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Astros reportedly making drastic promotion to address biggest lineup concern

Eric Cole
Eric Cole

Climbing Tal's Hill

Miami Marlins v Houston Astros / Nick Cammett/GettyImages

The Houston Astros' offense is in a pretty tricky position at the moment. While they have played better collectively lately, the fact remains that they are extremely unbalanced to the right-handed side especially with lefty Yordan Alvarez dealing with a broken hand at the moment. Now, it appears as though the Astros will once again turn to the minor leagues to solve their troubles.

Houston's outfield has been extremely messy all season long. Jose Altuve was converted to left field with mixed results thus far and Cam Smith has been slow to adjust at the plate to the big leagues, although his defense in right has actually been pretty good. Somehow, Jake Meyers has been Houston's saving grace in the outfield in 2025 as he has been hitting out of his mind. However, it does appear as though the Astros are going to give Jacob Melton a shot as well with the rather surprising word that Houston will promote Melton to the big leagues.

Astros promoting Jacob Melton in hopes that he can finally balance out their lineup

At first glance, this promotion looks a bit puzzling. While Melton is certainly one of the Astros' top prospects, hitting .254 in Triple-A doesn't immediately scream "promote me". However, Melton's numbers are a bit deceiving as while the start of his season was quite bad, the month of May has treated him well with a .289/.413/.474 line across 46 plate appearances. Assuming that improvement is real, Melton's bat could do a lot of good to provide some much needed balance to the Astros' lineup.

However, that does lead one to wonder exactly how this outfield/DH alignment is going to work from a practical perspective. You can't really take Meyers out of the lineup right now and both Altuve and Smith are pretty important parts of Houston's roster on both sides of the ball. Melton gives the Astros a true outfielder to work with, so the concerns over this move are moot as long as Alvarez is on the shelf and Houston has the DH unoccupied to get guys at-bats.

Say what you want to about the Astros, but they certainly are not standing pat. The team already made the curiously timed move to put Chas McCormick on the injured list in order to promote Shay Whitcomb. With Melton now called up as well, it is very clear that this is an all hands on deck situation as Houston tries to figure out what the best version of their roster the rest of the season actually looks like.

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Eric Cole

Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.