It’s interesting to think of how high the bar has become for the Houston Astros on the local landscape, especially when juxtaposed with the Texans and the Rockets, who empirically aren’t anywhere close to where the Astros are in their sport, and yet fans in Houston feel nothing but sheer bliss for both of those teams, because, hey, at least they’re both relevant again.
The Astros, meanwhile, have been to seven straight League Championship Series, won two World Series in the last seven seasons, been to two more, are third on the board for World Series odds, and yet it feels like there is way more major concern over the Astros than the Rockets or Texans. Such is life when the bar is, at a minimum, being among the final four teams standing.
I feel like we KNOW two things — first, the Houston Astros are a very, very talented baseball team, and second, they will need a handful of guys to have much better seasons in 2024 than they did in 2023 if they’re going to get back to the winner’s circle again in November. As the Yankees come to town on Thursday to open the season, here are my four biggest questions for the Astros this season:
What happens with Alex Bregman’s contract?
Bregman is in the final season of the six-year deal he signed back in 2017. As of this past weekend, he had yet to receive an offer on a new deal from the Astros, but he said he is open to looking at an extension in season. Bregman is looking for a monster pay day, and it is probably not the annual salary that is spooking the Astros, but likely the number of years Bregman seeks, which could be in the 8 to 10 year range. That math doesn’t work for Jim Crane. Aside from Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman is probably the Astro that it’s most difficult to envision in another uniform. The Astros are used to dealing with big name players in contract years, so dealing with any distraction shouldn’t be an issue.
Does bumping back to the eighth inning affect Ryan Pressly at all?
The signing of Josh Hader caught everyone off guard. Most of us, it caught us off guard in a positive way. None of us expected Jim Crane, out of nowhere, to give the best closer in baseball a five-year, $95 million deal. The one person the signing may have caught off guard negatively was former closer Ryan Pressly, who’s been a key cog in all of these playoff runs. He’s never blown a save in the postseason. Now he’s the setup guy for Hader. Look, the pay is still the same, but I’m sure it’s a blow to Pressly’s ego. How that manifests itself, if at all, will be something to watch.
Who gives us the biggest bounce back performance?
For a team that came within a game of returning to the World Series for the fifth time in seven years, there were plenty of Astros who had seasons below expectations. Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier both had ERAs near 5.00 in the second half of the season. Rafael Montero was a disaster. Jose Abreu had an OPS below .700. Jeremy Pena’s last home run was on July 5. I’ll go with Pena, who spent the offseason doing a deep dive on the technical parts of his swing.
Will the biggest question mark today be the biggest strength by season’s end?
Valdez and Javier were just part of the problem with the pitching staff. The Astros head into the season with a ton of big names in their starting rotation, but there’s not a single pitcher without some sort of question mark. Justin Verlander and Jose Urquidy begin the season on the IL. Hunter Brown and J.P. France both faltered last season after they entered uncharted usage territory. Lance McCullers and Luis Garcia, both coming back from elbow surgeries, won’t be back until the second half of the season, if then. The rotation is, by far, the biggest question mark on this team, and yet, if health prevails and the underperforms regain form we’ve seen before, Joe Espada could have a plethora of riches to work with.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
