Astros’ off-season: Show me the money

In 2025, the Astros crossed the luxury tax Rubicon for the second consecutive season, piling up approximately $245 million in obligations against an approximate luxury tax limit of $241 million.

2025 Houston Astros 2025 Tax Table

Heading into 2026, they will likely not cross the luxury tax level again for a team that failed to make the playoffs for the first time after eight consecutive appearances. (Or maybe they will – who knows with Jim Crane). Please note that the luxury tax level will be $244 million in 2026.

On the plus side, the Astros have around $35 million of retained and dead money that will come off the books that was paid in 2025. Think of money owed to Jose Abreu, Rafael Montero, Ryan Pressly and the like.

They will also (likely) have the $18 million they paid in 2025 to Framber Valdez come off the books.

They can also non-tender some of their arbitration eligible players and have that money come off the books. We will talk about that more in a minute.

Another option which we can discuss is trading one of more of their highly paid contract players. We will also talk about that farther down the line.

The set contracts for 2026 are as follows:

The arbitration eligible with a guesstimate of the results for 2026:

16 players – $71.45 million

If you remove the 7 players marked out here as non-tenders that would leave you with 9 players and $43.5 million in payroll.

And I know some folks want to non-tender Jake Meyers. I think they would more likely come to an agreement with Meyers on a two-year deal and then trade him if they want him off the payroll.

Other players coming back as pre-arbitration at league minimum could include:

That is 10 players for $8 million.

So, with the non-tenders suggested – you have $185.7 million tied up, but you have approx. $58 million to play with in the off-season below the $244 million luxury tax level.

Of course, you could add to that available dollar amount by attempting to trade one or more of the top 7 players. But, except for Yordan you would likely have to throw in money to make the trades and if you are talking about McCullers, you would have to include a prospect to get someone to swallow his contract.

$58 million seems like a lot of money, but with the going rate of free agents, it could disappear in a hurry, plus they would want to keep some of that in their back pocket if they wanted to add more salary at the trade deadline.

But they would seem to be in the market for at least one starting pitcher and possibly (depending on Hader’s health) a high leveraged bullpen arm.

In the end it is up to Jim Crane as much as Dana Brown on where and how much is spent this offseason.

What are your thoughts here?

←
→

13 responses to “Astros’ off-season: Show me the money”

  1. Good morning. Are Dana and Joe on double secret probation? Heck, there might be spy’s in the clubhouse this year.

    We really need to squeeze pitching out of whatever available cash there is going to be. Probably won’t happen, but if Dana can move Walker for 8 or 10 of that 20 million, it also helps with the theme of getting the offense to be more selective. Too many of those 177 K’s were not even competitive. And a .622 home OPS. Terrible. As an aside, if those Baseball Reference defensive stats can be trusted in any way, Walker also provided a -1.5 dWAR in 2025. Out of character, or aging?

    Dubon should not get close to 7 million for playing defense. Keeping with the theme, just too many quick, bad at bats. And a .625 OPS at home. Again, terrible. I’d actually keep Urias. It’s unlikely Carlos is going to be healthy for 150 plus games at third. Urias gives us a very solid glove at second too. And offensively, he’s better than Dubon.

    Victor is a lefty bat but he also had a crappy .633 OPS at home. Terrible once more. And a new contract for Victor might not be very thrifty. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have anyone besides Salazar available currently. Certainly cheap, and lefty too. But he night hit .160. Not a solution.

    And back to Jake for a moment. We know Jakes tracks down baseballs. He saves runs that way. But he’s got just 7 career assists. Everyone takes a base on Jake. We lose runs that way. Jake had a home OPS of .538 in 2025. Lifetime his home OPS is .672. He hit 3 homers on the season, none at home. That’s really terrble.

    Dana really has his work cut out for him. If healthy, we should have a pretty good offense, especially if a couple of new voices can convince some guys to change their approach at the plate. Cam has to take the next step or else he has to play some Triple A. We need a guy like Zach Cole show up and own a job. That’s the problem though. Too many ifs. We don’t an outfield to pencil in today.

    But back to pitching. Very few teams have enough pitching. The M’s will likely play in the WS because they actually have a mostly intact rotation in October, along with a solid pen. The Dodgers signed everyone and his brother and somehow got them healthy all at the right time. Pitching. Where is Dana Brown going to find enough healthy, effective arms on his budget in order to keep the Astros relevant? I don’t know. He really does have a tough job and he’s on the clock now.

    Like

    Reply

    • Daveb

      I meant to mention that the Astros with Caratini becoming a FA need to sign someone to be their backup catcher as there is no one near the top of the minors that you can hand that to (unless it is Salazar).

      You have nailed the problem area for the Astros – starting pitching – and it is not a cheap thing to pick up out in the world.

      Right now their starting rotation would look something like:

      • Hunter Brown
      • Cristian Javier
      • Jason Alexander
      • Lance McCullers Jr.
      • AJ Blubaugh
      • JP France

      You’d have Spencer Arrighetti (if well) Colton Gordon and Jayden Murray back there plus the possibility that Hayden Wesneski, Ronel Blanco and Brandon Walter return. (That sounds so much like 2025).

      Yikes.

      Like

      Reply

      • Dan, that’s why I can’t rule out Framber coming back if the league proves not to be overly enthusiastic about him.

        Like

    • The Astros had no problem telling Kyle Tucker they didn’t think he was worth what he was asking (or predicted to make) in arbitration. I think Brown needs to go to Urias and Dubon’s agents with a realistic, team friendly offer and then either trade them or let them walk if they don’t like it. I’m signing Jake and trying to trade him at the same time.

      I don’t typically trust the defensive metrics on bbref or other sites. I do think Walker was pretty good, but he had a couple fielding gaffs that cost us. I would expect him to be more valuable there next year in the field than any likely replacements, but I question whether it offsets the negative value from those uncompetitive K’s you cite. I don’t have any hope of finding a trade partner.

      I think Dan’s question on Hader is the most pressing. If he comes back and is healthy in 26 our bullpen should be strong. If he can’t go we suddenly have a big problem.

      Like

      Reply

      • Devin, my replacement at first would be Isaac Paredes. If Dana Brown manages to move Walker, although a bit of a long shot, it solves the where to play Paredes issue. And if we get good health from Paredes and Correa, that move makes us a better club and costs a few less bucks.

        Like

  2. To use an over used cliche, I think the chickens have come home to roost. That’s not to be negative but the “Band Aid” approach to the team over the last few years has been for the most part, unsuccessful. Signing aging and declining players to multi year large contracts has not worked out unless I’m missing something here. Look at how many of the playoff teams have managed to find really good players via the draft while we seem to be trading away guys for the quick fix. Years ago we built a dynasty on great draft choices and player development. Now our impatience has netted us a declining team performance with little expectation that things will get better.

    I would like us to be competitive but not at the expense of constantly mortgaging the future. Building a great team was started back in 2012 with George Springer. Sure there were a couple of misses but Correa, Tucker, Bregman, LMJ (before injury), and the signing of Altuve. Maybe we can get back to that winning formula, bu 1st we need to abandon the “win now” attitude that has brought us to this point. For the last three years the trend has been downward so hopefully we can get our mojo back.

    Like

    Reply

    • Z, good morning. I strongly endorse your post. It’s a used band aid at this point. We could have moved Framber and Bregman after 2023 and missed the post season in 2024 and maybe even 2025. But what’s another year if your roster is getting younger and more athletic and dynamic? Right now we’re far from being a World Series contender.

      Like

      Reply

      • Z / Daveb – Can’t argue with any of that.

        Chip talks about how his New Orleans Saints were in that in between band aid area. Not good enough to win it all or but not willing to blow it up.

        Like

    • Bregman is a baseball businessman. He’ll say all the right things, but he’s not about loyalty. That is the nature of the game these days. It’ll be interesting to see what someone will pay Bregman this winter. Two more years at 40 million sounded pretty good. Will anyone give him 5 at 40?

      I’m guessing we’re going to have one big pitching duel at the World Series this year. Post season play will always be a crap shoot, but when a team can assemble a heathy batch of superior arms in October, it’s quite an advantage. And it looks like we’ll have two teams, both with that advantage.

      Like

      Reply

    • There are a lot of big names in FA this year already. It seems like Bregman wanted to go to Boston all along last year and somehow convinced them to up the ante at the last minute. Does he have anything else up his sleeve? Prior to the season it looked like an infield logjam there, but now things are decidedly less certain given the trade of Devers and uninspired results from Campbell/Mayer. I don’t know…the narrative out there is that Bregman will have lots of suitors, but I he may end up disappointed if he can’t get something worked out in the first couple weeks of December. I do know with absolute certainty the Astros should not be involved in any such discussions. Even if I opposed playing Correa at 3B it’s worth noting Paredes was able to put up similar numbers to Bregman while missing about the same number of games and getting paid about 17% of the cost.

      Like

      Reply

      • Bregman could be looking at an extension from the Red Sox. That would be practical for him. But he did not have a remarkable year, especially in Fenway. The Red Sox might be quietly relieved that he’s apparently prepared to work the market again.

        Like

  4. Subjectively, all the drafting and so on set us up for a *chance* at success but it was JV that pushed us to greatness. And the trade for Cole (G). Shame Hinch messed up Game 7. I really think (subjectively, don’t have data to back it up) that we needed a JV to send us over the top. Just like Clemens pushed us way past our previous ceiling.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment