What more do you need? A winning road trip is good no matter what. It's not like they were on a barnstorming tour playing against single A teams. They were on the road playing against 2 other major league teams.
IMO, the road trip was indicative of the .500 team we are. We won a series against a bad team and lost one against a good one. I am not sure you could characterize the road trip as a whole as good or bad when we merely met expectations.
If you exclude their games against the Rangers... the Astros are 23-24 against teams over .500, with winning records currently against the Orioles, Cardinals, Indians, and Mariners. I'd also venture to say that most good teams are going to have around a .500 record against other good teams... its why they're all considered "good" teams. It does matter what you do against the bad teams... namely, you need to be taking care of business. Also, this season is where it is right now in large part to being completely INEPT against their biggest rival.
Because, as Nick pointed out, the results against the Rangers are ridiculous outliers. Since 2015, they're 139-109 (56%) against the 28 other MLB teams; 8-24 against the Rangers. Even if you take out the Astros' one-sided rivalry (Anaheim, which has only been one-sided this year; they went 10-9 last year), they're 118-99 (54%). The inability to beat Texas absolutely counts. But it's inexplicably, almost comically one-sided and you'd be hard-pressed to draw larger conclusions from it.
I don't find it to be rediculous. The Rangers are a better team and they know how to bear us. This is not coincidence, it's the better team winning. If we are 23-24 in our other games against winning teams, then that shows we still struggle (maybe not as much) to overcome mediocrity even when its not the rangers.
If the Rangers are so clearly a better team, why do they do worse against the other 28 teams in baseball than the Astros do? Have you ever looked at how other good teams do against good teams? Hint: they are around 0.500. Good teams beat up on bad teams and whole their own against the teams at their level.
Against winning teams can mean a team 1 game over .500. The Rangers are clearly better than us right now. They know how to beat us. We haven't figured out how to beat them. They overtook us for the division last year and they are spanking us with regularity this year. The rangers lost a lot of games when several players and a couple of starting pitchers went down. They were having a pretty easy time before the injuries happened. Then they went into a bit of a tailspin.
Rangers have played better baseball than the Astros. Some teams play better against another team because of a match up issue or just random luck. I see no reason to exclude head to head matchups between two teams when determining who's better. If anything, it should have more weight. Rangers have won significantly more games than the Astros.
And no one is disputing that. The question is are the Rangers 24-8 better than the Astros? Well, based on Houston's performance in their 248 *other* games over the same stretch, in which they've won 54% of them, the answer is probably not.
Yes, I understand your point. However, it changes nothing. The Rangers own us and would have an even better record against the rest of the league this year without the rash of injuries that hit them at once and stunted their winning ways for a bit. Even during that time, they beat us.
Thus, brings us back to the original point. If you exclude the freakishly bad performance against the Rangers, the Astros hold their own against good teams. The single biggest reason for this year's record, and where they are in the standings, can be attributed to them going belly-up against the Rangers thus far. Meanwhile, the Rangers have also gone 6-7 against the Angels, 2-5 against the Twins, and 4-6 against the A's... so in many ways, their dominant H-2-H against the Astros is also the main difference-maker in them being the best team in the AL. If they can perform better in the H-2-H... and continue to play at the same level against other good teams... they'll be fine (doesn't guarantee playoffs, but they'll stay in the hunt).
