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Astros’ off-season: Doing the math

The Astros will have to set their 40-man roster sometime in mid-November before the Rule 5 draft.

Currently, the 40-man roster looks like this…. 40-Man Roster | Houston Astros (mlb.com)

This includes 29 Pitchers, 3 Catchers, 7 infielders, and 11 outfielders. For those playing along at home and adding those numbers in your head – that is 50 players on the 40-man roster. Huh? What?

Well, the good news is that MLB does not count anyone on the 60-day IL against the 40–man roster yet. The Astros have 10 players (9 pitchers / 1 outfielder) on the 60-day IL, so that reduces their roster from 50 to 40, which is the max they can carry.

The bad news is that sometime in mid-November, the team needs to be down to a 40-man maximum before the Rule 5 draft that occurs in December.  Additional bad news is that they have to reduce beyond that 40-man number if they want to:

a) Sign any free agents and…

b) Move any prospects onto the 40 man that they want to protect from the Rule 5 draft, such as Colton Gordon

Let’s break up the roster into sections and discuss how that works into their ultimate roster.

Free Agents (8) – those becoming FA’s after the World Series –  Caleb Ferguson, Kendall Graveman, Yusei Kikuchi, Hector Neris, Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman, Ben Gamel, Jason Heyward

Under Contract for at least 2025 (7) – Josh Hader, Cristian Javier, Lance McCullers Jr., Ryan Pressly, Victor Caratini, Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez

Pre-Arb – Keepers (15) – Spencer Arrighetti, Ronel Blanco, Hunter Brown, J.P. France, Ryan Gusto, Bryan King, Kaleb Ort, Tayler Scott, Yainer Diaz, Cesar Salazar, Zach Dezenzo, Jon Singleton, Shay Whitcomb, Kenedy Corona, Pedro Leon

Pre-Arb – Question Marks (10) – Luis Contreras, Shawn Dubin, Nick Hernandez, Seth Martinez, Oliver Ortega, Bennett Sousa. Forrest Whitley, Grae Kessinger, Trey Cabbage, Cooper Hummel

Arb-Eligible Keepers (6) – Bryan Abreu, Luis Garcia, Penn Murfee, Framber Valdez, Jeremy Pena, Kyle Tucker

Arb-Eligible Question Marks (4) – Jose Urquidy, Mauricio Dubon, Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers

Okay—here is where we do the math, and yes, it is simply a matter of addition and subtraction.

  • Starting at 50 – when the 8 free agents are off the roster in a few weeks, that is down to 42
  • Now let’s say they add a couple of those FAs back in – for fun, let’s say they add Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander (though I’d really want Yusei Kikuchi back before Verlander). They are back up to 44
  • Let’s say they want to get down to about 34, allowing them to add 3 additional free agents to the roster and 3 prospects they want to protect from the Rule 5 draft. That means they need to slice 10 more off the roster.
  • You can do this in any number of ways. The easiest would be to DFA the 10 pre-arb question marks shown above.
  • But if you want to bring back some of those guys—Forrest Whitley, Shawn Dubin, Seth Martinex, Grae Kessinger—what do you do?
  • Maybe you trade a keeper, like Framber Valdez, but if you trade him for one or more 40-man players, you are back where you started, or worse.
  • Maybe you cut ties with Jon Singleton, the only real first baseman on the roster. Cut Cesar Salazar, and you only have two catchers on your 40-man roster.
  • Do you let one of the Arb-eligible question marks walk? It would be tough to let any of those guys go for nothing.
  • Maybe you can settle with all the arb-eligible players and maybe trade a few later.
  • Perhaps you sign fewer than 3 free agents or protect fewer than 3 Rule 5 eligible prospects and take your chances.

Bottom Line—Dana Brown and his staff have a lot of decisions to make in the next few weeks before setting the roster. By then, we should see some thoughts about where they are heading as an organization.

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17 responses to “Astros’ off-season: Doing the math”

  1. Ideally Brown and company have an idea where players are in their rehab schedules, but my expectation is that the 8 free agents are not signed prior to the start of the winter meetings. As suggested by oldpro, I expect Urquidy is not offered arbitration and instead is non-tendered. This puts them at 41 players. It would then come down to how many players from your question-marks group you are willing to lose in order to add newl eligible players for protection from the Rule V. I think Singleton probably belongs in the question mark group as well though.

    The fallout from the above prediction is that you can’t enter the 2025 season with just players from that 40 man roster. Clearly there would need to be other trades or players released to sign a free agent. One thing we could also consider is if Brown has his eye on anyone in the Rule V. We haven’t used that in quite some time. According to Google our last player acquired was Anthony Gose (as a pitcher) in 2017.

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  2. Dana Brown is way ahead of us. It’s all mapped out with contingencies for guys that might get traded, and guys destined for free agency that might get signed again and every other eventuality. Some guys are gone and don’t even know it yet. I’m thinking Bregman no, but maybe Verlander yes. As for the Pre Arb question marks, maybe 3 will survive the cut, all pitchers, Whitley getting one more spring. I could see J.P. France going. Does Jake get one more shot? I think Chas has the most upside of all the fringe outfielders, because he has historically hit and plays all three positions out there pretty well. I think Grae Kessinger has to be replaceable with someone that can hit more. Dubon might be the least selective hitter we’ve got, but we traded Will Wagner so Frenchy appears entrenched on the 26 man. Likely Kikuchi is gone, so we can start complaining about the 2024 deadline deal again. I think Singleton hangs around but I’m not sure why. My count is 38 right now. I doubt I’m right though. If anyone gets the initial 40 man correct, I’ll be very impressed.

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  3. Has anyone seen a summary of which top prospects the Astros have that are Rule 5 eligible. Jayne Hansen used to do that over at “whattheheckbobby”. I just don’t have the patience to go dig that out – though looking at the Astros Top 30 prospects list – a lot of them were drafted in the last 2 or 3 drafts – so they are not in trouble and then we have other top prospects already on the 40 man.

    It usually does not matter as a lot of times the Rule 5 picks are from lower levels and not on the Top 30 list which probably does not reflect who are the actual top valued prospects

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    • Of note, Kennedy Corona and Shay Whitcomb were rule 5 eligible last year. Corona might not get protected again after his poor offensive showing in Corpus and his worse showing in Sugar Land.

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  5. Compelling post season baseball being played. There have been some great games. Those Cleveland guys, seemingly outmatched, pulled off a stunner when they were an out away from being down 3-0 in the series.

    The Dodgers have drawn 31 walks off the Mets over 36 innings. Yeah, the Mets don’t have the pitching, but when a team is patient and keeps getting guys on base good things are going to happen. Can the Astros become a selective team at the plate again?

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  8. Who knows. Dana should get his magic hat and wand out. It’s going to take a wizard to get all of this right.

    Urquidy seems a no brainer, though getting fired from your job after you got injured doing your job sucks, probably can’t happen anywhere else but isn’t baseball wonderful?

    Meyers may follow him out. Jake Marisn…er Meyers, it is great to pay a no hit all glove guy with a smidgen of power and speed 1.5M to bat 8th or 9th and play some great D, but it may not be as attractive to do that at 3.5M. Chas was just lost last year, but offensively has shown more in the past and it’s not an age thing. When I look around the roster I don’t see anyone with more upside to be your everyday LFer, maybe CFer, than Chas. His 2024 performance means you are going to catch some flak for trying though.

    Low hanging fruit like Ortega, Hummel and maybe Cabbage probably don’t survive the purge either. One thing about putting Singleton on that list – there was probably much more substantive reason to release Singleton LAST offseason, and despite having a starting first baseman on the roster, they kept him. Dana has proven he finds Singleton more valuable than we do. I fully expect him not only to survive the purge, but be the teams opening day starting first baseman and play 110-120 games next year. It’s not WSWD, and trust me, I would answer their call if my phone rang with a Houston area code in the caller ID, but I don’t think it’s coming.

    As for getting Kikuchi back over Verlander, JV is cheaper and has less commitment tied to him (probably a 1 year deal). It’s likely neither are back, but if one is I’m betting its Verlander.

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  9. BA .258, OBP .350, OPS .773.

    Although his defensive metrics are flat out bad, his relative reliability against righty pitching will probably keep Singleton around.

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  10. Because MLB introduced the Lottery, teams cannot rebuild the way the Astros and O’s have done it. The lottery was the gift to the rich teams, a punishment to the Astros and a surrender to the agents and the players union.

    Now, the Astros need to rebuild in a new way, one in which they have to find the current combo between “hungry young” and “older and not satisfied”.

    They need to trade Framber and Tucker and get young, controllable starting position players. They need to weave in their young pitchers and finish developing their pitching prospects for 2026 and beyond. They need to use the next two drafts to fill up their minor leagues with decent prospects and then sign an impact position player to a big deal in the 2025-2026 offseason to help them get back on top.

    They need to see what their top 5 prospects can do during this coming season.

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    • 1oldpro, remember the Corbin Burnes deal last winter? The Brewers got their third baseman of the future and a couple of other interesting prospects for Burnes as he was heading into his last year on his Brewers contract.

      If the Astro pitching experts think they have made Kikuchi a better pitcher long term then he’s a viable replacement for Framber, likely a bit less expensive per year on a 2 to 3 year deal than the 17.8 million Framber will get paid in 2025.

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      • Your comment tells me we are on a similar wavelength. Is that a good thing or not? It is fine by me!

        However, Kikuchi is not at that prime age as a starter for a 2 to 3 yr deal to suit me. Keep pumping those young guys we discover and polish up the chain to the majors. And no more of these 3 top 10 prospect trades for a 2 month rental pitcher. No matter how well that one turned out.

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      • 1OP, I think any of those prime age guys are going to be looking for a 5 or 6 year deal.

        The jury will remain out on that deadline deal for another season or two at least while we see what our three former prospects do on the field. Somehow I think Loperfido is still going to figure things out.

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      • I’d like to comment about how we need to shed salaries and get some young, low cost guys who can play into the system, but looking at Spotrac’s rankings I see:
        NYM: $317M

        NYY: $309M

        HOU: $255M

        PHI: $247M

        LAD: $241M

        You can’t judge the 2025 numbers fairly yet because it doesn’t include arbitration eligible players and the free agents need to be replaced. I want to trade Framber because his numbers tell me there could be a good return and his salary will be pretty sizeable this year. If you could get Kikuchi to come back at 3yr/$45M I’d rather roll those dice than give Framber a 1yr/$20M and then lose him next winter. It’s a number I pulled out of thin air, but only saving $5M and getting some players back in return seems like it would be more helpful.

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  12. Sorry have not been on here for awhile am in the middle of moving to San Antonio. I think Astros will try to stay below 241M CBT limit but don’t think they trade Framber

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