The Houston Astros won the American League West at 81-81, becoming the first team to reach the postseason without a winning record. Then the Chicago White Sox walked into Houston and swept them out in two games. That is a strange pair of sentences to write about a franchise that spent most of the last decade in the ALCS.
Chicago took Game 1 by 6-3 on Tuesday, Sept. 29 and finished it 7-3 on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The White Sox scored four runs in the first inning of the clincher and chased Hunter Brown before he recorded a third out.
The Comeback That Almost Happened
Houston did claw back into Game 2. Jeremy Pena, Cam Smith and Jose Altuve each hit a solo home run to pull the Astros within a run heading to the sixth. Altuve’s was the 28th postseason homer of his career, moving him into second place all time behind Manny Ramirez.
Then Chase Meidroth hit a three-run homer to make it 7-3, and the season was over. Yordan Alvarez, an AL MVP candidate during the year, finished the series with one single and two strikeouts in eight at-bats. Houston has now gone three full years without winning a postseason game.
The Front Office Is Already Gone
General manager Dana Brown was fired on Aug. 24, so Houston entered the playoffs without a permanent head of baseball operations and leaves them searching for one. Joe Espada is in the final year of his contract. He went 256-229 across three regular seasons and 0-4 in playoff games, the kind of split that tends to settle a manager’s future without much debate.
Espada wants to stay. “I would like to continue enjoying those moments,” he said after the loss. He also made his case for the roster he already has: “As long as Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez are here, this is a damn good team.”
He is half right. Altuve is signed through 2029 on a five-year, $125 million deal, and Alvarez is locked in through 2028 at six years and $115 million. The two faces of the Houston era are not leaving. The open question is who ends up around them.
What An Era Actually Ends Like
The control window is not the issue. Jeremy Pena has one arbitration year left after making $9.5 million in 2026. Christian Walker is signed through 2027 on a three-year, $60 million contract. Hunter Brown has two arbitration years remaining, and Cam Smith is controlled through 2031. Bryan Abreu and Christian Vazquez are the only Astros set to hit free agency the day after the World Series.
So the roster stays largely intact. What does not survive is the idea of Houston as the team the rest of the American League dreaded drawing. An 81-81 division winner with an 0-4 postseason manager, no general manager and almost nothing from its outfield has already stopped being that team. Whether a new version arrives in 2027 depends on who Houston hires to build it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.