The trendy pick entering the 2025 season is to foretell doom for Houston’s streak of eight straight postseason appearances, seven of them as division champions. This is, after all, a team that lost two of its central pieces, right fielder Kyle Tucker and third baseman Alex Bregman, the former to a trade and the latter via free agency.
It’s also a franchise committed to reducing payroll, an action viewed by many analysts in these money-driven days as tantamount to surrender. The Tucker and Bregman departures were both, to some extent, driven by the franchise’s unwillingness to meet the player’s salary demands.
Couple that with Seattle’s obvious pitching depth, the return of Jacob DeGrom in Texas, and with the Athletics’ scary-good youth and the tendency is to write off the 2025 Astros as a potential also-ran in a sneakily good AL West.
Do that at your peril. The Astros may have lost some important offensive weapons, but they still have some impressive assets.
2025 Houston Astros: Who's new, who's gone, and what's at stake?
Houston is strongest where most teams desperately want to be strongest, on the mound. Framber Valdez was 15-7 with a 2.91 ERA in 28 stats last season, good enough to garner Cy Young and MVP votes.
Hunter Brown, Spencer Arrighetti and Ronel Blanco all came of age in 2024, Blanco throwing a no-hitter. In his rookie season, Arrighetti had the roughest go of it, but it’s worth noting that he lowered his ERA by 2.5 points after July 1, producing a 3.18 ERA in his final 11 starts.
The Astros do have injury concerns, with Lance McCullers, Luis Garcia and Cristian Javier all expected to miss Opening Day. But the current projection is that McCullers and Garcia should both be back in April. Javier, recuperating from Tommy John surgery, hopes to return after the All Star break.
It’s on offense where the Astros have to prove themselves, a funny thing to say about a team that returns Yordan Alvarez, Yainer Diaz and Jose Altuve, and ranked fourth in both run production and OPS just last year.
But the Tucker and Bregman departures at minimum hurt the club’s intimidation factor. The replacements — Christian Walker at first base and Isaac Paredes across the infield grass — frankly haven’t been as productive, although Paredes is considered a dead pull hitter, a potentially scary proposition given the existence of the Crawford boxes down the left field line.
Paredes hit 19 home runs last season, 16 of them for Tampa Bay but only three for the Cubs following his mid-season acquisition. Was the power decline driven by Paredes or just by Chicago’s North Side weather?
If Paredes blossoms into the slugger Astros GM Dana Brown thought he was getting in the Tucker trade, this could be a very interesting summer in Houston indeed. If not, the skeptics may be right about the front office’s cost-cutting.
Elsewhere in the lineup, player growth will be vital. Diaz emerged in his age-24 season as one of the AL’s best offensive weapons at catcher. He hit .299 with 84 RBIs. But his defense was sub-par, and he threw out only 23 percent of base-stealers. Can he grow as a backstop while maintaining his productivity?
Jeremy Pena handled the shortstop duties admirably. But, in his third season, the offensive numbers plateaued, including a mediocre .701 OPS. Can Pena escape being tagged with the dreaded ‘average’ label in 2025?
Mauricio Dubon is swapping defensive places with Altuve, moving in from left field to handle second base. In his third season with the Astros, Dubon saw his power flatline in 2024, his OPS falling from.720 to just .657.
Even without Tucker and Bregman, Astros are deep enough to win AL West
If the Astros offense can survive the losses of Bregman and Tucker, the rotation should be good enough to get games to year in and year out one of the game’s most reliable bullpens.
Again this season that pen is headed by closer Josh Hader abetted by chief deputies Bryan Abreu and Tayler Scott. The trio worked 218 innings in 2024, with 35 saves (34 of them by Hader) and 47 holds.
The issues for Houston are obvious. Can Walker and Paredes make fans forget — or at least feel less angry about the losses of — Tucker and Bregman? Will Arrighetti and Brown become the true front-line starters the team needs? Can Diaz improve his defense, and can Pena restore his offense?
But even stripped of two potent offensive threats and with a reduced payroll, the Astros remain a serious contender for divisional honors.