​Even analytical fans can be overcome with emotions. The last ten days have been brutal. If we remove the opener of the Mariners series, we saw the Astros got a combined 2-6 in the span of eight days. That was against a collection of teams where they probably were hoping for a 6-2 run. They blew late leads, the offense sputtered at times, and the starting pitching continued to struggle to get through the fifth inning. Even the normally reliable Yordan Alvarez seemed to hit a snag throughout much of the run.I hate to boil things down to simple math, but this is usually where my brain goes. There are essentially six months in a baseball season. It’s obviously grossly simplified to assume four weeks in a month, but we could probably add one week in there to account for the extra days. That means there are 25 weeks in a season. The last homestand accounts for slightly more than a week’s worth of games. 162 divided by nine equals 18. 18 is a nice round number.To put this in perspective for most Houston fans, 18 essentially corresponds to the number of weeks in an NFL season. So, imagine if the Texans’ offense failed to show up for a particular game. I know that’s not hard to imagine. Imagine if they had held a lead into the fourth quarter and squandered it. Imagine if their defense simply got torched on a particular Sunday. What would the conversation be like?Obviously, the conversation would likely depend on when that particular loss occurred. If it occurred in a random regular season game in October it would likely be a cause for concern, but no one would be quitting on the season quite yet. If it were the opening week of the season there would be some doom and gloom, but most people would realize it was just one game in a long schedule. If it occurred in January then obviously the season would be over.This is where we find ourselves as Astros fans. We have experienced one terrible week of baseball. They have had worse this season. It doesn’t seem like it but the first road trip was an unmitigated disaster. There have been stretches at home that have looked just as awful. So, the key to sound analysis is to take a step back and keep a level head about these things.The question we should ask is whether there is anything from these nine games that we can extrapolate to the much larger whole. I think there are a few through lines we can look at and pencil them in as areas of concern moving forward. These are things the next general manager and manager need to consider when the 2027 season opens (yes, I am assuming they are both gone).The lineup is too shallowLet’s do the math. We know Yordan Alvarez is great. We know Jeremy Pena is an all-star level player. We know Christian Walker overall has had a nice bounce back season. Isaac Paredes is also approaching career highs in OPS. That’s it. This lineup has four average to above average hitters when compared to the league average (as defined by 100 OPS+). That simply ain’t going to get it d