Astros deserved boos from their fans in wild-card series vs. White Sox

It took just two games for the Chicago White Sox to sweep the Houston Astros out of the American League Wild Card round and show that the AL West winners were never real postseason contenders.

Entering the wild-card round with an 81-81 record, Houston was still able to host in the Wild Card by winning what was shown to be a very weak AL West. As it turns out, home-field advantage was anything but that for the Astros.

Boos and no-shows by Astros fans were deserved by paper champion

On Tuesday, just over 34,000 people turned out for a late afternoon Game 1 at Daikin Park. By the time Chicago had planted a 6-3 loss on the Astros, some boos were coming down on the home team. Those boos and the 7,000-plus empty seats that came along with a team that had struggled down the stretch to make the postseason irked some Astros players.

Those boos could also be heard on Wednesday afternoon as well, as Houston succumbed to the White Sox and had its season end with a 7-3 defeat, with a "Let's go White Sox" chant breaking out as Houston was down to its final two outs.

Certainly there was a great deal of success in Houston over the past 10 years, with a pair of World Series wins and two other Fall Classic appearances in that stretch, and perhaps that stretch did spoil Astros fans. However, it's clear that this year's Astros team was nothing like those previous squads that battled for MLB supremacy.

The Astros played these final two games like a team that was a .500 squad. There were moments when Houston looked good, but there were far more when the Astros looked like a team that should not have been in the postseason.

Whatever "frustration" the Astros were feeling, as Christian Walker told The Athletic, Astros fans had every right to voice their displeasure in a flawed product. Those same fans that pay for tickets, parking, concessions and other things to watch a team have every right to voice their opinions when that same team isn't performing up to standards.

Yes, standards are high in South Texas. This year's Astros team didn't meet those standards. The fans knew it, as they were more than ready to turn the page to football season.

Simply put, the White Sox didn't just eliminate the Astros on Wednesday. They exposed them.

Houston won the AL West because some team had to. An 81-81 record was enough to get the Astros into the postseason, but it wasn't enough to convince anyone over two games that this was a team built to make any kind of run in October.

The wild-card round simply brought that reality into focus, and that's what made the boos in Houston understandable.