As they almost always seem to do, the Houston Astros are again pulling off a late-season hot streak. With a 6-0 win today against Pittsburgh, the Astros have now won 14 out of 15. As this ESPN.com/AP article notes:

Houston was 66-66 and 11 games back of Milwaukee, the NL wild-card leader, before the run began Aug. 27. The latest win closed the Astros within three games of the Brewers...

One method statisticians use to help determine if a given team's (or athlete's) streakiness is more than just a chance occurrence is to see if the team/athlete has shown any ability to repeat the special performance year after year. I recall the Astros' having had strong finishes in recent years, so I decided to look at the numbers for the last four completed seasons. Shown for each year are the Astros' records as of the last day of July, for the month of August, and for the month of September (plus any regular-season games played in October). You can click on the year to see the Astros' game-by-game log.

YEAR........THRU JULY..........AUGUST.........SEPT/OCT

2004........52-52 (.500)......17-11 (.607).......22-7 (.759)

2005........57-48 (.543)......13-14 (.481).......18-11 (.621)

2006........49-56 (.467)......17-12 (.586).......16-12 (.571)

2007........46-60 (.434)......15-14 (.517).......12-15 (.444)

Thus, with the exception of 2007, in recent years the Astros indeed have regularly put together strong finishes in August and/or September. Brewers, look out!