It's been a while since we looked at the whole picture of this particular Astros team. Back in April, we saw that Houston's offense was much improved, with run scoring up quite a bit from the start of 2010.
Things have continued on apace, with the Astros scoring 294 runs this season and topping 100 runs in each of the two first full months of the season. The Astros only scored 279 runs through the end of June last season, so they're still putting up a better offense than back then.
Of course, the problem has come in the month of June, when the Astros have managed just 3.4 runs per game in June. Unless they average 4.25 runs for the final eight games this month, they'll fail to score at least 100 runs. That average this month is also below the 4.14 runs they averaged in the first two months of the season.
The NL average over those first two months was also right around 4.1 runs per game, so it's safe to say while Houston's offense may not have been prolific, it was right at league average. In June, that average fell to 3.9 runs per game, so there's a little indication that the drop in Houston's scoring may be due to league factors as a whole. They're still much lower than the average offense Houston had in the first two months.
I know there is no link between them, but looking further into Houston's offense, it stands out that the bottom three teams in the major league standings are also the bottom three in the league walk rates. Chicago has the worst at 6.6 percent while Minnesota and Houston stand at 7.2 percent.
Houston also has one of the lowest isolated power averages in the league. Only the Padres, Pirates and Dodgers have a lower one this season, but it stands out that all three play in known pitcher's parks while Houston does not. At the same time, Houston has the highest batting average on balls in play in the entire league. That's been pretty consistent this entire season, but is usually worrisome.
For all the dire numbers surrounding Houston's offense, at least their weighted On-Base Average is in the middle of the pack with the rest of the league. Couple that with the faster players who can sustain a higher BABiP and those are two points in favor of the offense and continued run scoring.
I mentioned the other day that Houston had the worst Fielding Runs number in the league, but I was surprised that Houston also had one of the worst total in FanGraph's new Baserunning Runs. Despite having one of the best baserunners in Michael Bourn can't save them from how bad Carlos Lee and Brett Wallace have been.
There are a lot of factors that go into how an offense responds, but it's clear Houston is in a slump right now. There are signs they'll pull out of it, so we can only hope to see that come to fruition in the next months.