The Houston Astros announced Wednesday that they have not renewed the contract of manager Joe Espada, expanding the leadership void atop the AL West winners and opening up questions about where owner Jim Crane sees this team going. "We are thankful for Joe's hard work, his passion for the game, and for his commitment to the Houston Astros. He represented the Astros and the Houston community in the most positive way.
We wish he and his family the best moving forward," said Astros owner Jim Crane in a statement. For the last decade or so, the Astros have been reliable contenders and, for most of those years, a modern baseball dynasty. Since they emerged from their deep rebuild with a postseason berth in 2015, the Astros have hoisted the World Series trophy twice -- albeit with some scandal and controversy appended to one of those trophies -- won more than 100 games in a season on four occasions, and at one point made it at least as far as the ALCS for seven straight years.
Now, though, these bedrock contenders are at a crossroads after seeing many members of that championship core depart over the years, and it may be that their window has finally closed. This can be wondered aloud not only because they were swept in the Wild Card Series by the Chicago White Sox, but also because the Astros in 2026, playoff berth notwithstanding, were a bad team. They finished the season with an 81-81 record despite having played, based on opponents' average winning percentage, the weakest schedule in all of MLB.
That made them the only non-winning team in MLB history ever to make the playoffs in a full season. Additionally, the Astros had a -32 run differential during the regular season, which means they had a "deserved" record of 78-84. Now, they enter an uncertain offseason.
The ongoing CBA negotiations hang over everything. General manager Dana Brown was let go in August and Crane named himself the temporary head of baseball operations. And beyond that, pervasive roster weaknesses mean it may not be advisable for the Astros to try to contend again in 2027.
All of that sets the stage for the three questions that will, in many ways, define the Astros moving forward. This is the most central question of all. On the manager front, the leading "free agents" right now are, in no particular order, former Red Sox manager Alex Cora (the Astros' former bench coach under AJ Hinch), future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, former Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, former Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, and former Cubs manager David Ross.
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