What can you even say at this point? The Astros are “out of order.” They pitch like the Angels teams they used to bank wins on en route to 100 wins. In Yordan Alvarez, a generational player’s talents appear wasted on a team that looks to have no realistic pathway to seeing October, much like Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani on those same Angels.
When the Texas Rangers unveiled these City Connect jerseys, I mused, “Only the freaking Rangers would want to be more like the Angels.”
Well I was wrong. It’s the 2026 Houston Astros who have become the Angels. It’s painful and that’s all I can really muster up for a Sunday morning write up.
What’s wrong with this team? How do you fix it?
For that matter, what’s wrong with us? Why do we keep watching? Why did I give SCHN $19.99 so this team can frustrate me for 3 hours on a nightly basis?
There’s other things we could be watching. The NHL playoffs started this weekend. So did the NBA playoffs. WRESTLEMANIA IS THIS WEEKEND!
But, no, we keep watching this train wreck of a team. Because we’re baseball fans, and underneath everything we keep believing (or deluding ourselves), “Well, just maybe…”
Mike Burrows starts for the Astros against The Cardinals’ Matthew Liberatore. Lineups are as follows:
The game will be broadcast at 1:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
I know that you are all still deranged and watching this team, because participation in our TLA Gamethreads on our Discord server have not dropped off… at all.
My guess is that the turnout is more for each other and not necessarily for the Astros at this point. It’s a great community, and we hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game on the TLA Discord Server.
Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .
For more detailed instructions, please see the Guide to the Launch Angle.
If you’ve participated in game threads on other Astros sites in the past, you will probably see a lot of familiar names. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)
Feature photo by mhatter106. (Yes, this is a real picture I took in 2018 in the Minute Maid Park concourse. I’ve never figured out if it was intentional or just a terrible printer/custom jersey mistake.)
To become the Angels, you need Artie Moreno. Check.
I fear we’re going to get Tungsten arm o Doyle type posts but with Yordan and the Astros losing instead of Shohei and the angels.
Pray for us