Dave Cameron does a nice study showing that the Astros batters are actually hitting the ball well, but they are not getting good results:

Using Statcast data, MLB classifies batted balls in six quality-of-contact buckets, with ?barrels? representing the balls that fall into the exit-velocity/launch-angle windows that lead to the most offensive success. So far this postseason, there have been 86 barreled balls. Of those 86, 69 of have gone for hits, good for an .802 batting average. Batters have slugged 2.779 on those types of batted balls.

In the ALCS, the Astros have barreled six balls over the first five games. Here are the results of those well-struck balls.

…

No, that?s not a copy-and-paste error in the results column. The Astros have hit six barreled balls in this series, and all six of them have been caught in deep center field by Aaron Hicks.

In a small sample, like a five or seven game series, bad luck can really come back to bite you. That’s what is happening to the Astros in this series. We’ll see if that changes in the next two games.