Can Houston finish May as strong as they've started?
A look ahead at the rest of May for the Astros
May 13, 2019, 6:55 am
Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images
After the four-game sweep of the Rangers in Houston this past weekend, that puts Houston on a five-game winning streak and also has them 8-3 so far in the month of May. Can they continue to win series at this rate and keep extending their devision lead all the way to the end of the month?
Looking at the schedule the rest of this month, the Astros have a few easily-winnable matchups and then a few tougher matchups that could give them some trouble. Let's take a look at what's coming up as we draw nearer to the halfway point in the season:
Verlander returns to Detroit
Starting tonight, the Astros will be in Detroit for a three-game series against the Tigers. Detroit is two games below .500 and third place in the AL Central sitting 6.5 games behind the division-leading Twins. The Astros went 5-1 against the Tigers in 2018, sweeping the three-game series in Detroit. The one game they lost? At home in Houston with Verlander on the mound for the first time against his old team. In that game, JV went six innings during which he allowed five earned runs. To his credit, he faced them again later in the season, in Detroit, and got the win with seven innings of two-run baseball.
Verlander will be on the mound in the final game of the series on Wednesday, and I would fully expect he'll be prepared to lead the Astros towards a series sweep since it's entirely possible Houston makes easy work of Detroit in this series and continues dominating at the plate against the Tigers.
Six games with Boston
After the series with the Tigers, Houston will get a day off in Boston before a weekend series with the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Those three games will be the first of six over a ten-game span in an anticipated rematch of last year's ALCS. Boston had a really rough start to the year but are 8-2 over their last ten and have been, like the Astros, dominating their opponents with strong offense.
One of the intriguing matchups in this weekend's series, if the currently projected starters pitch, is Chris Sale vs. Corbin Martin. Martin was great in his debut on Mother's Day, and if given a longer pitch count to work with in his second start could have a juicy matchup with Boston's bats. After that series, next weekend the Red Sox will come to Houston for a weekend series to complete the season series. if the Astros can take four or more of those games, that would be a good confidence booster for a potential matchup in the playoffs in October.
White Sox kick off a long home stand
Sandwiched between the six games with Boston is a four-game series with the White Sox in Houston that starts a week from today. This should be one of the more winnable series left this month, with the White Sox sitting seven games back in their division and three games below .500. This series should also hopefully bring the return of Jose Altuve off of the injured list, which should be a nice boost to the team to push them past Chicago in the series.
One reason the Astros should find a way to win most if not all of these four games is that the White Sox have the second worst team ERA in the MLB at 5.32, so the Astros should feast on that pitching staff in Minute Maid Park, with or without Altuve at full strength.
Matchup with the surging Cubs before Houston travels West
The Astros and Cubs will kick off a three-game set starting on Memorial Day here in Houston. The Cubs are right up there with the Astros as one of the top teams in the league right now, leading their division ten games above .500 at 24-14. This will be an interesting matchup since it will be the only three times these teams play this year, and with it being in Houston, will mean the Cubs will get to add a DH to their lineup. This series is farther away and hard to predict, but the Astros should be given the edge since they've been smashing at home.
After that series, the Astros will head to the west coast for a six-game trip to take on two AL-West foes starting with a series in Oakland that starts on May 31st. That trip will be important for the Astros who, hopefully, will have maintained or extended their current 6.5 game division lead.
With May being just the second full month of baseball, we still have a lot of baseball yet to play in this season. However, if Houston can come out of May with a lot of momentum and a large division lead, they can set themselves up for a strong and manageable rest of the season.
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All-Star balloting opened up this week for what used to be known as the Midsummer Classic in Major League Baseball. I guess some still refer to it as such but the All-Star Game has been largely a bore for many years, though the honor of being selected on merit remains a big one. As always, fans can vote at all positions except pitcher. The fan balloting has resulted in mostly good selections for years now, though pretty much all teams still do silly marketing stuff trying to drum up support for their players. The Astros’ part in that silliness is their campaign to make it the “All-’Stros” game on the American League squad in Atlanta next month. It’s one thing to be supportive of your team, it’s another to be flat out ridiculous if voting right now for Yainer Diaz, Christian Walker, Yordan Alvarez, Mauricio Dubon, or Cam Smith. The Astros tried to game the system in submitting Jose Altuve as a second baseman where the competition is weaker than it is in the outfield, but given Altuve has played only about 25 percent of the games at second base this season he should not be an All-Star second baseman selectee for what would be the tenth time in his career.
Isaac Paredes’s recent freefall notwithstanding, he has a legitimate case as a backup third baseman, especially with Alex Bregman likely missing more than a month of games due to his quad injury. Jake Meyers is having a fine season but is obviously not an All-Star-worthy outfielder unless he is sensational for the rest of June. That leaves Jeremy Peña, who is simply the best shortstop in the big leagues so far this season. To be clear, no team in baseball (including the Astros) would rather have Peña going forward than the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., but we’re talking about the here and now. There are another 100 games to be played, but Peña not only is about a lock to deserve his first All-Star nod, but he is in contention to put in the books the greatest season ever by an Astro shortstop.
Over his first three seasons, Peña was a consistently mediocre offensive player. His highest batting average was .266, best on-base percentage .324, top slugging percentage .426. He is blowing away all those numbers thus far in 2025. While unlikely to come close to reaching his preseason goal of 50 stolen bases, Peña is swiping bags at the best success rate of his career. Add in Peña’s stellar defense and that he has played in every Astros’ game so far this season, and Peña has been irrefutably one of the 10 best and most valuable players in the American League. You could certainly argue as high as top three.
If Peña's productivity holds up for the rest of the season there are only three other seasons posted by Astro shortstops that are in the same league as what would be Peña’s 2025. Carlos Correa has two of them. Lack of durability may be the biggest reason Correa is not tracking to be a Hall of Famer. In only two seasons as an Astro did Correa play in more than 136 games. He was fabulous in each of them. 2021 was his peak campaign, playing in 148 games while compiling an .850 OPS, winning a Gold Glove, and finishing fifth in AL MVP voting. Correa’s Baseball-Reference wins above replacement number for 2021 was 7.3. Peña is at 3.6 with nearly 20 games still left before the midway point of the schedule.
For the other great Astro shortstop season you have to go back to 1983. Dickie Thon turned 25 years old in June of ‘83. He put up a .798 OPS, which gains in stature given Thon played his home games in the Astrodome when the Dome was at its most pitching-friendly. Thon won the Silver Slugger Award as the best offensive shortstop in the National League, and played superior defense. His Baseball-Reference WAR number was 7.4. He finished seventh for NL MVP playing for an 85-77 Astros’ squad that finished third in the NL West. Dickie Thon looked like an emerging superstar. Then, in the fifth game of the 1984 season, a fastball from Mets’ pitcher Mike Torrez hit Thon in the left eye, fracturing his orbital bone. Thon missed the rest of the ‘84 season. While Thon played in nine more big league seasons, his vision never fully recovered and he was never the same player. It’s one of the biggest “What if...” questions in Astros’ history.
Arms race
Players and the Commissioner’s Office pick the All-Star pitching staffs. Unless he suddenly starts getting lit up regularly, Hunter Brown can pack a bag for Georgia. Framber Valdez wouldn’t make it now but has surged into contention. Josh Hader’s first half is going vastly better than last year’s, so he is in line for a reliever spot.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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