Astros’ off-season: “Stuff”

Your faithful servant has again reached a moment when his mind is clogged with mental constipation.

So, this post will be filled with “stuff” that needs to be unloaded to allow room for more “stuff”.

  • What’s the Plan? Let’s face it. It is rarely clear to outsiders what the plan is for any of their favorite teams. That is normally because if there is a real plan, most front offices get derailed by injuries, bad performances, folks boogying out of town and the like.  With the Astros, the fans are hoping for a hint of what direction the team is headed.
    • If they are all-in and believe they have a shot at a championship, we should be seeing them spending the luxury tax line into oblivion.If they are hell-bent on staying under the luxury tax, we should not see more than a pick-up or two in the free agent market and maybe no one of consequence.
    • If they want to get younger, there may be some trades with familiar names heading out the door.

But we should see some indication of the direction of the club in this crucial off-season….unless….

  • The leash is so short – it affects how Dana Brown and Joe Espada play the game. They are just human – it would not be unusual to think that they will make decisions with a much shorter view in mind. It would be a lot to ask for Brown and Espada to work as though some 5 Year Plan is foremost on their minds. They need to win – but do they need to put things together that will only make the team good in 2026 or will they at least keep the next couple seasons in mind?
  • The Astros best pitcher in 2025 was Hunter Brown. Their best position player was Jeremy Pena. Extensions??  Brown is controlled through arbitration from 2026 thru 2028. Pena is controlled from 2026 thru 2027. While extensions need interest from both parties, the question has to be how interested the Astros are in extending one or both of these players. They have allowed a number of great players to walk over the last decade. They have signed a few team friendly extensions along the way. When you talk about plans – what is their plan for extensions?
  • The Astros won the AL West in 2023 (90 wins) and 2024 (88 wins) and came in 2nd missing the playoffs with 87 wins in 2025 behind the 90-win Mariners.  What is it going to take to win the AL West in 2026?  That 90 win or so mark is on the low side for winning a division, normally. It feels like it will take more than 90 wins with the Mariners poised to step up higher and perhaps one of the other teams having a one-off successful season. But the real question is whether the Astros can even get to that 90-win mark, much less beyond that in 2026.
  • If you were a betting man or woman how would you bet on the following:
    • 2026 Astro wins – 85 wins – over/underJoe Espada makes it all the way through 2026 as the manager – yes/no
    • Dana Brown is still the GM starting 2027 – yes/no

So, do you have any “stuff” to unload?

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29 responses to “Astros’ off-season: “Stuff””

  1. If our team wins the division I think Dana Brown and Espada will be back on a short contract. If not, they are probably gone. I wish Pena and Brown would be extended, but I doubt Crane does so. I wish Parades would have gone through surgery when he was first injured. Now with these reports that he will not be ready to open the season, I worry that this will linger through much of the season.

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    • Yeah Larry, I also wish Paredes had gotten his repair done. He’s a big question mark, and only the Astros know how big. They might decide it would be unwise to try and move Walker if Isaac is not going to be 100% on Opening Day.

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  2. I think it will take 90 wins for Espada to keep his job. If we’re making a prediction on Brown I think we need to ask how his moves/decisions have gone:

    1. Verlander for Gilbert and Ryan Clifford. JV struggled with injuries and performance. Clifford and Gilbert both look like they are hitting the wall as AAA players due to poor contact skills.
    2. Kyle Tucker for Cam Smith, Hayden Wesneski, and Isaac Paredes. He robbed Chicago here. Tucker was only slightly better than Paredes in 2025 and is now fielding FA offers.
    3. Correa from Twins in a salary dump. This might actually have been 100% Crane.
    4. Jesus Sanchez for Gusto and parts. Kind of like to have this one back.
    5. Dubon to ATL for Nick Allen. This was clearly a salary dump and selling high on Dubon.
    6. Kikuchi for Wagner/Loperfido…this looks brilliant in hindsight, but I wouldn’t mind having those guys back either for depth.

    As for signings, well, we start with Christian Walker, but he also signed Victor Caratini. The magic 8 ball says it’s awfully cloudy.

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  3. The plan. Jim Crane has the expectation that his team should play post season baseball annually. That perpetuates the problem at hand. We make moves for older guys that are available with the hope that they will get us over the hump until our young guys find their footing. Most young guys don’t find their footing. And our other old guys keep getting older, and more brittle too. And our free agents depart. The mentality for the past few years has been to get to October now and worry about next year later. It’s not sustainable.

    The leash. At some point, Dana Brown will likely become a victim of Jim Cranes whims. See James Click. Dana has little wiggle room. He does not have a farm bulging with talent. There is no stash of cash. Existing guys have to stay healthy. A couple of young ones need to blossom. And if these things don’t happen in 2026, Dana is gone, even though it’s likely at least a couple of roster decisions are not/will not be his own. Joe’s situation is a bit more simple. If all these new coaches help guys hit and the pitchers pitch, Joe might be spared. But he’s still got (at least right now) a rather lumbering team that does not specialize in old fashioned tools like bunting and are too slow to go first to third regularly or steal a base when it’s needed.

    Extensions. Did Lance McCullers sour this club on the concept? Maybe. But regardless, I don’t see guys like Brown or Pena showing any real interest in the concept at this point. Maybe a Yainer Diaz or a Cam Smith or even an Isaac Paredes, but these guy all come with significant risk too.

    What will it take to win the West in 2026? Steven said it last week. First is good health. The M’s look good on paper. We don’t look so good on paper. Quite a few good things need to fall in place. Is it even possible to get younger and more athletic this winter? Dana has some crucial weeks ahead of him.

    I can’t bet against my home team. But if the club is not doing anything by the All Star break, Joe could go home. And if the club is not playing post season baseball in 2026, Dana will go home.

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    • I did something unusual and watched an NBA game this weekend. James Harden put up 55 points to lead the Clippers over the Hornets. Is Harden going to bring a championship to LA? No. I doubt there will be a team in the Western conference they can beat in a playoff series. However, when he faces inferior competition he still has some of that star power. That’s how I feel about this Astros team right now. I think they can get to October if they stay healthy, but I don’t think they could take down NYY, BOS, SEA, or TOR.

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  4. If the teams goal was to win and do it without regard to the cap there is no reason to trade Mauricio Dubon for Nick Allen. I read some of the excuse makers around Houston media writing the excuses about 6M versus 1M and 4 years of control of Nick Allen, but lets be honest, Nick Allen should not even be a lock to make this team. You basically sent one of the better utility players in the league out for money. I get it, Duby has been disappointing as a near every day player. But he isn’t supposed to be a near every day player. They actually pretensed this deal with outrighting the other utility guy. They wiped 10M off the books but we are stuck with Nick Allen and his career .536 OPS. That is not a typo. .536. What are we doing here?

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    • I sure don’t envision a goal to win without regard to the cap. That’s not going to happen, unless something really interesting comes up, most likely at the end of July.

      Just throwing this out there. Maybe the new hitting experts simply did not think Dubon could adjust to a new team wide approach at the plate. So they justified the salary dump. I still have no idea what the throw in of Nick Allen was meant to do. Maybe they want him starting at short in Sugar Land to be on standby in case of emergency.

      And I have to think the club is hoping to replace a good portion of Dubon’s starts with a so far secret solution.

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      • Nick Allen is out of options and would not pass through waivers. If Brice Matthews comes on strong in the spring they don’t really need him. If he does not, well, at least Allen’s glove in the infield is on the same level as Dubon’s.

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  5. Let’s see

    • Larry – totally agree on Paredes – watching him gimp around at the end of the season was tough.
    • Devin – mix bag of trades for Dana, which I guess is not that unusual – I wish we could put an asterisk on the ones that Crane forced (Verlander? Correa?).
    • daveb – Are there too many things that have to go right for Joe and Dana to stay here? It sure feels like it
    • Steven – The Dubon trade was a pure salary dump. It is weird – would the Astros get less heat if they just non-tendered him rather than trade him for a black hole of offense. I am kind of surprised they could not at least get an A level middle of the road prospect for him. Dana should have some background on Atlanta players or maybe it has been too long.

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    • My question is a little rhetorical. I know what they are doing. I just don’t understand it. This franchise will still pay Zach Greinke more money this year than Mauricio Dubon will make. Rafael Montero got 30M from them. What I mean by what are we doing here – we are letting past mistakes force us to make roster moves that make this team worse on the field because we can’t find 6M for Mauricio.

      Sometimes I wonder in all of this stat-speak we like to rely on if we have lost sight of in game skillset impact. I get it, in a macro world, Mauricio Dubon getting nearly 500 PAs and posting a .650ish OPS year in and year out, its frustrating. He just refuses to take the walks he needs to get that close to .700. But in the micro, the Astros just traded a guy that can be penciled in ANY of the 7 positions on the field in any given day, and play all of them well. He can be brought in to pinch run because while he isn’t the fastest guy one thing you never had to worry about was hearing TK say “I’m not sure what Duby was thinking right there.” He could come in as a defensive sub. He could step in as a RH pinch hitter for someone like Melton if a lefty is brought in and you just need the ball in play, and doing it did not require you to play mental gymnastics with your defensive alignment. You just are not supposed to be giving the guy 500 PAs because what he brings to the team isn’t counting stats that you need to make the overall engine run. Nick Allen is not bringing all of that. I’m not even sure he is bringing any of it, though I bet Allen would be capable of playing a pretty good CF if he had ever been asked to.

      Jesus Sanchez is that frustrating guy as a fan. In the macro, he needs 500 PAs to help you, because you know in places along that journey you are going to get more 2 run doubles than you would from Dubon. But man, the guy is just a bonehead in the field, on the bases, and in the micro he is as frustrating as any player I’ve ever seen on this team.

      Why not offer Duby 3 yr/14M and see where it goes? Instead, you were frustrated with Dubon’s .668 career OPS, wait until you meet Nick Allen.

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      • I guess the thing that really gets me is that you are just saving peanuts here for a guy who has won a utility Gold Glove two out of the last three seasons. And maybe it is because I don’t see what the ultimate outcome is. If dropping both Dubon and Urias and their expected $10-11 million in 2026 helps them get something special instead – well I don’t see that happening. If the something special is just getting under the luxury tax – well then, I am unimpressed. Maybe they have a bigger “plan” like having someone like Brice Matthews playing IF and OF off the bench. But I rarely like young guys getting off and on at bats.

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      • I’d rather give Dubon the money we’ll end up paying Sanchez. I’d love to be giving Altuve, LMJ, and Correa less money to keep him. At the same time, he really ended the year with a whimper.

        July: 4 RBI

        Aug: 5 RBI

        Sept: 5 RBI

        Of those, one gave us a 2 run lead against Arizona in July which we would eventually surrender and then win on a hit by Walker later in the game. Another in July also gave us a 2 run lead against Texas which we later surrendered but ended up winning in extras on hits by Walker and Short. Another in July was our only run in a 2-1 loss to WAS. The other 11 were all completely inconsequential in games we either ended up winning big or lost big. I think you nailed the big problem – he needs to be used as a reserve and not counted on to see 500 PA. If I believe Brown…and I’m not sure I do…they want to keep Paredes and are hoping he, Pena, and Correa don’t miss any real time.

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      • Dan – my initial thought is dropping Urias and Dubon both are the pre-cursor to announcing a Polanco signing. He checks a lot of blocks for them. It probably would cost 3/45 but you just cleared out 10M of cap space for 2025 and you could frontload the deal. Would I do it? It would sound pretty hypocritical of me to oppose contracts for guys with health risks on the wrong side of 30 and then say yea sign Polanco, but the Astros have shown they think age is just a number.

        Thats the thing about ballplayers. They think if they want they can do it forever. Jeff Bagwell probably thinks in his mind his body would respond if he wanted to step in the box against Tarik Skubal. And I think he advises Crane that way. “Don’t worry about Jose Abreu’s 3 month swoon Jim, probably just a slump. Don’t be afraid to give him 60M, look what he did just 3 years ago!” I’m betting if Bagwell has the opportunity to affect this team giving Polanco that check, he will say yes, 2027 be damned.

        But anyway, after hearing the things I’m hearing from “insiders” (who knows maybe they really don’t know) it seems it was a pure cost cutting measure, not a reinvestment opportunity. Maybe all the podcasters and reporters will be wrong.

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  6. Over the weekend news

    • The Astros non-tendered Ramon Urias (did not offer him an arbitration salary) which seemed kind of redundant since they DFA’s him previously
    • And here they signed De Los Santos and Trammell prior to arbitration Players Avoiding Arbitration: 11/21/25 – MLB Trade Rumors De Los Santos was expected to get more in arbitration and Trammell I am sure was not expected to have to sign a split contract (one amount if he ends up in the majors and another if he ends up in the minors with the Astros). But this tells you both of these guys were not willing to get non-tendered and to try and get something/anything better out on the market.

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  9. As for Pena – lets see the Astros approach. They have tended to stay away from contracts that take guys well into their 30s unless they are HoF talents like Altuve and Verlander. Jeremy Pena is very good, right now, in his prime years of 27-30, especially this year (his age 28 season). But HoF, very doubtful. He hasn’t even proven yet that he is ready to join Bregman in the Hall of Very Good, and the Astros made a token offer to Bregman that they knew he wouldn’t accept.

    If Pena and his team are looking for something akin to a 8/240 offer I would take a hard pass. Offer him a 5 year extension, if he doesn’t take it, send him out next winter in a trade and try and restock with some more lottery tickets.

    Brown is a different case. There is a chance that HB becomes a superstar. But pitchers can be so volatile. They can go from hero to zero pretty quick. Sometimes they go back from zero to hero too. Sometimes they don’t.

    The Rays paid David Price roughly 35M over 5.5 seasons. They got a 21.3 WAR from him in that time period. He went on to play 8 more years in the majors, making roughly 215M more to post 19 more WAR. He was never bad, but the Rays got the better end of the deals no doubt, and they let Detroit and Boston and LA pay him for what his name was generating, and maybe not completely what the performance ended up being. Every pitching contract should be looked at through that prism, because there are a lot more Prices in the world than Verlanders. Caution lights should be on for any pitching contract that goes more than 2 or 3 years, involves a lot of money, and pays the player for his later 30s seasons. This is exactly why letting Framber walk is the best thing. It might work out for the new team, but it is highly likely that they will not get the 18.9 WAR he generated for us pitching into his 30s. Maybe, like Price, he will give them some, say 12-14 WAR over a 6 year deal, but at 30M a year? Oof.

    Sometimes its easier to convince pitchers years out to take an extension though. Hunter knows he is 3 years away from the market, and that is a heck of a chance to take on staying healthy. If you walked in with a new 5 year deal starting this season, bought those first 2 years of FA out for some certainty, and can find the AAV he is looking for, you might have him through his age 32 season. Of course, his agent knows this game too, and might want it longer or is willing to take the chance at get him on the market at 30.

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    • And here is the cool part about Price –

      The Rays traded Price for Drew Smyly, Wily Adames and Nick Franklin. They paid Smyly 6.5M for roughly 3.8 WAR. They paid Adames just over 2 million to give them 7.5 WAR over 4 years! They then flipped Smyly for Mallex Smith, who gave them 4.8 WAR over 2 years for just 1M. Carlos Vargas came over in the Smyly deal too and gave them 70 games and 77 innings in a relief role last year, and at 25 with a live arm has a chance to make David Price the blessing that keeps on giving.

      Just think about that for a minute. I didn’t even talk about Yarbough or Freyerison or Rasmussen. Just the guys I mentioned. 16.1 WAR for pennies on the dollar. Price cost the rest of baseball 215M for 19 WAR. And I don’t know many people that are beating the drums about Price ever being a bad contract.

      It’s just the Rays, they get it.

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      • I think it’s pretty impressive that they get it and you absorbed it. Admittedly, I just don’t go that deep, but I sure appreciate it.

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  10. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re just going to have to hang on here for a while to see what kind of GM work our GM pulls off. My concern is that I just don’t see a whole lot of flexibility of options. But who knows, Joey Gallo could become our new lefty starter.

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    • Going back to 1980 and JR collapsing on the field, and then Kyle and others too, I still wonder how MLB players really did not seem to get advanced preventative care from their employers.

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      • I do think that back in the day they just did not think serious things could strike these young athletes and looked in the wrong spots. How could a 30 year old have a stroke? How could a 33 year old have a heart attack?

        The JR situation was worse because it was not from out of nowhere – he was complaining about things and they just never found it. So sad.

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