The Astros rebounded some from a really bad August to post a record of 11-13 for the month. It was a little disheartening to see the Astros lose 11 of their last 16 games of the season. It was similar to 2013 when Houston lost the last 15 games of the season. Jose Altuve kept breaking out the hits and multi-hit games as he passed Craig Biggio's single season hit record finishing with 225 hits on the season besting Biggio's 210 by 15 hits. He also passed Kevin Bass' record of 61 multi-hit games in a season adding on last game to that total in the season finale bringing his season total to 69. Add to that a first ever batting title by a Houston Astro and you could say Jose had a season for the books in 2014. He also led either all of baseball or the AL in total hits, stolen bases, batting average and several other categories. Altuve had a bit of a slump in 2013 which caused him to miss out on his second consecutive All Star game after he debuted in the summer classic in 2012. He made some adjustments to his hitting over the off season that he continued to work on during spring training and it resulted in a season for the ages.
Chris Carter had one whale of a summer leading the bigs in hitting up until a giant slump hit in September. After hitting .340 or better for much of July and August, September came around and Carter only managed a .228 average. He did cut down on his strike out rate from an epically bad 212 K's in 2013 to 187 this season. Still not great but the improvement in his walks and a new career high in home runs, 37 for the season. That was good enough to be 2nd in the AL to Baltimore's Nelson Cruz and tied for second in all of baseball with Miami's Giancarlo Stanton. Certainly, something to build on for 2015 and since he's eligible for arbitration he looks to be getting a little bump in his pay next season.
The starting pitching for the Astros this year has been above average. Quality start after quality start piled up for this pitching staff. The top four spots in the rotation should be wrapped up with Scott Feldman, Dallas Keuchel, Colin McHugh and Brett Oberholzer. The fifth spot should be a nice competition of current arms on the staff like Brad Peacock or another young arm like Mike Foltynewicz could claim the spot.
The Astros need more offense in 2015. While a nice fielding third baseman Matt Dominguez is no stick at the plate and he was among the league leaders in hitting into double plays. Alex Presley was okay as was Robbie Grossman but they were too inconsistent at the plate. Marwin Gonzalez proved to be a great utility man who could play every day and his .277 average on the season was right on time. As was the pick up of SS/Utility man Gregorio Petit who hit .278 for Houston. These guys are just marking time for Carlos Correa who could see the bigs sometime next summer. The Astros will need to negotiate with Dexter Fowler but he has been a good pickup and the Astros really missed him in the line up for about 6 weeks with a rib cage muscle pull. The call up of the Astros best prospect, George Springer, was a good move and he played pretty well until a pulled quad ended his season in late July. The second call up was Jon Singleton and after a brief period at the beginning he struggled for the duration of the season. He ended the season hitting .168 in just 95 games and 310 at-bats he had 134 K's and only 50 BB's. He struggled so badly that I honestly thought that the Astros should have sent him back to AAA OKC to regain some confidence. Maybe the big contract extension he received when he came up prevented him from being sent down. I don't know but he has a lot to prove next spring.
The final 70-92 record is 19 games better than 2013's all time low of 111 losses and the first time Houston had as many as 70 wins since 2010. There is definitely hope for the future. The Astros say they will be looking to upgrade their hitting and relief pitching. We shall see. If Houston improves by 19 games again next year they will end up 89-73 which would be good enough this season to be in the Wild Card playoff game. That's pretty heady stuff to think that Houston could actually make the playoffs next season. Pretty awesome to think they are no longer cellar dwellers.
This is my last post on this thread. It's been great sharing the Astros season with everyone. I look forward to 2015 for an improved Astros team and the expectation that the problems with their media coverage is ironed out so we can watch them once in a while.
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