The local baseball club's first season in the American League was also its worst season in franchise history, as the Astros ended the 2013 season with an abysmal 51-111 record that was capped off with a fifteen-game losing streak.
This club is supposed to be rebuilding, but in fact they're only getting worse: they've gone from 106 losses in 2011 to 107 losses in 2012 to 111 losses in 2013. These have been the three worst seasons in a 51-year franchise history that includes a lot of lousy losing seasons. The Astros haven't had a winning record since 2008, and that 2005 World Series appearance now seems like ancient history.
With the mounting losses comes rejection from Houston's fair-weather fanbase. The Astros drew 20,394 fans per game to Minute Maid Park: the second-lowest attendance average since the Astros started playing there and 13th out of 15 American League teams. People aren't watching the Astros on TV, either; just a week ago they managed a 0.0 Nielsen rating for a broadcast, which basically means that nobody in Houston bothered to tune in to the game.
Sure, there are plenty of excuses for this season's failures: the team is the youngest in Major League Baseball, its payroll is the lowest, the franchise is adjusting to a new league, this is Bo Porter's first season as a manager, et cetera. But local sports fans don't care about any of that. They just want to see a winner.
Or at the least, some improvement. And right now, we're not even getting that.
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