Astros Offense Has Been a Disaster to Start 2022
By Matt De Saro
While the Houston Astros are off to a Soldi 5-4 start to the season, their offense has looked all kinds of bad in their first nine games. Aside from scoring 13 runs in their second game of the season, the Astros haven’t scored more than four in any game this season.
Houston is the 23rd ranked team in the MLB in runs scored, 23rd in RBIs, and hitting just .208 as a team. If this continues, there is no way the Astros maintain a winning record. So, just what is going on in Houston?
Well, the easy answer is simply that their best players are not hitting. Winning teams are built to suffer through periodic slumps to their best players. But, teams don’t generally do well when all their best players are struggling. It is not an encouraging sign that the five players with the most at-bats have some of the worst batting averages on the team.
Let’s take a look at a few of the biggest offenders this year for Houston and their current batting averages.
Houston Astros Top Hitters Are Struggling
- Jose Altuve | .156
- Yordan Alvarez | .143
- Aledmys Diaz | .182
- Yuri Gurriel | .167
- Kyle Tucker | .121
It’s pretty clear to see why this team’s offense is sputtering. But, why do they keep winning games? That is partially due to their pitching, and partially due to what kinds of hits they earn.
Despite a terrible team batting average, the Astros rank seventh in home runs. This has been enough to keep the Astros over .500 this season. But, the short series against the Seattle Mariners was eye-opening.
Houston took the second game thanks to the epic return of Vintage Justin Verlander in a 4-0 shutout. But, between Game 1 and Game 3 of that series, the Astros scored just three runs combined. That is bad enough, but Houston gave up a combined 18 runs in those two games as well.
Taking a look at this from a betting pespective, the Astros are just 1-4 against the spread in their last five games. They didn't cover once against Arizona and only once against Seattle. While eking out wins is fine from an MLB standpoint, it doesn't help us try to cash run line bets.
The Astros are a good team and should be able to pull out of this slump sooner than later. However, the longer they fail to hit consistently, the hole Houston is digging just gets deeper.