One of the things that occurred to me is how much the top ten of the Astros players have changed since last year. I know that WAR is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in general it gives a rough comparison of relative performance for both pitchers and position players.
Three things to state ahead of time:
- The WAR used here is from baseballreference.com, one of my favorite sites for stats. But there are other (different) sets of WAR from other sources.
- And…because of ties at the end of the line, there are 11 players shown for 2024 and 12 for 2025. Live with it.
- Also, yes, I know we are not quite at the end of the season and some 2025 WAR may change, but again – live with it.
Here is a quick look at the top WAR numbers for both seasons.
| 2024 | 2024 WAR | 2025 | 2025 WAR |
| Yordan Alvarez | 5.4 | Hunter Brown | 5.9 |
| Kyle Tucker | 4.7 | Jeremy Pena | 5.0 |
| Ronel Blanco | 4.4 | Framber Valdez | 3.7 |
| Framber Valdez | 4.4 | Jake Meyers | 2.9 |
| Jeremy Pena | 4.1 | Bryan Abreu | 2.5 |
| Alex Bregman | 4.1 | Isaac Paredes | 2.5 |
| Jose Altuve | 3.4 | Josh Hader | 2.3 |
| Yainer Diaz | 3.3 | Yainer Diaz | 2.1 |
| Hunter Brown | 2.6 | Cam Smith | 1.9 |
| T – Jake Meyers Tayler Scott | 1.7 | T – Jason Alexander Mauricio Dubon Bryan King | 1.8 |
My, my, that is fascinating.
Here are some quick thoughts:
- How many players made both lists? (5) Framber Valdez, Jeremy Pena, Yainer Diaz, Hunter Brown and Jake Meyers.
- How many players were no longer with the team in 2025? (2) Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman.
- How many fell off the list due to injury? (2) Yordan Alvarez and Ronel Blanco
- How many fell off the list due to performance? (2) Jose Altuve and Tayler Scott
- Who had the biggest climb between seasons? Hunter Brown 3.3 and counting, a change for the better.
- Who had the biggest drop? Yordan Alvarez down 4.7 to 0.7
- Who is new to the Top 10? Bryan Abreu, Isaac Paredes, Josh Hader, Cam Smith, Jason Alexander, Mauricio Dubon and Bryan King. (Let’s face it – Paredes, Smith and Alexander were not here in 2024)
- Anything striking here? Even though the top two in 2025 (Brown and Pena) are going to end up higher than the top two in 2024 (Alvarez and Tucker), the top 10 as a whole will be quite a bit lower. If we only add in one of the #10’s from each season – the top 10 in 2024 totaled 38.1 and the 2025 (with a 6% boost to accommodate for 10 more games to go) Top 10 are only at 32.4. That is a 15% drop in one season.
- If you go beyond the Top 10 ….. In 2024 the Astros put up a total WAR of 43.2, while in 2025 they should end up (again with a 6% bump) at 41.2 WAR. A much smaller fall of 4.6%.
- But if you split it…. If you split between the pitchers and the position players you get a very different look. The pitching actually increased between 2024 and 2025 from 16.9 WAR to 21.9 with the 6% boost – an almost 30% increase. However, the offense went from 26.3 to a boosted 19.3 or a 27% decrease.
It is rather amazing to think that a pitching staff with all their injury problems this season (Ronel Blanco, Hayden Wesneski, Spencer Arrighetti, Josh Hader, Brandon Walter, Bennett Sousa, etc.) improved that much.
On the other hand, the offensive side has not really overcome the complete loss of Tucker and Bregman and the long-term injury losses of Yordan Alvarez and Isaac Paredes. Throw in the fact that you have a fall-off in defense and offense of Jose Altuve and some fielding fall-off with a calf scramble to fill in behind folks and you end up with a much worse crash than expected.
In the end, the Astros need to build on their pitching improvement and work on a position player turn around to have better results in 2026.
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
18 responses to “Top 10: Astros’ 2024 vs. 2025”
My original thoughts were along the eyeball viewing. How has the walks and strikeouts, on the offense side changed, from last year to this year. Looking at all of the times we have seen rallies killed by the strikeout, for this season, I thought this season would have a markedly large increase. I am very surprised at the result.
2024:
1211 strikeouts over the entire season. 450 walks over the same period.
2025 to date:
1176 strikeouts. 448 walks.
It appears that these two stats are going to end up similar which is what surprised this ol’ man.
LikeLike
But the Astros strikeout percentage this season is 10 points higher when there are RISP than their overall strikeout percentage. and their BA is 8 points lower when there are RISP than their overall BA. So, it’s not their strikeouts that hurt them, it is their strikeouts when the chips are down that has sent them to defeats. They are not very good when it is clutch time.
LikeLike
This team overall is terrible at striking out on breaking balls out of the zone. They are not disciplined enough to look for spin and lay off. It is the result of lack of coaching and lack of awareness of pitcher tendencies. In years past they were better at it than these guys are.
LikeLike
Jose Altuve is the leader of this deterioration of plate discipline. Last year was, by far, his worst year ever for striking out and he is getting close to that number again in 2025.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am of the small group that believes the batter should set up to the front of the batters’ box to hit the ball before it breaks. Most of the pros set up at the back of the box though.
LikeLike
I just read the comments on the CBoxes website. I am so glad that we are civilized here.
Thank you all.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve always felt that utilizing profanity and name calling is a lazy way out and is not the intelligent way to address the problems we see.
I consider y’all intelligent and civilized and I also appreciate you – you make this blog a pleasure to write.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m glad to see Cam Smith is on there. I’ve seen number of comments and posts/articles talking about what a huge mistake Houston made not sending him to Corpus. It’s possible they’re ultimately going to be right, but I’ve greatly enjoyed watching his success and struggles this year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thoughts
LikeLiked by 1 person
A few weeks back I tried writing about a scenario where you absolutely know a hitter will not get a hit or reach base. I felt like that in the 1st inning when Altuve got down chasing that first pitch out of the zone. I was a bit deflated when Diaz came up, but he came through and it was huge. The next time up Altuve showed the most amazing/frustrating thing about himself. Virtually every time he’s come up with a huge hit this year it’s either followed or been followed by an absolutely atrocious at bat. I don’t care…he’s still one of my favorite Astros…but definitely gives us some stress watching the games.
LikeLike
Heck of a series. The Rangers had three pretty good starters lined up against the Astros. Our bats got to all three guys early. We used Jason Alexander, an Oakland cast off in the opener, AJ Blubaugh, with 25 career ML innings under his belt in the game two bullpen match up and then El Reptil against two time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom.
Our pen, made up mostly of guys from AAA and cast offs from around the league, got 33 outs in the series.
And now we have our ace and our ghost ace lined up on 5 days rest for the Mariners series.
At some point, Dana Brown will be given consideration for Executive of the Year. And then of course we’ve been reading that others around the league think Joe Espada deserves Manager of the Year recognition. Is this the same Joe that people want to fire?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Guys, I’m swamped the past few weeks, so I haven’t tracked real well. BUT…
I just noticed that not only did the Astros take over the AL West lead (AGAIN), they are only a game and a half away from a bye in the first round. Geez, what does THAT say about the state of MLB and particularly the AL?
Of course, Detroit owns the head-to-head tie breaker over Houston (and they don’t play again), so the Astros are really TWO games out…but the team still has some things in its control…BELIEVE IT OR NOT!
Dan, you should write a book about this season! If the Astros could go deep into October, it could be a beautiful year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This has been the nutsiest season – Chip. If they go deep – this would be a miracle season considering all that has happened.
A book – quite a challenge
LikeLike
The first place tie resumes.
LikeLike
Good morning! Need a win tonight. Got to get the opener.
LikeLike
Has anyone been paying attention to Cleveland? They’re on a 7 game win streak and are 3.5 back after sweeping Detroit. They finish with 4 @MIN, 3 with DET at home, and then 3 at home against TEX. Obviously we knew our next three against SEA are huge, but even limping into a Wild Card spot might be tough at this point.
Last offseason it was observed that Framber and Max Fried have basically been the same pitcher. Around the All Star break the Yankees fans were complaining about Fried…which is typically not a great thing since he is on their books for so many years and dollars moving forward, but after picking up a win last night he’s now 18-5 with a 2.92 ERA and 182K over 188+ innings. Framber has gone in the other direction with a 12-10 record, 3.59 ERA, and 173K over 180 innings. What? You want the newer stats? Fried has a 1.12 WHIP and Framber a 1.220. That difference is miniscule. If we look at ERA+ Framber is at 117 and Fried 138. FIP 3.31 for Framber and 3.12 for Fried. Those two are a bit at odds with eachother. Given Fried’s better numbers, the Yankees’ pitiful defense, and crackerjack ballpark you’d expect him to have a better FIP. Regardless, they’re still in the same ballpark in terms of performance.
LikeLike
Devin, yes, but if the Astros take care of their own business, no reason to be concerned about the Guardindians as Dan calls them.
This time of year, I’m looking for one game at a time and am happy to have Hunter on the mound tonight. We’ll see how it goes and despite losing Yordan on Monday, our guys seem to have a bit of a spring in their step right now, so I’m not thinking about limping into the playoffs. I’m looking forward to Friday night, thinking that in spite of competition from High School football games all over the city, we should have a big, loud crowd.
Unfortunately, Framber is not close to Fried right now from a performance standpoint. Max is pitching like an ace down the stretch. Framber certainly has that ability, but does he still care?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glass half full guy would remind everyone that the Astros are actually closer to to the 2 seed and first round bye than not making the playoffs at all.
WAR, what is it good for? I don’t know, it does a pretty good job of telling how things have went. It doesn’t do much for telling where things might go. I prefer evaluating swing rates, contact quality and quantity, a myriad of other things that might tell me if I’m looking at a trend or a fad. I can’t really look at Jose Altuve’s 0.4 WAR and realize how important he has been to the lineup (sans this September so far….) or Walkers mere .6 point difference at -0.2 and realize how bad he has been for most of the season.
It was nice to be the dagger in the heart of the Texas Rangers. Couldn’t happen to a better fan base and a better right fielder.
LikeLiked by 1 person