Astros 2014 Season: I Told You So ...

Back on April 25th, the Astros were 7-17 and the Astros fan base was in collective freakout mode. There was much wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. The loss that night was a particularly ugly one with three Astros errors and a bullpen implosion of epic proportions in which a 5-5 tie going into the ninth inning became a 12-5 loss when the ninth inning was, at last, mercifully complete.

The next day I posted one of my "soapboxes" in which I posited the following:

No matter how good a team is, and the Astros certainly cannot be categorized as a good team of late, they are going to have almost shockingly bad games from time to time. But as Astros fans, we have been conditioned over the last three seasons to expect those shockingly bad games. And we have been conditioned to respond, "Here we go again," when they happen. No longer do we think, "Oh, that's just a blip on the radar screen." We think that a flaming Hindenburg is going to crash onto the deck of a sinking Titanic and the whole fiery mess is going to be swept up by a Category 5 hurricane and deposited at the corner of Crawford and Texas. Even when the Astros do start playing well, every stunningly bad game that they have will provoke this response in Astros fans as surely as Pavlov's dogs looking for dinner. 

I went on to say that I felt confident that the Astros would play better than their rough start indicated, and that we, the fans, would start seeing incremental improvements in the team's play.

One commenter had this to say to me, "Feeling pretty silly about your 71 win prediction, aren't ya? Another 100 losses is in the cards."

After scraping myself off the ceiling for basically being referred to as a "silly" girl, I engaged in a little back and forth with Mr. Commenter. After saying that I stood by my prediction and that 24 or 25 games was too early to make any sweeping generalizations about the season, Mr. Commenter game back with this, "Going 71-91 translates to .432. We are currently a .280 team [the Astros were actually .292 after 24 games]. Getting to 71 wins from our current record would require a .468 clip the rest of the way [actually .464, but why pick nits?]. Going .468 is generally not much to ask. This very poor start make [sic] even that look like a bridge too far."

Well, he was right. The Astros only went .457 the rest of the way and my prediction of 71-91 fell far short of the actual final record of 70-92. Silly me.

In any event, Astros fans did finally climb down from the ledge and start to enjoy the season. There were still some rocky stretches from time to time, but overall, it was a fun season to watch as eight more players made their major league debuts and more established players such as Dallas Keuchel and Jose Altuve soared to new heights. Collin McHugh and George Springer showed us the promise of things to come and Chris Carter came into his own. There were a lot of positives to take away from the season.

Even without knowing who will manage the team in 2015, how the roster will be constructed, who will come and who will go, I can already tell you a few things. There will continue to be growing pains at times. The team will occasionally have a monumentally bad game. There will be bullpen implosions from time to time. At least one rookie will have a bad start that will have "fans" calling for his head in April. And the Astros will get that much closer to contending, and contending for a long time to come. At some point, it won't be baby steps any longer; it will be a giant leap to viability. And, hopefully, at some point, Astros fans will be conditioned to expect the best and not the worst.

Oh, and I do have one last thing to say to Mr. Commenter. Nanny Nanny Boo Boo. (I never said that I was mature.)