Houston Astros: 2 contract extensions they need to make and 1 to avoid

The Houston Astros are in a pretty interesting place as an organization right now. They are coming off a World Series title and remain in the thick of the playoff chase. However, they have a new general manager in Dana Brown after ownership basically forced out his predecessor, have some very real competition in their division with the Rangers off to a hot start and the Angels and Mariners lurking, and they are slowly seeing the guys that have kept them competitive the last few years either get older or move on to different organizations.

Turnover on any team is to be expected and no team realistically can expect to keep their window of contention open forever. However, this is still a really good baseball team that can remain good for a while if they make the right moves even as other teams rise and become contenders themselves.  

The trick, of course, is picking the right players to offer longer term deals in order to solidify the team’s core and to know when to get the most out of others and understand that the financial commitment to keep them around just isn’t worth it.

Which extensions do the Astros need to make and which ones should they avoid?

Fortunately for the Astros, Brown comes from an organization in Atlanta that is quite good at identifying opportunities for long-term deals while avoiding very large, lengthy deals for players that may not be worth it over their duration. The obvious question now is: who should the Astros keep and who should they let go. While we won’t be doing a complete accounting of the roster in terms of “stay vs go”, here are two players that the Astros should do everything they can (within reason) to keep around and one contract extension they should avoid.

Extension to make: Framber Valdez

You would be completely excused if you thought that giving contract extensions to pitchers is usually not a great idea. Indeed, some of the worst contracts in baseball (looking at you, Patrick Corbin, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Sale, and Stephen Strasburg) were given to pitchers and the laws of physics plus good ol’ fashioned Father Time are particularly unkind to arms. However, you have to have guys in your rotation you can trust and adding Framber Valdez to the already extended Cristian Valdez in the Astros' rotation is a worthy gamble.

Coming into the 2023 season, the Astros clearly wanted to extend Framber. He was coming off a season where he threw north of 200 innings and posted an ERA of 2.82 and a fWAR of 4.4. Those are big time numbers, but Valdez has somehow been even better in 2023 as he has been one of the better pitchers in all of baseball this season. He has shown real gains in ERA, FIP, xFIP, strikeout rate, and walk rate. In short, he is quickly positioning himself to be a bona fide ace.

In fact, his performance this season is actually a reason to think that getting an extension done could be MORE difficult now vs. before the season started. The Astros and Valdez were negotiating before spring training on an extension, but those talks broke down after the gap between the two sides was too large. Well, Framber has only gotten more expensive since then given how well he has been pitching in 2023 and is less likely to want to give any discounts. Framber also has the same problem that Tucker has in that he still has two years of arbitration left, so waiting at least another season may be the best way to get talks going in the right direction so that the two sides have an arbitration figure to work from.

Framber will almost certainly require significantly more to extend than the five year, $64 million deal that Javier got. The Astros should be very wary of giving Framber too many years as he is already 29 years old and will be in his early 30’s before he runs out of team control. That said, starting pitchers that you can trust to throw meaningful and quality innings are tough to come by and since the Astros aren’t likely to be playing in the deep end of the starting pitcher free agent pool too often, extending Valdez seems like a good option. 

Extension to avoid: Alex Bregman

To be clear, this isn’t an indictment of the work that Alex Bregman has done with the Astros to this point. He is a two-time All-Star, has a pair of 8+ fWAR seasons under his belt, is a strong defender at third, and is coming off a strong season in 2022 where he posted an .820 OPS and 5.5 fWAR. However, there are some real reasons to avoid extending Bregman any further than the Astros already have.

The extension that bought out Bregman's first three years of arbitration also has him making $28.5 million this year and next. That contract has been a bargain so far especially with his production in 2022, but his next extension isn’t likely to be at any discount with Scott Boras as his agent. There is no denying that Bregman is a valuable player, but once a contract gets to a certain point, there are going to be opportunity costs especially for a team that is somewhat payroll constrained like Houston. Is it worth keeping Bregman at the cost of not being able to fill other spots on the roster? Our guess is no.

The other problem is that Bregman is showing some signs that he is beginning to decline. His average exit velocity is starting to creep slowly downward, he isn’t barreling pitches as much, and he hasn’t hit more than 23 homers since 2019. He does still have a really good walk rate and elite K-rate along with his usual excellent defense, but it is clear that Alex isn’t hitting the ball hard as much as he used to. Investing a lot of money in a guy who will be 30 next season and is already seemingly declining is problematic.

In the end, everything comes down to cost. If Bregman is willing to do a shorter term deal that doesn’t break the bank, then by all means do it. However, if the Astros find themselves needing to give him a long-term deal with a high AAV to keep him from walking, they should let him go after his current deal runs out after the 2024 season.  

More Astros News from Climbing Tal's Hill