Astros’ offseason has done nothing to address this make-or-break trend from 2025

If you were to ask Houston Astros fans as to what the team's biggest problem was, most of them would say injuries and that is a strong option. Both sides of the ball got absolutely brutalized by injuries with Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Peña, Josh Hader, and Isaac Paredes being just a few examples. While losing that match talent over the course of the season is rough, another factor played a big role and it is unclear if Houston has done what they need to to fix it.

In modern baseball, the general axiom is that if you throw the ball hard and hit the ball hard, you will win baseball games. While there is definitely more nuance to the game than that with plenty of exceptions, the data does support that general consensus. The problem, according to a recent article from ESPN's David Schoenfield, is that the Astros having seemingly stopped hitting the ball hard at all.

Astros' average exit velocity points to more problems than just injuries

Now, to be fair, when you have multiples of your best hitters miss a lot of time AND you make the decision to trade Kyle Tucker away, your batted ball metrics are going to suffer. If Alvarez takes more than 199 plate appearances last season, their average would have obviously gone up.

However, Houston's 88.4 mph average exit velocity has routes in more than just the injuries. Peña and Paredes did get hurt, but both players had below average exit velocities before their injuries. Jose Altuve has long been a guy that has lower average exit velo numbers, but now Father Time is catching up and he doesn't have the speed anymore to make up for his bottom 4% exit velocity. Amidst the season-long struggles of Cam Smith, his 87.9 mph exit velo sticks out.

The problem is that not only have the Astros not addressed this problem during the offseason so far, but there doesn't seem to be a great for them to do anything about it. With basically no payroll space, the Astros basically have to hope Alvarez stays healthy and Christian Walker rebounds.

That could very well happen and if Alvarez and Walker can be the players that Houston thought they would be, the Astros' offense might be able to make a large improvement on the 4.23 runs scored per game that they put up in 2025. However, that is no sure thing and the Astros' offseason trajectory does not seem to be pointing to any solutions coming anytime soon.