If Houston stands pat on offense their 6-8 would look a lot better if they could all revert to their 2023 ops: Walker .830 Sanchez .777 Diaz .846
I think the offense has a lot of potential to very good with the same personnel that ended last season. Certainly some risk there but a big ceiling with better injury luck and some internal development. Starting pitching was the real area we absolutely had to shore up, so I'm mostly happy with the off-season as is.
Next concerns for astros should be bullpen , but the amount of money available there is TBD by what happens with our infield glut. Could we just have yordan and Tuve play LF and DH only , give 2nd to correa and 3rd to paredes keeping walker and pena and having one of our best defensive infields ? What about cole , smith , and matthews ? Our bullpen is super reliant on harder and abreu. Needs reinforcement. Javier and Lance are albatross contracts going nowhere imo . Our roster is at 41 now . I think brown has had this plan all along , and he executed very well. I do find it hard to move walker. You'd be selling low and his defense was very good . Less of a fan of meyers . But appreciate he will bring steady D . What percentage are we confident that cam/ cole/ or Brice could cover CF ? I think if they can get great relief help for Jake they should make the move . What are we doing with Jesus sanchez ? LF , tradebait ? If you look at available FA's , the unsigned pitchers still look fairly deep and it's hitting that looks top heavy and slim pickings . Maybe walker will have value after all . I think Dana can afford to be patient having added hopefully 300 innings in starting pitching . I do think our bullpen could use a retrofit. Everyone is saying about trading pena /paredes to get value , I could see the same for yordan . I don't necessarily want this to happen , but I think we could do something like .. yordan for 1-2 cost controlled MLB players , one being an above average OF and additional prospects Then trade meyers for bullpen help. Go with young legs in the OF and great IF d for these pitchers you just paid . Maybe get another pitcher off the FA scrap heap as a project. Go in with lance /Javier / blubaugh / Weiss / whoever battling for the last 2 rotation spots
5 of the 7 bullpen positions (which means that there are 6 starting pitching positions, with one being long relief or opener or some such): Josh Hader Bryan Abreu Steven Okert Bryan King Bennett Sousa Fighting for the last two spots: Roddery Muñoz (Rule 5) Jayden Murray Kaleb Ort Nate Pearson Enyel De Los Santos and maybe Lance McCullers Jr. (or whomever loses out in getting into the starting rotation) The Astros do not lack for arms to compete for the bullpen positions. The Astros may add more AAAA arms to the competition, since this is something that they usually do going into Spring Training. BUT They do not need to trade Meyers to get there. I have trotted this out before in the forum. The response was that Correa would not want to play 2B. Correa has an above average 3B glove with an A++ arm. I can see the reluctance to move Correa off 3B. The open question is whether Paredes can play a respectable 2B. He is relatively young and has played 2B in the MLB before. His hamstring injury, if still lingering, may prevent him from making the switch in this ST. He has said that he would not mind playing 2B, though. I just dunno. The Astros coaching staff will have to sort this out. We can not rule out a Walker trade, so that Paredes starts at 1B. We will see.
I would like a bullpen arm that can close, not all the time just occasionally. I didn't like how Abreu handled closing duties when Hader was out. I would like someone that has done it in the past but would be the 2nd option to close but in the playoffs might be the 7th inning guy with Abreu in the 8th. Preferably a right hander.
With money and roster spots as tight as they are, it would really surprise me if Houston added Pearson and Munoz without really really expecting them to be on the roster. The fact that De Los Santos signed a split contract makes me think they expect to be able to pass him thru (like they did with Trammell). Add Pearson and Munoz to the locks for the bullpen (Hader, Abreu, King, Okert) and there’s 6 RP spots spoken for. Sousa can be optioned but if he’s healthy he’s on the roster based on how he pitched last season. Brown, Javier, Imai, and Burrows are locks for the rotation if they’re healthy. Weiss’s comments on Rome’s podcast make it pretty clear that he was told directly that he will be a starting pitcher with Houston; there’s a wrinkle there in that he can technically be optioned to the minors, but I think all signs point to him being on the opening day roster as a SP. That makes for a full rotation. I think the wild cards are McCullers and Arrighetti. There’s a case to be made that each of them are locks for the roster. But McCullers looked finished last year and the fact that no one in the front office has mentioned him at all this offseason tells me he is being discounted. Arrighetti has been talked about but 2 things give me pause about that: first, he’s currently 5th at best but potentially 7th in the pecking order of starting pitchers, and second, he’s got minor league options remaining. I think if Houston is going to make a move to add a bat, Arrighetti is a prime candidate to be traded. In the end I agree that Houston doesn’t need to add any more pitching. I don’t think Paredes playing 2B does much to solve Houston’s problem, since it means Altuve or Alvarez would be playing LF, which is bad. The only solutions to me are to trade one of Walker, Paredes, or Pena. I personally don’t see any way they trade Paredes or Pena without downgrading the offense, so those moves only work if they can find someone to dramatically overpay. It’s hard to say how desperate they should be to trade Walker, but moving him is to me clearly the most straightforward way for the Astros to clear their infield logjam and free up some resources to fill their remaining holes (a LH OF and a backup C).
David Robertson, Jose Leclerc, Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero, Kendall Graveman, and Paul Sewald fit that bill to some degree.
Solid and well thought out post. I still think the best option is playing Yordan more in LF and keeping everyone. My next option would be to just rotate 1b, 2b, 3b,DH, and about 50g of LF between the 5 guys, 140g each if they are all healthy for 162. And that doesn't even consider any games Correa can play SS. But apparently the Astros are not interested in either of those options. I do think that getting a guy who can take over SS by 2027 should be priority. If they can't extend Pena then a Tucker-esque trade is best for the organization next off season (or at the 2026 deadline)
Unless the Astros have changed their ideology about Yordan in LF this offseason, I am confident he can be expected to start about 1/3 of all his games there. 2021 = 28.6% 2022 = 42.1% 2023 = 35.4% 2024 = 36.1% 2025 = 31.9% (50% after returning from hand injury) In addition he has always been better when playing LF and being more involved in the game (1.046 career OPS in LF / .919 as DH). This was even more drastic in 2025 but that may be because he played more LF after returning from injury. The fact that as a LF he is an MVP level hitter but as a DH he is only an All-Star has always made me wonder why they have not let him start there more. After all, a .919 OPS is great, but not so impressive to completely alter team philosophy and personnel to protect. In the past 3 seasons there have been 28 times a hitter with 400+ PAs had .919 or better OPS, there has been exactly 1 in each season of 1.046 or better. Committing to starting Yordan 50% of the time in LF solves a lot of problems and its simply not THAT much more than they have been starting him anyway. Imagine how different this roster outlook is if you pencil Paredes into DH 80+ games. 25 starts at 1B, 25 at 3B, and 20 at 2B= 150 games.
I think there is a relatively high chance that we trade Walker I don't think any major moves were going to occur until we figured out the SP, which is done now Yes Walker was better in the 2H last year, and yes he is a terrific defensive 1B But with yesterdays signing we are right up against the tax again. Not only can we not do anything else in the OF right now without going over the tax but we would be locked out of in season/trade deadline moves also if Crane doesn't want to go into the Tax for a 3rd straight year It also just isn't a great roster makeup. To get all of them in the lineup it forces us to either play poor defenders at multiple positions, or else we sit one of them every day. Yes, we have guys that will need days off, but being forced to sit one every day or play multiple poor defenders just isn't an optimal mix. So trading Walker can do multiple things for you. It can give 1B to Paredes, Jose can stay at 2B where he isn't good but a lot better than he is in LF, and Yordan can stay at DH a huge majority of the time and not add to his injury risk. So not only does everything fit better at that point, it also opens up salary to either address LF now, or allows us to go into the season to see how our current options perform with room to add there later. It also gives a little flexibility to add somewhere else if we have an injury to a regular or poor performance. It also gives flexibility for Dana to add a bullpen piece if there is one that he likes, and honestly that's been probably his biggest strength since he has been here.
