Astros' starter is the key to the rotation's success and it's not who you might think

After much hand-wringing, the Houston Astros have given their starting rotation quite a facelift this season. We no longer have to worry about them trying to patch the void left by Framber Valdez with the likes of Nate Pearson and Ryan Weiss.

The Astros paid a pretty price to acquire Mike Burrows in a blockbuster three-team deal with the Tampa Bay Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Houston has already seen marquee signing Tatsuya Imai endear himself to the city. Those two are creating quite the buzz, justifiably so, and they no doubt will be important cogs for 2026.

But neither holds the key to the unit's success. Instead, the arm that can truly unlock the group's full potential has been here all along — Cristian Javier.

Cristian Javier will prove to be the starter most critical to the Astros' success in 2026

As exciting as Imai and Burrows are, they both bring more questions than answers as we roll towards spring training. Imai lit up the NPB last season, but as we've seen from Roki Sasaki and his 4.46 ERA, success isn't instantaneous.

The Japanese import has struggled with walks in the past. His 7% walk rate in 2025 was solid, but his 9.8% mark in 2024 was below average, and his 11.4% rate in 2023 was egregious. It only gets worse the further back you go. Can he continue to throw strikes while consistently fooling major league hitters and get them to chase outside of the zone? We'll have to see it to believe it.

The questions about Burrows are more straightforward. The 26-year-old has 99.1 career big league innings under his belt, with 96 of them coming last season. During that time, he posted slightly above average strikeout and walk rates and slightly below average hard hit rates and exit velocities. The total package was a 3.94 ERA and a 4.37 xERA. That's the makeup of a mid-to-back-end starter, and the 128.1 combined innings he logged between Triple-A and the bigs in 2025 was the highest single-season total of his career. Can he hold up over a full season?

That brings us to Javier. The 28-year-old has enjoyed big league success before, posting a 2.54 ERA in 148.2 innings in 2022, which earned him the $64 million extension that he's currently playing out.

Fast forward to today, and a lot of that shine has worn off. Javier went down and required Tommy John surgery in 2024, but while returns for other injured Astros hurlers were windy, setback-filled roads, Javier returned to action in just over 14 months.

Eight starts and a 4.62 ERA weren't encouraging, but underneath the hood, Javier pitched much better than the results indicated.

The right-hander posted a 3.41 xERA, indicating there was a big variance between what he produced and what he should have based on the quality of contact he induced. His varied repertoire, which includes a fastball that plays up despite its 92.8 miles per hour velocity, a sweeper, a curve, a changeup, and a newly introduced sinker, kept the ball off the fat part of the bat, yielding a minuscule 6.5% barrel rate and an above-average 38.3% hard hit rate.

The biggest issue Javier faced was luck above all else. The once-promising hurler recorded a 59.4% left on base rate, which is comically bad and in no way sustainable. That will regress to the mean, and his performance will improve as a result.

The new sinker is also a key. Javier threw the pitch just 10% of the time as he worked his way back, but it's an offering the Astros have deemed important. They believe it was a key component to Hunter Brown's breakout and have made it a priority for Burrows to add to his repertoire. For Javier, getting a feel for the pitch and throwing it with confidence could further unlock his already impressive repertoire, and if the Astros are right, could help him reach new heights.

Lastly, time is on his side. Javier came back quickly and was likely still getting his strength back after the devastating injury and grueling recovery. Now with another full offseason and a normal buildup process in spring training, his arm will likely be stronger, which could help him recover some of that strikeout stuff that made him so lethal in 2022.

The pieces are all there for Javier to leapfrog Imai and Burrows and emerge as the clear No. 2 behind Brown. Given that he's reached those heights before, he's a better bet than the two less-experienced options, and what he showed in 2025 proves that he's the real key to the rotation's success.