baseball previews

The bottom fell out for the Houston Astros in 2011. Though they hadn’t made the playoffs since their pennant-winning year of 2005, the Astros had remained a respectable team, had a winning season as recently as 2008 and been in the mid-70s in 2009-10. Last year they couldn’t hold up the fort any longer, and collapsed to a 56-106 record. Brad Mills, in his third year as manager, and general manager Ed Wade are under a new ownership group now and a move to the American League is ahead next season. It stands to reason that the duo needs to show some progress this year or the new owners might just decide to turn the AL-debut year into a wholesale new look. TheSportsNotebook takes a look at Houston’s prospects in 2012, breaking them down into the four key areas: the ability to get runners on base, power, starting pitching and relief pitching.