries for the Astros coming into the season. But the biggest one might have been the bullpen. You had closer Josh Hader and … a bunch of low-profile guys, waiver-wire castoffs and Rule 5 Draft picks. But the bullpen has turned out to be the team’s signature strength.
Bryan Abreu was the non-Hader pitcher you had the most faith in, and he has been excellent, but the real surprises have come from players like Steven Okert. He came in on a Minor League deal, has a 2.43 ERA, and has thrown more bullpen innings than anyone (29 2/3). There’s also the likes of Bryan King, Bennett Sousa and Shawn Dubin. And Hader is back to looking like the dominant pitcher he was in Milwaukee, putting up his best season of the last half-decade. There is no position group that’s more of a crapshoot than a team’s bullpen, and the Astros have come up aces so far.
Jeremy Peña is finally playing like the World Series MVP
You could make an argument that winning the 2022 ALCS and World Series MVP trophies might have been the worst thing that could have happened to Peña. It made people look to him like he was a superstar in the making, that he would just step into Carlos Correa’s old spikes and play exactly like him. That ignored the truth that he was a 24-year-old kid still figuring himself out, as we saw in two underwhelming seasons in 2023 and 2024.
But Peña sure has figured himself out now. He has been the Astros’ best player so far in 2025, hitting .316 and raising his slugging percentage almost a full 100 points from last year. He has established himself – perhaps built on the foundation of that postseason run – as one of the steadiest, most reliable Astros on the roster, to the point that Altuve has been openly advocating for Houston to extend Peña’s contract. During a time of much turmoil, it turns out that it’s Peña who is the rock of this team … the one guy you can count on day in and day out. And it helps, of course, that he’s hitting better than he ever has.
They’re using every piece of the roster
Let’s look at last Saturday’s 10-inning win over the Guardians, which really is emblematic of how the Astros have kept their collective heads above water this season. They used four relievers after Brown gave up one run in 5 1/3 innings. They used Cam Smith as a key defensive replacement for Altuve. Jake Meyers ended up scoring the tying run as the speedy extra-innings runner in the 10th. Rookie Jacob Melton came off the bench to draw a walk and score the winning run.
The Astros didn’t play a perfect game, but they were resourceful and found a way to beat a very good Guardians team, on the road, in a game in which their ace couldn’t make it out of the sixth.
“I think this is what you call a team win,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. “It took everyone, it took every pitch, every at-bat for us to win this game.”
It is becoming a theme of the season.
The rest of the division isn’t taking advantage
The Astros went 15-13 in May, which of course is hardly dominant but is still pretty impressive when you consider they were playing without Alvarez for all but one game during that stretch. But this still should have been a time for the rest of the division – particularly the Mariners and Rangers – to see an opening from the wounded Astros and take it. They didn’t. Both teams finished under .500 for the month and have opened up all sorts of new problems of their own.
The Astros are the only team in the AL West that had a winning record in May, success they have carried over to June, with a 5-2 record. In fact, since losing to the Mariners to fall 3 1/2 games back on May 23, Houston (10-4) has gained 6 1/2 games on sliding Seattle (4-11).
And, again: The Astros did that with a ragged rotation and no Alvarez. The time to take out the Astros was probably in May. That didn’t happen. If the Astros win another division crown, May will have been the reason why. They’re not going anywhere. As usual.