At the end of April, the Houston Astros surprisingly led the American League West Division by 4 games with a record of 15-7.\u00a0 During the month of May, the lead briefly increased to 7 games before settling back to 4 games with a record of 31-20 at the end of May, the most wins of any American League team.<\/p>\n
With almost one third of the season now behind us, it is time to consider what has happened to account for this improvement and to attempt to determine whether or not it will continue.\u00a0 While the 16-13 record in May was not as strong as April\u2019s 15-7 the team has continued to play well in most respects.\u00a0 Relief pitching has been the strong point with an ERA of 2.28, third best in the major leagues.\u00a0 The Astros lead the major leagues in home runs with 84 and are tied for fourth in stolen bases with 43.\u00a0 The team has a positive run differential, scoring 4.38 runs per game and allowing 3.86.<\/p>\n
On the other side, Astro batters are second to the Cubs in striking out with 464 and are 25th<\/sup> in batting average at .237 and 23rd<\/sup> in on-base percentage at .305.\u00a0 The ERA for Astro starting pitchers is 4.16 compared to the major league average of 4.06.\u00a0 This is where the team is most vulnerable, particularly with the loss of No. 3 starter, Scott Feldman to a knee injury which will keep him out for about six weeks.\u00a0 The starting pitching stats are buoyed by the work of Dallas Keuchel, who leads the American League with an ERA of 1.76 and is a strong candidate for the AL Cy Young Award at this point.\u00a0 In May, the Astros No.2, 3 and 4 starters, Collin McHugh, Feldman and Roberto Hernandez, all had ERAs over 5.00.<\/p>\n The Astros must fortify the starting rotation to stay in contention.\u00a0 So far, management has chosen to use the farm system with positive results.\u00a0 Lance McCullers Jr. was promoted from AA Corpus Christi in May and had three solid starts with an ERA of 2.40.\u00a0 Two other minor leaguers, Jake Buchanan and Michael Feliz, have also been promoted but have seen only limited action.\u00a0 Other possibilities are available in the minors but a trade for an established major league starting pitcher may be required if the team is to be a serious contender.<\/p>\n Individually, results were mixed in May.\u00a0 Evan Gattis overcame his April struggles, hitting .276 in May with 9 home runs and 22 RBIs.\u00a0 Chris Carter also improved in May with six home runs and 21 RBIs. Rookie, Preston Tucker, promoted from AAA Fresno, had some timely hits and batted .306.\u00a0 Jose Altuve had a down month, batting only .231, and third baseman, Luis Valbuena and backup catcher, Hank Conger were well below the Mendoza line (.200).<\/p>\n Astros minor league teams have performed very well in the past two years and that trend is continuing in 2015.\u00a0 All four of the full-season teams have winning records.\u00a0 Three of the four are leading their divisions and the other is in second place as Astro minor leaguers continue to build a winning tradition.\u00a0 However, the two top prospects do not appear to be quite ready for the major leagues.\u00a0 Carlos Correa, after tearing up the Texas league at Corpus Christi is batting .241 in his first 19 games at Triple A Fresno and pitcher, Mark Appel is 3-1 with a 5.85 ERA at Double A.<\/p>\n The Astros need to start strongly in the month of June after dropping their last two series in May.\u00a0 The schedule gets tougher later in the month with a trip to the West Coast to play Seattle and the Angels, followed by home series against the Yankees and Royals.\u00a0 By the end of June, we should know if the team is likely to be competitive in the season\u2019s second half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the end of April, the Houston Astros surprisingly led the American League West Division by 4 games with a record of 15-7.\u00a0 During the month of May, the lead briefly increased to 7 games before settling back to 4 games with a record of 31-20 at the end of May, the most wins of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}