Astros’ offseason: Looking around

During the off-season, I will go to a couple of sources on the web daily for Astros info. One is MLB Trade Rumors and the other is the official Astros page on MLB.com. The trade rumors website has, as you would guess, articles covering the latest rumors about each team, but it is also among the first to report on trades and signings.

As far as the Astros site, this time of year, there are a lot of articles that either look back at 2025 or make predictions that no one will check about the 2026 season. It will also be the source for “official” team confirmation of trades, signings, and injury information. But don’t hold your breath about getting too much injury information.  Reading through the articles at the Astros site yesterday, a number of interesting things struck me about each item.

1 breakout candidate for each MLB team in 2026. Brice Matthews was picked out by Brian McTaggart as the potential breakout candidate for the Astros.  I found this interesting because right now Matthews is totally blocked from playing in the infield and would seem to be only a potential backup in the outfield. Perhaps McT knows some inside info about the Astros clearing some space in the infield or a plan to give him a chance to grab an outfield spot in 2026. Or maybe he is making an educated guess just like we do.

Every team’s longest home run of 2025. You could have given me 15 guesses, and I would have still not chosen the forgotten man, Shay Whitcomb, for the longest home run for the Astros in 2025. Considering it is the only homer during his two cups of coffee in the majors in 2024 and 2025, he is not one of my early considerations for this category for the Astros. But I do remember him clobbering that 451 foot blast this year….now that I was reminded of it.

Prospects who broke out — 1 for every team — this season – It is rather fascinating that this article jumped to Zach Cole as the breakout prospect in 2025 and not Cam Smith. Cole put up strong slash numbers, but in only 47 ABs and he struck out 20 times in those ABs. Cam certainly had a weak second half of the season, but he did some good offensive things in the first half of the season and married that with a full season of strong defense at a position he had never played before. And Cam did this after only playing 32 games in the minors with only 5 games as high as AA.

A 2026 bounceback candidate for each team – Certainly the one player the Astros need a bounceback from the most in 2026 is Yordan Alvarez. He is the offensive linchpin for the offense and it would not be an exaggeration to say that his injuries in 2025 were the difference between the Astros sitting at home for the playoffs and comfortably making it. Other candidates for bounceback in 2026 would be Christian Walker, Lance McCullers and for his bad couple months with the Astros, Jesus Sanchez.

Astros Top Prospects | MiLB.com – The one proviso on these lists is that this is the rankings from milb.com, not from the ballclubs themselves and that is an important distinction as a team may say – Player X is shown as Top 5, but we have him at 12 with our internal ratings. What can we pull from what we see here in the Top 30 ranking, even if we don’t know how the Astros rate them?

• 12 Right-Handed Pitchers
• 0 Left-Handed Pitchers – this seems to be a trend with the Astros
• 9 Outfielders
• 5 Infielders
• 2 Catchers
• 2 Combo – Catcher and another position
• 3 have played at the MLB level – Matthews and Cole, plus A.J. Blubaugh
• 4 others have played at the AAA level without yet making a MLB debut
• 9 have topped out at AA
• 4 have made it to A+ ball
• 5 have made it to A ball
• 5 have made it to Rookie ball

Latest Astros injuries & transactions – Well as one would expect from an injury report from this very secretive team, there is very little meat on those bones. Yes, we know that Brandon Walter, Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski all underwent surgery in 2025 and yes, we know that due to when those surgeries happened Blanco and Wesneski have a shot at returning in 2026 and Walter does not. But any other tidbits? When in 2026 are Blanco and Wesneski expected to return? How did the surgery go? How is the rehab going? (crickets)

And what about some of the less seriously injured from the end of 2025? Saw one article about Josh Hader that indicated he was going to be OK – but nothing on this list. What about Isaac Paredes’ hamstring that looked like it might need surgery? And what about Yordan Alvarez who was last seen collapsing after skidding across home plate?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Richard, Cole headline the Astros’ top performances in an MLB debut – This is a fascinating article, if for no other reason, it shows how fleeting success in the major leagues can be. This list of great MLB debuts includes players who went on to be fine or even great major leaguers, including the late J.R. Richard and Ken Caminiti, and current Astros like Yordan Alvarez and Hunter Brown. But it also includes the other end of the spectrum, players whose first game was their one and only hurrah. John Paciorek had three hits, four RBIs, and three runs scored in his debut at the end of the 1963 season, got hurt, and never played again. David Matranga hit a homer in his debut, and it was his only MLB hit in 7 games. Mark Saccomanno hit a homer on the first pitch he saw in the majors and only had one more hit in his career.

There is a little sadness in realizing these players had such great starts and little else. But perhaps it is better to have had something than nothing.

And we will get to watch what happens with Zach Cole and see where he falls in the pantheon of great debuts.