Astros 2026 Look Ahead – The Big Ifs….

In many ways, it feels like the Astros are owed some positive karma after two straight seasons of bad luck on the injury front.

In 2025 alone they faced season ending or long term injuries with pitchers Hayden Wesneski, Ronel Blanco, Brandon Walter, Bennett Sousa, Kaleb Ort and position players Yordan Alvarez, Isaac Paredes, Zach Dezenzo and Jake Meyers.

This did not count the pitchers on long term IL to begin the season including Lance McCullers Jr. Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier and J.P. France, who all returned to mostly poor or worst results. And then they lost closer for the first time Josh Hader and Yordan Alvarez for the second time at a very key moment in the season.

2024 had been almost as bad, so from this point of view there should be some good luck coming to the team.

So, let’s play the “If” game in looking at some good luck items that could certainly improve the team in 2026.

  • The biggest “if” has to do with Yordan Alvarez. “If” he can play around 140 games like he did in 2021, 2022 and 2024 – that will be a huge boost to the team
  • “If” Isaac Paredes can give the Astros a full season at the pace he was giving them before his hamstring injury – that would certainly help the team, especially as an example to the youngsters on the Astros, who need to know how to work the count and get a pitch they can handle.
  • “If” Cam Smith can provide numbers somewhere between the .292 BA/ .359 OBP/ .805 OPS/ 37 runs/ 7 HRs/ 39 RBIs he had leading up to the 4th of July and the .153 BA/ .248 OBP/ .479 OPS/ 18 runs/ 2 HRs/ 12 RBIs afterwards (and hopefully closer to the former), he could be a valuable offensive weapon.
  • “If” 2024 Yainer Diaz returns and puts 2025 Yainer Diaz way back in the rear view mirror, that would be a nice plus for the team.
  • “If” Dana Brown and Joe Espada can figure out how to juggle two guys that are better DHs than position players (Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez) and a crowded infield that sports Altuve, Carlos Correa, Jeremy Pena, Christian Walker, Isaac Paredes and Ramon Urias, that will be interesting to watch. (Along with seeing if top prospect Brice Matthews is more ready in 2026).
  • “If” Zach Cole was not a fluke. “If” Jake Meyers can figure out how to hit at home as well as away. “If” Cam can do what was discussed above. “If” Jesus Sanchez is more like his career numbers than what he showed in his 2 month tryout here. And “If” Yordan Alvarez can help out part time in left field….then the Astros might still be looking for an OF signing or trade.
  • “If” the Astros can actually develop a position player/ bat who does not melt down when they are brought up, that would give them a big leg up.
  • Hunter Brown had the 3rd best ERA for starters in the majors while being tied for 21st in wins. “If” the universe has any kind of fairness, Hunter should be up around 18 wins in 2026.
  • “If” Cristian Javier can channel just a little of that 2022 magic now that he is another 6 months away from surgery, he could be a threat for the top 3 in the rotation.
  • “If” Jason Alexander was not a fluke and can continue the solid pitching he showed down the stretch in 2025, that would slot in to a 3 or 4 spot in the rotation.
  • “If” A.J. Blubaugh pitched the whole season and even doubled his 1.69 ERA from 2025, that would be a great addition to the rotation.
  • “If” Lance McCullers Jr. finds his control and his velocity again….oh that is asking for too much.
  • “If” Dana Brown can find some kind of rotation help that can actually get through a few months without facing the knife, we would be so happy.
  • “If” Miguel Ullola finds the plate and pairs it up with his plus arm and becomes the next surprise from the Astros minor leagues, that would be fantastic.
  • “If” Josh Hader comes back without having to face surgery and picks up on his All Star season from 2025, that would be a fine shot in the arm for the bullpen.
  • “If” Steven Okert, Bryan King and Bennett Sousa continue to give the Astros solid, leveraged innings out of the bullpen, that would be great.
  • “If” we could have a nice, quiet, mostly injury free season in 2026….the team might make the playoffs.

What are your big “Ifs” you are hoping for this season?

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31 responses to “Astros 2026 Look Ahead – The Big Ifs….”

  2. Well, sounds like Dana Brown is working on the infield overcrowding with his release of Urias. But as some have said – wouldn’t it make more sense to let Duby go than Urias from a $$ and a hitting sense?

    Ullola is available as a next man up on the 40 man.

    Framber will find out how much his freak out collapse hurt his value in the free agent market

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    • I don’t know. Duby is a better fielder and can play all 3 OF positions as well. Personally I may have considered DFAs for both and Sanchez, and found myself with about 16M free. But they aren’t me. And Dubon has value, I don’t know if its 7M in value, but if you can limit him to 300 PAs while still managing to find 700-800 innings in the field to maximize his defense, maybe.

      You just can’t find yourself having Dubon forced into playing nearly every day and ending up with 450 PAs because other people are hurt or ineffective. If that happens, you probably will wish you had kept Urias.

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      • Let’s face it, Dubon stinks at the plate and annually ends up with too many at bats. Even with new coaches trying to sell the team on being more selective, Frenchie just won’t be able to change his game at this point. Urias was less worse. And he played good infield. Cheaper. I don’t want Dubon’s bat in the outfield. And the cynic in me is already thinking that we’ll be doing all the same things in 2026. Slow, station to station team, with too many guys that can’t work an at bat, especially when it counts.

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  3. Too many IFs for this team to solve in one year. The biggest one: avoiding another 2,330 IL days. The Dodgers survived 2,500 and still won the WS, but that was because they could buy Blake Snell to replace Kershaw. The Astros can’t operate that way—health is everything.

    • IF Cam adjusts.
    • IF Jake holds down the 9th spot and keeps finding seeing eye grounders.
    • IF Jesus Sanchez gets a righty platoon partner and isn’t a liability.
    • IF Correa looks like 2024 (904 OPS) instead of 2025 (734).
    • IF Peña stays healthy.
    • IF Altuve’s bat offsets his defense.
    • IF Paredes adapts to his role.
    • IF Walker improves.
    • IF five starters emerge without another bad contract.
    • IF Dubon’s at-bats are limited but his glove used late.
    • IF Caratini returns.
    • IF Yainer learns to hit spin as well as he catches it.
    • IF Javier and McCullers regain 1–2 MPH.
    • IF Hader stays upright.
    • And most of all, IF Big Man plays 140 instead of 60.

    Dave—you want younger and more athletic. This isn’t it.

    What IF they’d traded Valdez to the Dodgers two years ago for Rushing and Sheehan? LA might have listened. Sheehan lost time to TJ but is back, Rushing isn’t a star but would be Houston’s catcher of the future. That move shifts Yainer to 1B, avoids signing Walker, and lets Yainer focus on hitting. His best year came when he was mostly DH. Instead, the team chased another name after Abreu, leaving them stuck with two more years and $40M of a subpar 1B. It’s all about staying out of bad contracts.

    This franchise doesn’t make the sharp moves it did in 2015–18—finding Brantley, trading for Cole and Verlander, turning Morton into a star. Crane wants to win, but I don’t think he realizes he wasn’t the reason they were winning. He underestimated Luhnow. IF only he knew.

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    • Nice list Steven! One minor disagreement – I don’t think Yainer catches spin very well – so I want him hitting spin better than catching it.

      I can’t help but wonder if biting the bullet and trading Walker while picking up half his salary would not work out best. You could put Paredes at 1B and have Yainer out there sometimes.

      I’m guessing Caratini would like to get a steadier gig with someone.

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      • Dan, I haven’t really given much thought. I would like to see Caratini back. I’ve been kind of paying attention to college football right now, and not watching the baseball news as I don’t expect things until December – but I expect this to be an upheaval year for the Astros. I think there are going to see some moves we don’t like.

        Caratini has a career of playing better when his time is limited. But maybe he looks at it as a guy at what should be his prime, maybe he is looking for 500 PAs somewhere, and he won’t get it here.

        I just find it hard to believe that the Astros couldn’t find some value for Urias somewhere, even if its just an 18 year old lottery ticket for A ball that might not have developed his fastball yet. Dude is pretty average, but pretty average doesn’t exist in a lot of places at 2B or 3B around the league.

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      • Steven – even though I gently nudge “noisily” down below about Luhnow – he was great at gathering more and more valuable “chips”

        The Astros sent an A level pitcher for Urias and got nothing in return letting him go. (I will point out that that pitcher had pitched great for the Astros and got pounded with the Orioles farm team, but neither here nor there).

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    • Yep. Crane discounted the value of Luhnow. And followed that up by discounting the value of Click. Worst of all, followed that up with the extreme OVER valuing the Crane/Bagwell GM collaboration. Dana Brown is probably a good scout/evaluator like many say he is. But, it’s probably still best to have a heavily analytic approach at the GM spot for making the final decisions. A GM like that can and generally does have the “old school” baseball staff to provide input, because that is still valuable and always will be. But having an analytic thinking GM helps a bunch, because that mind set is probably the most disciplined and is far less likely to make those Jose Abreu and Montero types of mistakes. Those two decisions alone by Crane/Bagwell are so bad, that correcting them is usually impossible without the types of financial might that the Dodgers wield.

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      • Yes, but even analytical Luhnow brought us this 2015 classic trade

        Josh Hader, Domingo Santana, Adrian Houser and Brett Phillips for Mike (Fink) Fiers and Carlos Gomez

        Ouch

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      • LOL. Well ….. no one is perfect:):). I have to admit though … that was a bad one. But at least Gomez did help beat the Yankees in 2015. Helped to get things started:):).

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    • Yeah Steven, I am going to be chagrined again. Of course you heard me whining about moving Framber for the past couple of years. Too late. Can I have a third of those if’s?

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  4. That’s true noisily…and Fiers was very helpful during the portion of 2017 when all the rotation pieces kept missing time.

    And then Fiers was our worse nightmare. He gave MLB the one thing they couldn’t get from the other cheaters – someone who would turn state’s evidence on his former teammates. This allowed MLB to punish one team and one team only (I don’t count what happened to the Red Sox a real punishment).

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  6. Well, Allen is strictly a late inning utility guy. He’s got no business in the line up.

    This is a ten million dollar salary dump moving Urias and Dubon.

    Maybe we are in the hunt for Donovan. Or maybe they’re thinking about shoving Matthews into the mix.

    Bit of a head scratcher for now. Hopefully another soon to come move will explain it. Meanwhile, plenty of Dubon fans will be rather upset today.

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  7. I really liked Dubon – he would do anything they asked him to do – played brilliantly in the field no matter where or when they asked him to play. But he was a utility guy because he had a utility guy bat.

    I have to think they are clearing payroll for a purpose here. They still have the problem of where to play Paredes – it feels like this pushes him towards second base, unless……they dump Walker and his salary too. But if it is Paredes to second then where the heck does Altuve go? Left field did not work. And DH is going to be mostly Yordan.

    Waiting for more bricks to drop here.

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    • First – let me say ahead of time I’m not an advocate for this deal, but the franchise that tried to trade for Arenado……-

      But what if freeing up Dubon and Urias and Chas allows them to go after the guy they wanted in the beginning at 2B – Jorge Polanco. It wouldn’t surprise me if we hear the 3/45 deal made soon, because this team seems to like taking on guys on the wrong side of 30 with contracts they are going to regret in 2027.

      I do think Jesus Sanchez time in Houston is going to end up being short. I can’t imagine a world they want to give him 7M to play bad baseball because every once in a while he hits a no doubter. Give me some doubters that float into the Crawfords by sheer accident and a player that actually catches a baseball, throws to the right base, makes heady baseball decisions on the basepaths, and doesn’t terrorize my lineup with swings and misses because he wants to hit one to the old Astrodome. When he leaves, ask him to get a bus ticket for Trammel and Melton too.

      I’ve heard the Donovan rumors. Brendan is a hometown kid here from my town Enterprise. Dude is a gamer. We could probably find multiple times over the years of me advocating for getting this guy. Thing is, I don’t know what the Astros have that the Cards would want. They are clearly in the market for a starting pitcher that can change their fortunes. We clearly don’t have one of those we are willing to give up. Maybe there is a world where Arrighetti is the centerpiece of bringing Donovan here, but do we really want to give up Spencer at a time that we aren’t sure we even have 5 guys?

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      • Steven, I thought the departure of Urias meant Dubon would be staying. And then I felt like things were not going to change much this winter. I think now that I might have been very wrong. We might well have plenty to talk about this winter.

        Sanchez, Trammel, Melton. I sure agree there.

        We’ll see what happens.

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  8. I’m not surprised, but I am a little emotional about it.

    “Duby” never really had THAT defining moment as an Astros like the Chas catch, but everyone knows this roster needs an overhaul and it’s not going to be done at the expense of 20M dollar players. I really will not be surprised if they move Yainer next – Brown has continuously talked about the need to find more guys that work counts.

    I’ve always been a fan of Dubon. I understand all the weaknesses. It’s clear that he was going to stay south of league averages in OBP and SLG. He wasn’t a terribly gifted baserunner despite being pretty quick. He was just another guy that couldn’t lay off the slider.

    But I also understand his strengths. He had become one of the hardest guys in baseball to strikeout. He could field 8 positions, and be a plus defender at all 8. The Astros just always got forced into over exposing him. He was never meant to get 4 ABs every game. He isn’t supposed to be batting in the 4th inning with 2 runners and 2 outs. Those at bats were supposed to go to Pena, or Altuve, or
    Paredes, not the people he constantly had to stand in for because they weren’t available. No, he was supposed to get the occasional spot start, replace someone in the 7th defensively, take a tough at bat against a lefty when you need the ball in play, it’s not his fault the Astros couldn’t accentuate his strengths and hide his weaknesses because of injuries.

    That said, that role doesn’t need to be a guy that makes 6M. To be fair, if you are the best in the world at filling that role, and I think Dubon might be, you should be paid for it – it’s just not going to be by a team that straddles cap space.

    There is no way Nick Allen and Brice Mathews are going to be Ramon Urias or Mauricio Dubon. What the Astros need is to reverse that 2,330 days of IL time and see Correa, Pena, Paredes and company actually play and not rely on Nick Allen to do anything but come in as a defensive replacement at 2B or take the occasional spot start.

    The funny thing is – Atlanta made this move because they don’t have a SS. They have not committed to Dubon being their starting SS next year but it’s looking like a possibility.

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    • I can’t decide whether I like this move or would have preferred non-tendering Dubon. Have we decided Correa can’t play SS anymore? As I said last week, the metrics have him slightly worse than Pena last year, but we’d be looking at 20-25 games there maximum unless a catastrophic injury happened. Altuve has to enter the season with an expectation of 50/50/50 starts at LF, 2B, and DH. I’m going to call him an infielder for now and say we’re looking at 6 infielders, 2 catchers, 1 DH, 4 outfielders, and 13 pitchers on the roster. That makes Allen your sixth infielder. Espada better find a way to get people practice all around the diamond this spring.

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      • Yea, I really can’t figure out what I think they are going to do. I don’t think they want to enter the Spring with Paredes and Walker both, Paredes is the guy they don’t want to trade because he gives them at the plate what they want but he doesn’t have a home, and Walker is the guy they are going to say they have no intention of trading but the reality is they simply can’t.

        So maybe we get to spring with the logjam, Walker at 1B, Altuve in LF, Pena at SS, Correa at 3B, and no real answer at 2B and no real place for Paredes to play. I know a lot of people think just penciling in Paredes at 2B makes the most sense, but if that was Brown and Espada’s plan they would have already said it and moved on to their bigger issue of the pitching staff. Personally, I would do it, he can’t be worse than Altuve, but they see the medicals and the infield practice I don’t, so I have to trust their judgment.

        If the roster goes into ST the same, how many days do you think you see Yordan in LF, Altuve at 2B so Paredes can DH? It also gives you the flexibility of giving Correa DH days. But man, in my mind, Altuve should only play 135 games next year and half of those should be at DH. It feels like, right now, Yordan is going to be in LF moving around that 250 lbs on those ankles and knees more than we want.

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      • Currently, we have three guys best suited for the DH role, with Correa taking third base from Isaac. Getting Paredes over to first base would make it Altuve and Yordan. But if we end up with Yordan and Altuve sharing DH and left and Padres over at second, gosh, we’ve already got a significantly compromised defense. I also think 150 games is too many for Altuve at 36. 3000 hits should not be a consideration when the line up is penciled in.

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      • I think Paredes is a pretty good ballplayer and doesn’t need to be relegated to DH. I do think there are times guys need rest. I somewhat agree with you about Altuve, but only because he seems to get an injury or two each year. We saw one year where a non-serious knee injury really knocked him out for awhile and his performance suffered when he was in there. If he can avoid those I don’t believe at 36 he should be unable to play 150 games. It’s not like we’re asking him to steal 50 bases.

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  9. Chip forwarded me communication from former announcer Greg Lucas where he said ” I can find NO basic statistical reason why trading Mauricio Dubon for Nick Allen makes sense for the Astros. There has to be a financial reason. There is no baseball statistical or even eyeball reason it creates improvement for Houston.”

    I will go one step beyond – I don’t think that Nick Allen is a sure thing to make this baseball team in 2026 other than the embarrassment of trading for him and then letting him go. (Of course, they have already done that with Urias and may be going to do that with Sanchez).

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    • To be honest my very first thought was – this kicks the can down the road on that money decision, because there was a world where Dubon was non-tendered and left for nothing. This at least gives you a depth piece that you can non-tender after a deadline and it not kill you at 1.2M, and he makes the team if you are stuck in “well we really couldn’t pull off this Donovan trade or Polanco signing.” They really couldn’t just sit on Dubon like that, locking in his contract in arby means paying the entire thing later if you do get the move you want.

      Personally I would have non-tendered Duby, and then tried to negotiate a 3 year deal at something like 13M. Or you could have just made that offer right now. Maybe they did it float it to his agent. Who knows. We don’t know what happens in the hallways of the ice box but we can pretty ascertain that it was financially driven instead of whats better for the team.

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  11. I don’t feel bad about losing Dubon. If the Astros are really committed to building a line up that is going to be more selective, then Dubon should not be in that line up, nor Walker. I should add Diaz to that list, but maybe he’s salvageable. He’s also a catcher that produces more offense than most.

    As for Allen, if he makes the team, he’s the 26th guy and he won’t last long. Great fielder, but he is legitimately the worst hitter in MLB.

    Again, we’re going to have to wait and see how it all shakes out. I’m sure Dana has a plan, but will it come together?

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  12. Last nights Chandler Rome Clutch City podcast featured Dan Hennigan, our new guy behind the scenes, who will help coordinate with our hitting coaches what the offense is trying to do daily. For me it was a comforting discussion, as he pretty much said everything I wanted to hear about having a disciplined plan for the offense everyday, depending on facts such as who will be on the mound for the other team. He mentioned that the ambush concept would still be used from time to time, but it was pretty clear the goal is to become much more disciplined as a team at the plate, player by player. He reminded that we were 21st in runs scored, and thought we should be in the top ten, and mentioned our failure to get that last 90 feet far too often.

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    • Morning all!

      AstroNut, I think we have guys that can already do what Bleday does. And I know that Enright will miss 2026 with Tommy John. But Heim, even though he quit hitting after 2023, might be a one year consideration if Caratini does not come back into the fold.

      Jacob Webb seems like the kind of guy the Astros would like to work with. Maybe he can throw more ground balls. I’m a bit surprised the Rangers sent him packing. Maybe they know something we don’t.

      Foley looks interesting but he’s got a bad shoulder.

      Cousins is another Tommy John victim.

      One thing I feel pretty good about with Dana is that he does find guys and frequently gets something out of them.

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