The Astros lost their second of three games to the lowly Washington Nationals on Sunday 6-0 dropping them to 7-16 on this still young season. There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. This is a bad baseball team doing bad baseball things right now. Sure, they could turn it around. The Major League Baseball season can be excruciatingly long.

But, also, they might not. Five of their best players are playing well including Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, Jeremy Peña and Yainer Diaz. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to show for it and when those guys inevitably have a slide — as every good player does during a long season — what the hell do they do then?

We can point to some reasons they have not been very good. There are many. Here are four.

Injuries

This is not an excuse. Period. All teams suffer injuries. But when essentially your entire projected starting lineup is on the IL, that’s a problem few teams (if any) can overcome. They got Justin Verlander back and will get Framber Valdez back in short order, but they now lost Cristian Javier. Where would this team be if Ronel Blanco hadn’t suddenly become an ace starter? We shudder to think.

The Final Three

Remember in Spring Training when everyone was all, “Dude, no one is going to score runs on us in the seventh, eighth and ninth. If we get a lead, teams are toast.” Um, OK so that was then. Now, the reality is Bryan Abreu has been the best of the bunch and he has an ERA of 4.91 and a WHIP of 1.818. Yikes. Ryan Pressly, the closer-turned-setup-guy, has an 8.31 ERA with a WHIP of over 2. And the $95 million dollar closer Josh Hader has a baffling 8.38 ERA with a WHIP of 1.655.

They have blown six saves this season including a brutal two-run lead in the ninth in D.C. by Pressly. The Astros have been super fond of talking about looking at the back of players’ baseball cards to understand how good they will likely be once more of the season has passed, but progression to the mean is hardly guaranteed, and it will take a hell of a turnaround to make these three as feared as everyone hoped and expected.

Lack of Timely Hitting

The Astros are 22nd in baseball (.266 BA) with runners in scoring position. They are 28th in runners left on base per game (4.27). That speaks to two things. First, they get a good amount of people on base. They are a remarkable third in both team batting average and OPS (seventh in slugging). We say remarkable because they fact that they rank that highly in hitting categories yet drop to the bottom of the league when it comes to driving runners in is just crazy.

Second, their clutch hitting is absolutely brutal, the polar opposite of Astros teams in the past despite having many of the same players. There is definitely some luck that plays into this and some problems in the lineup (more on that shortly), but the lack of clutch hitting does not auger well for a team that is struggling to get guys out in the last three innings of the game.

Giant Gaping Lineup Holes

When we had Martin Maldonado, we didn’t realize how good we had it. Maldy’s .606 OPS in 2023 may as well have been 1.100 when you consider the just putrid .223 OPS we are getting from Jose Abreu. Right now, Abreu is simply not a major league baseball player, but he’s out there every day because our only option behind his is…Jon Singleton. His numbers are positively Maldonado-y slashing .229/.308/.306 with a .594 OPS. You could almost live with that if you thought he would remain that consistent.

But, that is before you calculate the lack of hitting from Alex Bregman (.213/.302/.280) and Jake Meyers (.220/.273/.415). Meyers may not play every day — thankfully, that job belongs to Chas McCormick, who is finally starting to see his numbers turn around; and Mauricio Dubon, who is one of the best clutch hitters on the team — but when he does, he is little to no help. Bregman is the most galling. In his free agent year, he looks like he showed up ready to take a discount to remain in Houston. He pops up more often than new taco trucks.

When you have that many holes in your lineup, it’s tough to string together any kind of crooked-number innings and this team is definitely not doing that.