Houston Astros Surge to .500 and Set Up a First-Place Showdown With Texas

A week ago the Houston Astros were four games under .500, third in a shaky AL West, and easy to write off. Six games later they are 55-55, winners of eight of their last nine, and they open a home series Friday night against the first-place Texas Rangers with the division lead sitting right there on the table. Oh, and the trade deadline hits Monday afternoon. If you were going to pick one stretch to decide what this Astros season actually is, you could not script it much better than this weekend at Daikin Park.

The Week That Was: Five Wins in Six Games

The week opened on the South Side, where the Astros took two of three from a White Sox team that, strange as it still sounds, has been the class of the AL Central this year. Houston won the opener 9-5 on Friday, followed with a tidy 4-1 win Saturday, then got flattened 12-3 on Sunday in the kind of clunker that good teams shrug off and bad teams spiral from.

They shrugged. The Astros went to Anaheim and swept the Angels without much drama: 6-4 on Monday, 3-2 on Tuesday, 7-4 on Wednesday. Tuesday was the one that felt like a contender's win. Reid Detmers struck out nine Astros over five innings and the game sat 2-2 into the ninth, when Nick Allen came off the bench for a pinch-hit double, Christian Vazquez moved him to third with a single, and Yordan Alvarez lined a two-out single to right-center for the lead. Josh Hader closed it with a perfect ninth for his 14th save. Wednesday, Houston finished the sweep behind a four-hit night from Yainer Diaz and never really looked threatened after the middle innings. Thursday's off day let everyone catch their breath before Texas arrived.

Yordan Being Yordan, and the Supporting Cast Showing Up

Alvarez is carrying a .325 average with a .647 slugging percentage, and this week he did the two things that define his seasons: he homered early (a first-inning shot Tuesday) and he ended games late (that ninth-inning single). When he is going like this, the entire lineup breathes easier.

He had help. Jeremy Pena has been scorching for a couple of weeks and hit his 12th homer of the year in Wednesday's finale. Diaz went 4-for-5 with two RBIs and his seventh home run in that same game, and rookie Cam Smith ripped a two-run double in the sixth that put it out of reach. Christian Walker chipped in his 21st homer on Tuesday. On the run-prevention side, the late-inning pairing did its job all week: Hader took Tuesday, and Bryan Abreu locked down Wednesday for his seventh save.

The Rotation Is Getting Healthy at Exactly the Right Time

The quiet story of this Astros season has been the pitching carnage. Hunter Brown has been out since March 31. Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski spent the year working back from Tommy John surgery. Cristian Javier dealt with shoulder trouble. For most of the summer, Peter Lambert (8-5, 3.06 ERA) held the rotation together while offseason signing Tatsuya Imai (6-4, 5.59) took his lumps adjusting to major league hitters.

That picture is changing fast. Wesneski started Wednesday in Anaheim and earned the win in the sweep-clincher. Brown is back and sharp in his early outings, 2-1 with a 3.45 ERA, and gets the ball in Friday's opener against Texas. Blanco is lined up for Saturday. A team that spent four months piecing together starts is suddenly rolling out something close to a real playoff rotation the same weekend it plays for first place. Timing is everything.

One Game Back in a Division Begging to Be Taken

Entering Friday, Texas sits at the top of the AL West as the only team in the division with a winning record, with Houston at 55-55 right behind them — a game back at most, and possibly a half game depending on Thursday's results, after the Rangers dropped two of three to Tampa Bay. Seattle, the defending division champ, has lost 11 of 16 and slipped two and a half back, and the Mariners' problem is compounded by Texas having already clinched the season-series tiebreaker against them. The Angels are 13 or so games out and selling, which we will get to below because Houston just spent three days feasting on them.

Step back and the arc of this Houston Astros season gets clearer. This was a team sitting at 50-54 barely a week ago, buried by injuries and inconsistency, and the temptation was to call them sellers. Instead they have played their best baseball of the year at the exact moment the division stopped running away from them. Nobody in the AL West is putting together a 95-win pace; the flag is going to go to whichever flawed team gets hot and healthy in August and September, and right now Houston is the only club in the division that can claim both.

Here is the blunt math: the AL West winner may be the only playoff team this division produces, so every one of these head-to-head games is effectively worth double. Houston has owned the Silver Boot series historically, and the all-time ledger against Texas is nearly dead even at 155-154. This weekend is three games against the team you have to catch, in your own park, with your two best returning arms starting the first two. It does not get more direct than that.

Deadline Business: Quiet So Far, but Monday Looms

The deadline lands Monday, August 3, at 5 p.m. Central, and Houston's only real move so far came back on July 15, when the front office sent Lance McCullers Jr., Colton Gordon and cash to Milwaukee for outfielder Jadyn Fielder — a deal that was mostly about clearing salary. Since then, the reporting has Houston exploring additions in the outfield, the rotation and the bullpen, which is a polite way of saying they are open for business everywhere.

The complication: Texas is already shopping in the same aisle. The Rangers grabbed catcher Logan O'Hoppe and reliever Chase Silseth from the Angels on Wednesday, and with Corey Seager back from his month-long injured list stint, they are clearly pushing chips in. How this weekend's series goes may decide how aggressive Houston's front office gets before Monday's buzzer. Win two of three and you are in first place with a healthy rotation; the case for adding gets loud in a hurry.

What's Next for the Astros

• Friday, July 31 vs. Texas: Hunter Brown (2-1, 3.45) gets the opener, with the Rangers throwing from a group of Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom and Kumar Rocker across the weekend.
• Saturday, August 1 vs. Texas: Ronel Blanco lined up for Houston.
• Sunday, August 2 vs. Texas: Series finale, early afternoon start.
• Monday-Wednesday, August 3-5 vs. Toronto: The homestand continues right through the deadline.

The Houston Astros' week in review reads simple: 5-1, a sweep of the Angels, the rotation restocking itself, and a lineup that looks dangerous again from Alvarez on down. Now comes the part that counts. Three games with Texas, a deadline decision on Monday, and an AL West that is going to belong to whoever wants it most over the next two months. For the first time all season, the Astros look like a team that wants it.