After a dreadful start, the Astros will restart their season on Friday in Seattle with a 50-46 record, one game back of the first place Mariners. Here’s a look at whose stock has gone up and whose stock has gone down through the season’s first 96 games.
Stock up
Ronel Blanco
Injuries to the Astros rotation gave the 30-year old right-hander an opportunity to show he could be a quality Major League starter, and boy, has he taken advantage. The Astros have won 13 of Blanco’s 18 starts, and he enters the All-Star Break with a 2.56 ERA and 0.97 WHIP, which are both sixth best in Major League Baseball.
“He’s been huge to this team,” Astros manager Joe Espada said Sunday. “The amount of innings, the big outs, how consistent he has been, how our team feels when he's on the mound. He's starting to be one of those guys that you're counting the days for him to be on the mound.”
It’s been a remarkable rise for a guy signed out of the Dominican for $5,000 as a 22-year old, who made his Major League debut at age 28, and was converted to a starter at age 29. Blanco’s 4.42 FIP and .180 BABIP indicate that he’s due for some regression after the break and he’s less than 20 innings away from his career-high, but regardless of how the rest of the season goes, Blanco has shown he should be in the Astros rotation moving forward, and he likely would’ve been an All-Star, if not for a foreign substance ejection and suspension in May.
Jake Meyers
Amid trade speculation, Astros general manager Dana Brown anointed Meyers as the team’s centerfielder early in the offseason, and the 28-year old has made his GM look very good for doing so. As expected, Meyers been elite defensively, leading all American League centerfielders with nine outs above average, which has him in prime position to win a Gold Glove, but he’s also improved in other aspects of his game.
Meyers has high end speed, but it has never really translated to the base paths, and while seven stolen bases isn’t a big number, it is a career-high, however, the batter’s box is where Meyers has really made strides.
He’s come back to Earth after finishing the Astros game in Oakland on May 24 with a .914 OPS. He compiled just a .562 OPS in the 38 games that followed, but he recovered to post an .870 OPS during the Astros homestand prior to the break, which gives him a 108 OPS+ for the season. No one ever doubted Meyers could handle an everyday role defensively, but so far, he’s shown not to be an offensively liability.
Joe Espada
To say Espada has been tested during his first 96 games as a Major League manager is an understatement. He inherited a team expected to advance to an eighth straight ALCS and watched as starting pitchers dropped like flies, All-Star position players underperformed, and what was supposed to be an air-tight back end of the bullpen underachieve. The Astros lost their first four games, and found themselves 12 games under .500 on two instances.
“It was not the way I wanted my career to start as a manager, but I knew at the end of the day the guys would turn it around and we did,” Espada said Sunday.
Espada isn’t the reason the Astros have turned their season around, but he deserves credit for trusting it would happen.
“(He) stayed the same guy every single day,” Alex Bregman said. “Showed up to the yard ready to work, ready to compete. Didn’t panic. Knew that we needed to play better baseball, and constantly reminded us of how good of a ballclub we are.”
Espada is very different from his predecessor, Dusty Baker. He’s far more likely to go to his bench early and often in search of a platoon advantage, and he’s much more willing to bury a struggling veteran lower in the lineup and down bullpen pecking order, or even shun them altogether. He hasn’t been perfect, but so far, Espada has handled the promotion as well anyone could have expected.
Stock Down
Chas McCormick
After slashing .273/.353/.489, McCormick has seen his numbers crater in 2024, entering the break with a .203/.264/.304 slash line. A slow start to the season could be pinned on a hamstring injury that landed him on the IL at the end of April, but he had a .603 OPS in 21 games before his IL stint, and a .534 OPS in 35 games since returning.
McCormick used to feast on left-handed pitching, but his OPS against lefties has almost been cut in half from last season to this season, dropping from 1.008 to .533, and with a strikeout rate of over 31 percent against righties, he’s been lifted for a pinch hitter in 9-of-25 starts since returning from the IL.
With Jake Meyers holding down center field and Kyle Tucker due to return from the IL at some point, it’s fair to wonder how many opportunities McCormick will get in the second half, and if the Astros add a bat before the trade deadline, his spot on the 26-man roster could be in real jeopardy.
Starting pitching depth
Dana Brown has always preached optimism when talking about Astros starting pitching depth, but he can’t do that anymore.
Before the season started, the Astros were expected to have Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy, Hunter Brown, and J.P. France carry the load until reinforcements Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers Jr returned from their 2023 season ending surgeries. Let’s see how that’s worked out thus far:
Verlander: IL to start the season (shoulder), made 10 starts and landed on the IL again (neck)
Valdez: Short IL stint (elbow)
Javier: Two IL stints and underwent Tommy John Surgery in May
Urquidy: Injured during spring training (forearm), underwent Tommy John Surgery after cutting a rehab start short
France: Underwent season ending shoulder surgery
Brown: Hasn’t missed a start
Garcia: Rehab has slowed after feeling arm soreness following latest rehab start
McCullers: Shutdown from throwing before facing hitters
The Astros have used 10 different starting pitchers through the first 96 games of the season, matching their total from 2023. They only needed eight starters to get through the 2022 season. The idea that they will be able to get through the season’s final 66 games without needing another seems like a fantasy, so adding at least one starting pitcher before the trade deadline feels like a necessity.
The 2022 offseason
The offseason that followed the 2022 World Series title that started with the dismissal of James has not gotten better with time. The Astros finally parted ways with Jose Abreu after he slashed .124/.167/.192 in 35 games with a minor league sandwiched in between, forcing the Astros to eat $30 million, and the three-year, $34.5 million contract continues to age poorly.
Montero compiled a 1.50 ERA through his first 12 appearances of 2024, but the peripheral numbers showed regression was coming, and that’s exactly what’s happened. His ERA over his final 26 games before the break was 6.56 with a 7.28 FIP, and he’s allowed seven homers over 23.1 innings in that span.
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