Had some time to collect my thoughts and get the mourning out of the way.
Despite once again making it to the ALCS, this season just wasn't all that much "fun", IMO.
1. 90 wins is far less than we've gotten use to since the dynasty run started. We were in 1st for just 19 days this entire season. Spent 90% of the year chasing.
2. The awful home record. I looked back at the schedule and the Astros won just 5 of the 15 games I attended at MMP. It got noticeably worse in September and October.
3. Lack of clutch factor. We went 1-8 in extra innings and were under .500 in 1-run games. I don't know how many times we went into the 9th down by 1 or 2, put multiple runners on with less than 2 outs, and scored 0. We only had 4 walk-offs all year long.
4. Fucking injuries. Had to do without Altuve for 45% of the season and Alvarez for 30%. Lost 2/5 of our starting rotation in a 24-hour period.
5. Dusty's hardheaded nonsense and too many AB's taking by scrubs.
Apart from his jackass refusal to play Diaz for no justifiable reason or hating Chas, nothing pissed me off more this year than when Dusty would make some incomprehensible decision based on a hunch or dream he had and then try and explain it with some made-up statistic. You'd look it up and he'd have the numbers ass backwards. Like he'd pinch hit somebody "I feel like he had a better chance against (insert lefty pitcher)" and the numbers would be 2-12 lifetime with 8 k's vs that pitcher and a career 0.458 OPS against LHP.
Corey Julks got 323 plate appearances and put up 0.3 WAR. Hensley got 93 for -0.7. Kessinger, Madris, and Singleton got another 150 and were worth -0.8. That's 550+ PA accounting for -1.2 WAR.