The Houston Astros are a pretty good baseball team. Don’t think we’re breaking any news there. They’ve played in seven consecutive American League Championship Series, and until someone can knock them out of the postseason in the wild-card or divisional rounds, then it’s fair to expect that the team will just keep chugging right along.
Last year they went to seven games with the Texas Rangers, the eventual World Series champions. In six of the seven years of this run that the Astros are on, they have been knocked out by the team that would go on to win the World Series. The only exception is the 2020 season when they lost to the Tampa Bay Rays.
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Last season the Rangers were leading the AL West most of the way, but when the dust settled and the regular season was over, it was Houston atop the division once more. The only time they didn’t win the West also came in 2020 when the Oakland A’s took the crown. They should be plenty safe from the A’s in 2024 after finishing 40 games ahead of them last year.
With the Los Angeles Angels losing Shohei Othani, the Oakland A’s determined not to spend money on their payroll, and Texas and Seattle going through some issues with their RSN deals that caused them not to spend, the Astros didn’t have to do much this winter.
Houston Astros additions and subtractions
We’re nearing the end of these team previews, and the Houston Astros may have been the least active team all offseason. Outside of trading away a couple of young minor leaguers, the team has made a total of six moves, and four of those were players electing free agency. Those four include Martín Maldonado, Ryne Stanek, Phil Maton, and Hector Neris.
To make up for those headed elsewhere, the team signed one of the best relievers in the game in Josh Hader, bringing him back to the organization. Hader was originally acquired by Houston in a deadline deal with the Orioles that saw L.J. Hoes head to Baltimore in exchange for the left-hander in 2013. The Astros then included Hader in another deadline deal in 2015, shipping him to the Milwaukee Brewers in along with Brett Phillips, Domingo Santana, and Adrian Houser, in exchange for Carlos Gómez and Mike Fiers.
If you want to go deep down a trade rabbit hole, he was traded by Milwaukee to San Diego in a deal that saw Esteury Ruiz head to the Brewers. Ruiz was traded to Oakland as a key piece of the Sean Murphy deal last offseason and proceeded to swipe 67 bags, an AL rookie record.
With the loss of Maldonado, the Astros are turning to Victor Caratini behind the dish as their backup catcher, and he’s projected to be a fairly big upgrade, putting up 1.4 wins compared to the -1.2 that Maldonado produced last season.
When you compare the Astros WAR from the departing players and compare it to the projected WAR from the two guys they’re bringing in, Houston comes out ahead with +1.9. The Angels and Mariners have negative totals by the same metric, and the A’s made some marginal upgrades, but they’re in a pretty big hole to begin with.
Houston Astros 2024 season outlook
While the Houston Astros will be without future Hall of Fame manager Dusty Baker, on paper, the team should be just fine. FanGraphs has them projected for 91 wins, third-most in their projection system behind just the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves. Meanwhile, Baseball Prospectus has them at 94.7-67.3, which also ranks third-best in their projection system.
Nothing was broke, and they still added Hader into the mix. Pairing him up with Ryan Pressly, who has racked up 90 saves with the team over the past three seasons is going to secure just about any late-inning lead. Throw in Bryan Abreu’s 1.84 ERA over the past two seasons and it would be wise to not face this club in the postseason.
Houston will be without reliever Kendall Graveman for the entire ’24 campaign, and Justin Verlander will be starting the year on the IL as he gets ramped up for the season. Even with those injuries to key players, in addition to Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers, the Astros look stacked. The key for them will be staying healthy as the end of the regular season approaches, because that is when this team’s season truly begins.
The Rangers are still looming and may not be as big of a regular season threat with injuries of their own to contend with over the first half of the season, but in a postseason rematch, Houston and Texas are both stacked offensively and on the mound.
Houston Astros player to watch in 2024
While most of the Houston Astros’ roster is still the same as it has been, there are some fresh faces that are being counted on to continue the team’s run of success. Yainer Diaz brings the defensive ability of Maldonado but was also a well above-average hitter last season with a 127 wRC+.
Jon Singleton making it back to the big leagues last season for the first time since 2015 was a great story, and the fact that he is back, and projected to be on the Opening Day roster in just a couple of weeks is just delightful. He had some solid at-bats in the postseason, working the count, that will hopefully translate over to a full season of ball.
But the guy with the most eyeballs on him this year will be Hunter Brown. The 25-year-old right-hander made 29 starts for Houston last season, racking up a 5.09 ERA with a 4.37 FIP. Part of the reason for the high ERA is that he gave up a home run on 21% of his fly balls, 26 dingers in total. That tends to fluctuate year to year, so Brown should be in for a downturn in deep flies allowed, which is god because the Astros may need him a bit in the early going.
Brown doesn’t need to the the team’s top guy–they have Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander for that. But he does need to be more effective, especially while the rotation is a little short-staffed to begin the year. ZiPS has him projected for a 4.06 ERA, which should be plenty below league average and would be exactly what Houston needs from him.
Jason Burke covers MLB for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.