Everything Joe Espada said after Astros' season-ending loss in Game 2

The Houston Astros became the first team eliminated from the postseason on Wednesday, coughing up four runs in the eighth inning to turn a 2-1 lead into a 5-2 loss to the Detroit Tigers in Game 2 of their AL Wild Card series. It's the team's seventh straight home playoff loss, and it marks the first time since 2016 that Houston will not appear in the ALCS.

Suffice it to say, this is now how Joe Espada pictured his first year as manager coming to an end. Houston battled through plenty of adversity during the 2024 season, navigating injuries to Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez and seemingly every one of the team's starting pitchers but still managing to capture yet another AL West crown anyway. But the offense disappeared in October once again, and the high-priced bullpen imploded late to cut short the Astros' playoff run before it even began.

It's hard not to feel like this is something like the end of an era in Houston, with Justin Verlander and Alex Bregman potentially becoming the next two members of the team's championship core to move on. After the loss, Espada answered questions about his bullpen strategy and reflected on the team's season overall.

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Joe Espada reflects on season, talks bullpen strategy after Astros' Wild Card sweep

This might not be the message that Astros fans want to hear right now, but after the game Espada tried to maintain perspective on the season as a whole.

"It's tough," Espada said. "But I want our guys to be proud of how far we've come. Like it was a very challenging season, and we reached the postseason, something that's our goal every year."

There's definitely some truth to that; again, hardly any team dealt with as many pitching injuries as Houston did this season. But for a team that had reached the ALCS seven consecutive times, claiming that making the postseason is the goal feels at least a little disingenuous. It's understandable that Espada would be proud of the players he just spent a 162-game marathon with, but it's unlikely to pacify a fan base that expected much better — and that already had plenty of issue with some of Espada's decisions during the Wild Card Round.

Speaking of: Espada addressed his bullpen management late in Game 2, specifically the decision to use Bryan Abreu in the seventh and Ryan Pressly in the eighth despite Abreu looking like the far more effective pitcher pretty much all year long. Despite the numbers, Espada stuck by his guns, saying that the plan was always to use Pressly as Houston's setup man.

"You have to give credit to [the Tigers], they put some good ABs together, " Espada said. "They've been playing pretty good baseball since mid-August, so credit to them, they played well and they executed well."

Again, this is not what Astros fans want to hear after a crushing postseason exit. "That was the plan all along" is not an explanation, and everyone is still left to wonder why Pressly was given higher-leverage work than Abreu with the season on the line. (Never mind why Hader was used while trailing by three runs in Game 1, or why Espada brought Hader in early enough that A.J. Hinch wasn't locked into pinch-hitting a lefty for Spencer Torkelson.)

Espada certainly isn't on the hot seat after this performance, but he's also sure to come in for plenty of criticism over the days and weeks to come — criticism that these comments won't help to calm down.