Astros salaries from incredible bargains to burning cash

The Astros, like every team, have good and bad contracts to varying degrees.

Any analysis of this type is full of unknowns. I’m looking at a number and saying, “is he worth that amount?” without knowing the nuances that could make a difference to the player, the Houston Astros or both.

Still these numbers are real and we’d like to think they’re tied to performance. Sometimes they are and sometimes they’re not.

In studying salaries there are several numbers attached to a player. The one I’m using here is the number applied to the 2022 luxury salary tax, because that drives a lot of the decision making, especially for the Astros.

Also, it’s easy to pick the guys on rookie contracts and say they’re the best and there’s a couple with the Astros too valuable to ignore in that range, but I didn’t want to focus specifically on those, but rather identify where the Astros exceeded expectations and where they may have missed an opportunity.