Houston Astros: It’s about time to press the panic button on 2017

It has been a bit rough for the Houston Astros as of late, losing six of their last eight games.

In the past, if the Houston Astros had that type of mark, most of us fans would consider that accomplishment to lose so little games in such a stretch.  But times have changed since the triple-digit loss seasons and the expectations as well as the bar has been set high for this team.

This team was build to contend for something and although we’re still have a nice cushion with a 11-game lead in the AL West and a marginal couple-of-games lead in the majors, I definitely see a trend of how we’ve lost our games as of late and I don’t like it one iota!

Mark Berman interviewed general manager Jeff Luhnow in regard to making any potential moves and here’s what he had to say:

Even though we may not have to make a deal now, the phones should be hot at the Houston Astros’ offices at 501 Crawford.

Gerrit Cole, Tony Watson, Sonny Gray — we need somebody to help with this pitching staff woes; and yes, tough decisions will have be made.  But it’s for the protection our integrity and the betterment of our club to continue to do great things.

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Sure we can say that we have this lead and there’s a reason why cushions are to made but things are getting critical, our bullpen is taxed, we’re trotting young, inexperienced pitchers out there just to help with depth and this trend cannot continue.  And that’s no disrespect to our young talent because it’s been great seeing them do work.

Our offense is fine — there will be nights among the ebb and flow of things where won’t be smacking home runs or have multi-run wins.  But we have so many guys that know how to hit at the right time to keep this team flying high it won’t be an issue.  Our pitching staff is of concern to me.  We can jump out to a lead but if we don’t have enough experienced staff to be able to deceive our opponents when they’re at-bat, then what’s the point.

Next: Why the Astros past tanking isn't the reason why they're so good

We don’t know when Dallas Keuchel, Lance McCullers Jr., Charlie Morton and Collin McHugh will return as they’re suffering from their various maladies whether it’s a neck thing, a back thing, a lat thing or a dead arm.

We don’t want to get in a situation where we’re scraping for our lives to survive as things got dicey back in September 2015 where our playoff hopes were being challenged by a late run by our competitors.  Let’s make a move NOW as if it were yesterday, I just have a bad feeling and it’s time to nip it in the bud before it gets worse.

Go Astros.