Houston Astros drew 0.0 local TV rating on Monday against Los Angeles Angels

At this point in time, it is no secret that the Houston Astros aren’t exactly a competitive team in Major League Baseball. For example, the Astros garnered a league-“leading” 111 losses during a brutal 2013 season, and with the collection of talent they have assembled, it is tough to envision Houston making a run at the 2014 playoffs. Still, there is a good deal of optimism surrounding the team’s future, and Houston is generally regarded as a bit of a “baseball town”.

However, Monday night’s television rating isn’t going to do anything to help that performance, as the game between the Astros and the Los Angeles Angels reportedly drew a 0.0 Nielsen rating. Here is a snippet from the report, courtesy of David Barron of the Houston Chronicle.

"Nielsen’s Houston ratings report for Monday shows a 0.0 rating for households, adults 25-54 and men 25-54 for the afternoon Angels-Astros game at Minute Maid Park. The Angels won the game 9-1.The Nielsen report, of course, doesn’t mean that no one among the approximately 500,000 or so households in the Houston area with access to CSN Houston was watching the game.Nielsen uses a limited number of TV set-top meters to measure viewing habits – 579 were use at some point during the day Monday, according to the report. None of them tuned in to the Angels-Astros game; thus, the 0.0 rating."

Frankly, this is borderline incredible given that it the season is less than a week old. As pointed out by Barron above, this doesn’t mean that no one was watching the telecast in Houston, but regardless of that, this is a damning figure for the team, especially given the fact that you would expect increased interest early in the season.

The Astros aren’t going to be good this year, but they deserve better than this from their local fan base.