Let\u2019s think about what changed. When the offense was putting up elite numbers and the pitching couldn\u2019t get out of its own way, the Astros went 12-20. That was scary. The best unit was maxed out, and it still wasn\u2019t enough. But June was the exact opposite (May, too, to a lesser extent). The pitching was part of why they won.<\/p>\n
It starts with the return of Hunter Brown, who made three June starts and posted a 2.45 ERA. Tatsuya Imai certainly wasn\u2019t perfect, but he really only had one bad start the whole month, and the Astros scored nine in the first in that game. Peter Lambert has continued to pitch well. Josh Hader came back and has been nearly untouchable. And the bullpen, the same group that started the year as one of the worst units in baseball<\/a>, had the third-best ERA in the sport in June.<\/p>\n That\u2019s more than something held together with timely hits, though some of it was that. It\u2019s a pitching staff starting to turn into what was envisioned when the team was put together this winter. Bats slump and un-slump, somewhat on their own, but pitching is tough to fix. A rotation and bullpen getting healthy and rounding into form tends to stick.<\/p>\n And that brings us back to the struggling offense. This isn\u2019t a team with a talent problem<\/a>. It\u2019s a team with a good group of hitters having a rough month. Alvarez is playing like an MVP. Jeremy Pe\u00f1a and Isaac Paredes also had monster Junes, but guys like Christian Walker, Cam Smith, Yainer Diaz, and, yes, Jose Altuve mostly have track records that show they should be better. Smith is the one who doesn\u2019t really have that track record, but he balances it with both upside and a history of showing up and getting hot.<\/p>\n So do the math on the upside. Houston just went 16-11 (after going 15-14 in May) with a rough month offensively. If the offense simply climbs back to where the personnel says it should be<\/a> and the arms hold, you\u2019re looking at a team actually firing on all cylinders for the first time this year. The floor of the roster came up in June, but the ceiling hasn\u2019t been touched.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean canceling all October plans or getting ready for a parade. The team is still under .500 more than halfway through the year. Winning while getting outscored has a way of correcting itself, one way or another. The back of the rotation still has questions, and Dana Brown still has a job to save<\/a>. The front office has to decide whether to buy into an extremely winnable division<\/a>. Those are real caveats, and to pretend otherwise would be silly.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s hard to argue with a winning month. The Astros (barely) survived their pitching falling apart, and now they\u2019ve survived their offense struggling. A team that can win multiple ways, even when it\u2019s just one way at a time, can be far more dangerous than one that needs everything to click. The numbers in June don\u2019t look great, but they suggest the hardest part might be behind you.<\/p>\n
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