It was one of the more iconic scenes in baseball moviedom. Lou Brown tells his troops that Rachel Phelps (the owner) does not want them to win. In order to win the division they will need to win 32 more games (from that point in the season) and with every win they will pull off a slice to reveal a nearly naked Rachel Phelps. I’m sure we would all just as soon scrub that mental image in our minds when doing the same with Jim Crane and the animus is not nearly on the same level.
Still, we need to look
at the basic exercise because once you approach Memorial Day it is time to stop calling the season early. My comrade Patrick Creighton talked about the team only being one month in. With the early start, we are now approaching two months of baseball. So, if we are playing the Rachel Phelps game then how many wins will it take to get to the playoffs?
We need to approach this from two angles. Obviously, we need to look at where the Astros currently are and do the simple math to get them to a certain number of wins. However, how many wins is that? Following the 2020 season, MLB permanently expanded the playoffs to add the third wild card. Below are the lowest number of wins in each league to make it to the postseason that year. We will add another column for the aggregate.
So, it is possible when looking at the National League to imagine a team with 83 wins making it to the postseason. You could argue that the American League could be in one of those seasons where the balance of power is skewed to the other league. Even in that universe, the average number of wins in THAT league has been 85. It feels irresponsible to assume anything less than that. Is it possible? Sure. Is it responsible? Not in a million years.
So, let’s assume 85 wins for the time being. The Astros have two separate issues. They are eleven games under .500 and they are 0-6 against the team most likely to wind up on top in the AL West. They have five games remaining this week between the Mariners and Rangers. This math exercise could get out of hand really quick, but let’s look at the basic math. The Astros sit at 16-27. In order to get to 85 wins they would need to finish the season at 69-50. That’s a .580 clip.
That doesn’t seem like much. This team played to that down the stretch in 2024 (in fact playing at a better clip after starting 12-24). They famously played at a better clip in 2005 after starting 15-30. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results because this is a different Astros team than even the 2024 outfit. Like the 2025 bunch, they are decimated by injuries. However, we go back to the basic math question. A .580 baseball team over 162 games would win 94 games. This is a basic question. Can this team be a 94 win team as currently constituted even when it is healthy?
I have no doubt that a healthy Hunter Brown would be huge in this rotation. A healthy Josh Hader would be huge at the end of the bullpen. A healthy Jeremy Pena would be key to the lineup. These are all givens but they are also all theoretical. None of them are currently healthy. Brown cannot return until June at the earliest because he is on the 60 day disabled list. Pena could possibly return within a week to ten days, but that would be after this key stretch in the AL West. Hader probably has at least another two to three weeks of rehab left before he can join the team.
Let’s say that in 28 days you have them all back and playing at their previous high levels. That would mean you would need to play at a .580 clip with some or all of them out or the math would change. If you go say 13-13 in those games while some or all of them are out then you need to go 56-37 down the stretch. That’s a .602 percentage or a 98 win pace.
I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but someone needs to say this. The odds of coming back from this start are slim. Yes, you are only a handful of games separated from the top of the league. You also have the 15th best record in the American League. Focusing on the number of games you are back seems simple enough, but that is assuming every other team in the league continues to sputter and spin their wheels. It assumes no one gets hot or figures something out. The best way to approach it is to go based on history and focus on that number. That number is 85.
Obviously, this is a place for cold, hard data. Understanding the math obviously spills us into the next debate and that is whether the Astros realistically can do that and what they would need to do to help their chances. That feels more like commentary to me, so I will leave that for a different time. What do you think? How realistic do you think it is for this Astros team to come back?
