Historic implosion proves Astros escaped Ryan Pressly at the right time

Eric Cole

San Francisco Giants v Chicago Cubs / Michael Reaves/GettyImages

At the time, Houston Astros fans were split on the news that Ryan Pressly was being traded to the Cubs. Pressly had already lost the closing job to Josh Hader and was making a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere, but he also had been a stalwart reliever for Houston for years and it was hard to see him go. After Pressly's historically bad appearance against the Giants Tuesday, those that were upset about the trade have become suspiciously quiet.

There were already some concerns about the quality of Pressly's stuff in Chicago before Tuesday. He hasn't been striking batters out and is getting hit hard when they do make contact. Now, after what is likely among the worst appearances in extra innings you are likely to ever see, the Astros look brilliant for getting Pressly mostly off their books when they did.

Ryan Pressly's freefall in Chicago is vindicating Astros' offseason decision

Piling on a guy for just one bad appearance isn't particularly fair, but wow was this one from Pressly a disaster. The Cubs were in a real battle in the 11th inning with San Francisco and, on paper, they had the opportunity to use one of their bullpen anchors in that spot. Instead, Pressly gave up nine runs (eight earned) and did not record a single out. Just like that, a tie game turned into a blowout.

The problem is that this wasn't just one appearance going awry for Pressly. So far in 2025, Pressly has seen all the batted ball metrics against him crater including hard hit rate, strikeout percentage, chase rate, and expected batting average. Hitters are hitting over .300 against both his four-seam fastball and his slider. That is nightmare-level stuff.

Recently, The Athletic's Eno Sarris went a step further and highlighted how Pressly's stuff does not match the high leverage role he has been placed in. Only Luke Jackson has shown worse stuff amongst closer, though Jackson has still found a way to get eight saves this season.

One does hope that Pressly turns things around with the Cubs as he is a good dude who did a lot of good work when he was with Houston. However, his struggles do seem to make the Astros' decision to part ways look a lot better these days.

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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.