Astros’ hitting: The chicken or the egg?

The one thing that all Astros’ fans can agree on is that the team needs better hitting across the board to be a contender in 2026. The biggest question may be whether the firing of Alex Cintron and Troy Snitker and the hiring of head hitting coach Victor Rodriguez, his assistant Anthony Iapoce and the promotion of Dan Hennigan to director of hitting and offensive coordinator will move the needle at all.

Are the problems the Astros had in 2025 in putting together a consistent offensive attack a problem with the message the previous hitting coaches were handing out (the chicken) or a problem with the types of hitters they were handing their message to (the egg)?

As with most things with this team and baseball in general – this is a more complex question than meets the eye. Let’s explore some of the twists and turns here by exploring the situation from multiple angles.

Outside of Control

Looking at the 2025 season, what negative things are outside the control of the hitting instructors?

  • Kyle Tucker is traded away – one of the Astros best bats is gone.
  • Alex Bregman leaves in free agency – one of the Astros best (and more patient) bats is gone. Note Kyle Tucker showed quite a bit of patience in 2024 also.
  • Yordan Alvarez only plays in 48 games – the best Astros bat misses more than 2/3 the season.
  • Isaac Paredes misses 56 games with injury – the most patient Astros hitter and one of its biggest threats misses about 1/3 the season.
  • The Astros give 642 ABs to a motley crew of players hitting under the Mendoza line.

Potentially Inside Their Control

A number of hitters fell below their norm in 2025:

  • Yainer Diaz plummeted from a .299 BA/ .325 OBP/ .766 OPS slash in 2024 to a .256/.284/.701 line in 2025.
  • Christian Walker fell from .251/.335/.803 in 2024 to .238/.297/.717 in 2025.
  • Jose Altuve went from .295/.350/.790 to .265/.329/.771.
  • Chas McCormick went from .273/ .353/ .842 in 2023 to a terrible two seasons including .210/.279/.569 in 2025.
  • Other than Zach Cole and the first half of the season of Cam Smith the hitting staff did not seem to have the magic touch with their call-ups that the pitching staff did. Thus the 642 ABs of motley production mentioned above.

But Also Potentially in Their Control

  • Jeremy Pena improving from .266 BA/ .308 OBP/ .701 OPS in 2024 to .304/.368/.840 in 2025.
  • Jake Meyers improving from .219/.286/.646 in 2024 to .292 BA/.354/.727 in 2025.
  • Cam Smith thriving in the first half of 2025 with minimal minor league experience behind him.

This is a tough thing to analyze. How much is what the coaches can drill into the player’s heads? How open are the players to being coached? Are they being taught the right things? Are the players talented enough to take concepts and thrive? Etc., etc., etc.

In the end the Astros decided to get different coaches and different voices in the dugout and not a bunch of different players. Will that be the right decision? We will see.

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13 responses to “Astros’ hitting: The chicken or the egg?”

  2. The chicken or the egg? I am in the chicken group. Early last spring training season, I saw an interview of Espada and the hitting was brought up. Espada stated that he wanted the hitters to be more aggressive that season. So, it is the chicken telling the players to be aggressive and swing early and often.

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    • Sarge, I’m hoping Joe stays out of the way and lets the new hitting experts go about their plan to make this team a better hitting team.

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  3. Without mentioning any names, several things have to fall in place offensively for the Astros in 2026.

    Players have to be healthy.

    Players have to be willing to embrace the program set forth by the new hitting experts.

    We can’t afford to have older guys continue to regress in 2026. We need them to at least stabilize. And that might mean simply reestablishing a certain level of patience at the plate or a willingness to hit the darn ball to right field.

    I don’t know who can bunt, but if we don’t have more guys that can bunt, we’ll continue to be bad at scoring guys from third base, or getting them to second or third base in certain situations.

    We had plenty of hits in 2025, but not enough when we needed hits with guys in scoring position.

    We have to have at least a couple of young guys prove they can hit major league pitching.

    We need to have some guys that can steal bases at an 85% clip and more importantly, be able to get on base regularly.

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    • Great point about not hitting with RISP Dave. I think our lineup just has too many guys that can be had with out pitches or out of the strike zone, where they either strike out or hit the pitchers pitch. More consistency in forcing the pitchers back into the zone would help.

      I doubt anyone tracks numbers to that degree but I bet we had the fewest 3-0 and 3-1 counts in baseball with runners in scoring position. To me it seemed the team couldn’t elevate with the opposing pitcher in times they needed too, or were at least impatient and pressing with RISP.

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    • Yea I couldn’t find 3-1 counts with RISP, but we were bottom in the division in 3-1 counts period. Even the A’s and Angels forced more 3-1 counts then us. And we were bottom in 3-0 counts. And we were bottom in walks. We just don’t have a roster of guys forcing pitches. Dubon being gone should help that as he took 400 PAs swinging early and often, but more work needs to be done.

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  5. I don’t know about chickens or eggs. I live in the city.

    What I do know – Walker’s three years before Houston in BB/K ratios – 69/131, 62/127, 55/133. First year in Houston, 40/177. If the roster stayed the same Altuve will be at 2B, like Walker age is moving his BB/Ks the wrong way. Pena trended better but missed 37 games. Paredes does well but missed 60 games. Correa is trending the way age suggests. The OF is just a mess. And Yainer is Yainer.

    Correa and Walker are two guys that at least need to hold ship at their current ratios and not decline more, or these contracts are going to turn into Abreu like bad contracts instead of just kind of bad contracts. I guess Altuve belongs in that category too but as a fan I can never call my favorite players contract a bad contract.

    So, yes, echo to everyone else – Pena, Paredes, and Big Man need more ABs. Correa, Walker, and Altuve need less so they have less impact on the overall and maybe the rest can keep their legs fresher, let them drive through the ball more often, and let some bat speed make up for the natural decline in eye speed – but they can’t stay fresher playing 155 games. They all need to be limited to 140 and should be off at least once a week each. We can live with Yainer being Yainer if two things happen – he isn’t plopped in the middle of the order night after night and he gets his batting average back up to the 280ish range. A few more walks though wouldn’t break anyones heart.

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  6. As for Yordan – I hate to say it, he is the most tradeable commodity you got.

    But I wouldn’t trade him. I would play him in LF 100-110 times next year because the Astros have put themselves in a place where they have to gamble on his health. They need DH days for Correa and Altuve and Paredes. They can use letting Walker rest those legs twice a week, once from the bench and once from the DH spot. Sure, they can do some Altuve in LF and DH Yordan still, but they need Yordan in LF a bit so Altuve can be at 2B and Paredes can DH or play 3B and let Correa DH. They basically have 5 bats they need to move around 4 positions but have the flexibility to do it, except they don’t have anyone to play 2B yet. I’m surprised we aren’t hearing Polanco rumors, everything seems to be about Donovan, and I would rather have Brendan, but that seems a reach that we can match what they want without including Javier or Arrighetti, and I don’t know that we can lose either of those guys when Polanco only costs you money.

    And to be clear, Yordan is actually a pretty league average defender with a good arm. You just don’t want him out there sprinting after fly balls. 250lbs is a lot of weight to moving around, the more he has to do sudden starts, sudden stops, crash into walls, dive after anything, well, the more our blood pressure rises.

    Maybe Gorman is a more realistic target as you can probably get Gorman for an offer of Blubaugh and Melton. He is no star, but he is a lefty bat with some power that can play both 2B and 3B, and adds to the flexibility, has 3 years of control, and is 25 entering his prime. Acquiring Donovan just seems to disruptive to the pitching staff.

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  7. I don’t think we have enough information to know whether it’s the chicken or the egg. Our hitting really frustrated me last year. It falls into two categories though. In the first, players just got beat on questionable pitches and made easy outs. Cam Smith had too many pop-ups in fair territory. Christian Walker had too many swings and misses at sliders he wasn’t going to do anything with had he made contact. The hitting coaches have to fix that. You gain an advantage by spoiling those pitches. The second category was players not taking what was given to them. This is the Altuve/Diaz category. Go watch at bats from a few years back and notice when they got an elevated fastball over the plate they’d push it into right field for an easy single. In 2025 they would either take the pitch for a strike or try to pull it…typically either popping up or being late and fouling it off. Is this the player deciding it’s more valuable to try for doubles/HR or is it the coaches pushing that approach?

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    • Altuve is just getting older. I expect BB rates to go down and pull percentages to go up year by year at his age. You just hope he kind of hangs on to some of that bat and hits well enough.

      Diaz, I don’t know. Most of his batted ball ratios are the same as the previous two years. Exit velocities, the same. Spray charts, the same. He had a climb in his FB% and a drop in his GB% that was enough to make me think he had a desire to try and elevate more, but while they were pretty different from 2024, they were more in line with 2023. I also think he is fairly predictable as a hitter, and the shift was easier to employ on him.

      I loved Diaz coming out of the minors. I thought he was our next great hitter. Career .321 in the minors. Then he hits .282 as a rookie. Follows up at .299. I assumed .310 was coming, and national recognition would start. Instead, he floundered, and for us fans with a degree of frustration because it just always seemed to be when we needed something from him. That .321 in the minors in this day and age is crazy, we are talking about handing CF to 1 of 2 guys – one is a .249 hitter in the minors and the other .255.

      I really don’t know. I would like to see Yainer bat 8th and be left alone. Honestly I would like to see him not catch anymore, partly because he is only OK back there, but he was never going to make his money because is the next Maldy. I still feel like him spending a year listening to Dusty and Maldy tell him no one cares if he can hit and to focus on catching and game preparation like we are still in 1978 hurt his offensive progress. But Dusty and Maldy have been gone 2 years now, at this point, its on him to get better as a hitter.

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  9. The Astros had problems hitting and really most of baseball does. The Astros say goodbye to two good/very good hitters and their overall best hitter misses most of the season and they end up above league average in BA (.250 vs. .244) when the best number was .265 and the second best was .254 and in OBP (.315 vs. .313) with .333 being the best. Their below average SLG (.399 vs. .406) dragged down their OPS (.714 vs. .719 lg average). OPS usually tracks closely with runs per game and sure enough they were below average at 4.23 vs. 4.42 runs/gm.

    This team is not going to become a top 3 offense, but if they can get more at bats out of their best hitters, less out of the guys that are AAAA hitters and have a few of these guys (Walker, Smith, Altuve) hit a bit better – they could certainly end up above average.

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