Dan P decided to ask the smartest guy in the room questions about the 2025 Astros. Note I sit alone in my own office.
Q: Did you believe before the season that the Astros would be where they are, 2.5 games up in the AL West on June 9?
A: If you asked me before the season, whether this was possible, sure I would be on-board. The Astros play in the normally anemic AL West, so that did not seem that much of a stretch for them.
However, if you told me the Astros would be 16-15 and 3 games back on May 2, would then lose starting pitchers Hayden Wesneski and Ronel Blanco for the season and Yordan Alvarez, their (normally) best hitter for an indeterminate amount of time, I would be very doubtful success would follow. But then they went 20-14 between May 2 and today and flipped the race.
Despite losing Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman, Ryan Pressly, Justin Verlander and Yusei Kikuchi before the season and Wesneski, Blanco, Alvarez and Tayler Scott since the season began, the Astros are outperforming my expectations right now.
Q: There are rumblings that Christian Walker is as bad or worse than Jose Abreu – where do you stand on this deep, dark issue?
A: We do kind of forget that Abreu finished 2023 with a .237 BA/ .296 OBP/ .680 OPS and 90 RBIs. Not good, but nothing like how he started 2024 (.124 BA/ .167 OBP/ .361 OPS) in 113 at bats. So far, Christian Walker in 2025 is worse than Abreu back in 2023 with a .207 BA/ .269 OBP/ .619 OPS with 8 HRs and 29 HRs. On the plus side, the Astros are 8-0 in those games that Walker hit a home run. Most of his homers have been impactful, such as the walkoff against the M’s and the solo shot to break the ice in a 0-0 pitching duel against Paul Skenes. I don’t know how Walker will finish this season, but I do know I don’t flinch when a ball is hit to or thrown to him. All we can do is let him roll and pray a little.
Q: Is Jeremy Pena for real?
A: He may not be .316 BA/ .373 OBP/ .853 OPS real, but man he looks like he could give you .280 BA/ .350 OBP/ .800 OPS. And anyone with his glove in the middle infield that can do that is a very dangerous and valuable player.
Q: Joe Espada – Saint or Anti-Christ?
A: Joe is growing on me. No matter what happens with the team, no matter who gets injured, or has surgery or makes a mistake in a game….he has his team’s back and his team has done a marvelous job of having his. He has gotten a lot out of them even with all the injuries and early season underperformance. His positivity maybe makes us roll our eyes and mumble Polyana. But no one can point at him and say he has given up on this team or lost the clubhouse.
Q: Dana Brown – Luhnow or Click?
A: We worry about some of his choices – signing Christian Walker (which most of us thought was a good signing), not chasing starting pitching, not re-signing Alex Bregman, etc. We praise him for some of his choices – what looks like a great haul for Kyle Tucker with rookie Cam Smith, 3B Isaac Paredes and Wesneski, getting solid performances out of relievers Bryan King and Steven Okert, and bringing up unheralded pitchers like Colton Gordon and Brandon Walter to start critical games.
He doesn’t have to be Jeff Luhnow or James Click, but if he can thread the needle and find a way to rebuild the farm system, while still keeping the big team competitive in the post season, we may be very happy with the one Dana Brown.
How would you answer these questions? And do you have any questions for the smartest guy in my room?
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
15 responses to “An Astros Q&A with an expert (Just ask him)”
Great write up Dan. I thought about some of this a few days ago listening to Stone Cold Stros. I agree with Charlie, if you told me this team would lose 3/5ths of its rotation, 2 of them for the year, that Altuve would have these slumps that make him look human, that Yordan would be ineffective then hurt, that your new 20M first baseman would be this bad, that you would end up releasing the guy that was supposed to be your 7th inning guy, that Yainer would be hitting .237, and that even Framber had that eh start to his year – man the over/under I would have given you would be 7 games under .500 and out of it. Yet, Espada has them in first place.
Pena and Meyers need their flowers. They have been the consistent part. And Isaac? That is one of the most effective .249 batting averages you will ever see. He looks pretty much in line with the guy we hoped we were getting, that 2023 Isaac, and less like that 2024 Isaac that Chicago was willing to move to make room for Matt Shaw and his 2 HR. This team is about the best pitching tandem of aces and the best back of the bullpen in the game and some timely hitting. Think about this – if Hader wasn’t 17 for 17, if he was say 14 for 17, this team would be .500 and tied with Seattle.
As for Walker/Abreu – we were all happy to see Abreu signed. We knew he was a little older, but he had just recently won an MVP and hit over .300 the year before. I don’t know how long into the season we knew, but I think we knew here before most people did. The bat had just slowed. Everything was a line drive into the first base dugout. He could still punish a middling fastball. But his spray chart had changed. It wasn’t hard to see. If this is happening to Walker, he has me fooled. I see a guy still pulling line drives. I don’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday but he hit a screamer with runners on and two outs and Arias just made a great play. That happened to him a lot to start the year. I think some of it is he just started pressing. He expanded his zone, and struggled.
Maybe with the lead expanding to 3 games, he will relax just a little. Or maybe the fact is he is 34 and has lost just a smidgen, and major league pitchers only need you to lose a smidgen to take advantage of you. Given where he is now would you call it a disappointment if he ends up around Jose Abreu’s 2023 season? I don’t know.
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With Walker I wonder how much the change of scenery and change of league has impacted his bat. Quite frankly, he has never been a good hitter, but he slugged enough in the desert to get over .800 OPS in four seasons over his career. He has never approached the levels that Abreu hit earlier in his career. The difference is that Walker’s glove plays even if he forgets his bat. I’m going to keep complaining when he strikes out 3x in a game, but otherwise don’t have much interest in talking about him. We need Altuve to make some adjustments and need to hope the Astros found a trainer/doctor/nurse/etc who can get Yordan healthy.
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After all the injuries, combined with Diaz, Walker and Altuve struggling, and the loss of multiple key players going in other directions, I would have been okay with a .500 record at this point. That would have kept us in the hunt, with Yordan and Arrighetti presumably coming back sometime around the All Star break. And at some point I expect both Walker and Diaz to hit more. I’m not sure about Altuve though. Thankfully, a couple of other guys have stepped up, including Cam Smith really producing well in high leverage situations.
As I said above, I think Walker will hit. Thankfully, the pitching staff has been excellent and a couple of guys are having career years to date. We’re in first place with a three game lead. That allows Joe to keep writing Walker into the line up without having to think about other options. And getting Yordan back might be the best thing for Walker.
Jeremy Pena has always been good. He averages a 4 plus WAR annually. So far in 2025, his game has really come together. An .800 OPS would be a real accomplishment for him.
Joe has had a good couple of weeks. But if his bats lose three in a row, there will be that group cursing him for not getting more out of his hitters. But this club is seven games over .500 with quite a few flaws. If there was a Manager of the Year award at the halfway point, Espada would be in the running.
Dana is a tough one for me. I don’t know how he decided his pen would be good enough to do what they have so far. I’m guessing he listened to his nerds, at least to a degree. I think by the end of the season, even without Wesneski, we’ll see that Paredes and Smith will have won the huge trade that Brown pulled off. But Dana talks too much. He makes promises that he can’t keep. And unless I’m pointing fingers in the wrong direction, his handling of injured Astros has been a miserable failure, a real weakness that seems to be an organizational issue that started before his arrival.
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The club, once again, played down to its competition.
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I just don’t think LMJ is a MOR guy. 96 pitches with only 51 strikes just ain’t going to get it. A WHIP of 1.43 is basically saying that he’ll give up 3- 4 runs every time he goes out there. Hopefully we’ll have Arrighetti, Javier, and maybe Garcia after the All Star Break. Yes he’s had a couple of good outings but since our offense can’t seem to get rolling we can’t set our expectations too high. Can we expect that the rest of the AL West teams to collapse? I doubt it.
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The Sox had a pretty good young pitcher starting in Smith. But the Astros did manage 9 hits and 3 walks last night. Again though, the timely hit was absent.
If Lance is not able to throw a fastball, even just to set up his breaking stuff, he’ll have a hard time succeeding. Gusto really needs to put a good game together today. I’d hate to lose another set to the White Sox, especially at home.
I don’t know what Dana is going to do about pitching, but we do need another starter. Free agent options won’t come cheap. I’d like to see Ullola get a shot. Seems he’s got the stuff, but getting it over the plate is the challenge.
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I mentioned Ullola on the tail end of the last blog. He is going to be sought after as the main trading piece by any club that we talk to about either a lefty hitting left fielder or a more veteran, pitch decently now starter. I’m back and forth. Baseball savant has him at 94-95 with the occasional mix to 97 on his 4 seamer. But the K/9 numbers he has suggest its like Javier’s in that the strikeout isn’t driven by velocity but by ride. One thing that has stayed for him as he has climbed has been batting average against – he is elite, and it’s not in small sample. He is rated as the Astros number 4 prospect, but I don’t know who is better. MLB had Cam at number 1, but he is here. They have the opening season as Melton and Mathews above him, but I would disagree on both.
All that said, yea, the next time someone has a successful major league career at 6.1 BB/9 will likely be the first time. Its been a little better as he has gotten older, sitting in the 5s in the last two years, but he is not Nolan Ryan. He won’t survive in the big leagues at 5 BB/9. I suspect that’s why you haven’t seen him.
There is a little bit of smoke that Boston is trying to move Duran to make room for Roman Anthony and address their pitching needs (both major league and minor league – they have a super system producing hitters, pitching is an eyesore). Could Ullola and Blubaugh head a package for Duran that maybe includes Melton? Duran is not a free agent until 2029. He isn’t a superstar, but dude is as pesky as they come. Is Ullola, Blubaugh and Melton an overpay? Duran isn’t a rental, so he won’t be cheap. Boston might even get a better offer than that.
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Just read your initial notes on Ullola. Maybe it’s premature, but I’m not sure if McCullers is going to hold up. He’s getting extra rest. But he’s still got a ways to go physically. I have no idea what his ceiling is. So I don’t know what we need most; starting pitching or a solid left-handed bat that will fit into the lineup somewhere. Either way, I agree. I don’t want to lose Ullola without seeing him first. But I also don’t know what we might give up for a starter or the lefty bat. I’d probably start with Jake because he’s likely worth more today than he ever will be going forward.
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I think the trade Steven proposes would have been a no-brainer five or six years ago but is a little more suspect right now. Our farm system is not deep and injuries keep happening. Duran is a good outfielder who can cover any of the spots well. He’s a good hitter who might have had a career year in 2024. The big problem is he can’t pitch for us. The idea of getting a proven bat for the postseason is attractive, but it’s not a given that our rotation holds together long enough to get us there. We could be facing an all hands on deck situation. Then again, maybe France comes back in early August, LMJ has enough juice for us to go .500 in his starts, and we’re having a discussion about why didn’t we add X, Y, or Z in the summer.
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Thoughts
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Sure was good to get six innings from Ryan Gusto last night. He threw strikes. Hittable strikes, but that got the job done against the Sox.
Christian Walker sure looks good at the plate when he actually hits the ball. That smooth, compact swing gives some confidence that he’ll get himself into a groove.
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Walker is just an interesting hitter. He absolutely annihilated his first two hits last night, but as you said they were almost effortless beautifully smooth swings.
His last at bat he missed a breaking ball low and away with his best Yainer Diaz imitation of a wild swing with no chance of contact
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Sure was good to get six innings from Ryan Gusto last night. He threw strikes. Hittable strikes, but that got the job done against the Sox.
Christian Walker sure looks good at the plate when he actually hits the ball. That smooth, compact swing gives some confidence that he’ll get himself into a groove.
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I noticed, during the game last night, that Walker is now wearing batting gloves with padding that covers the tops of the hands, ala Bagwell gloves. Good move by the club.
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Dan, the Twins are flying here to play us on Friday night!
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