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: Kyle Tucker

This is an obvious one as Kyle Tucker’s name has been very much on folks minds when it comes to contract extensions. Indeed, the front office was very candid when they expressed a desire to lock Tucker up long-term and it is not difficult to see why. Kyle is coming off back to back seasons where he has put up nearly 5 fWAR, hit 30 home runs, and has been a consistent performer on both sides of the ball.

2023 hasn’t been QUITE as good for Kyle thus far, but he has still been a well above average big league hitter thanks to his combination of power and speed. Noticeable improvements in Tucker's walk rate and strikeout rate point to likely improvement over a larger sample and the months of June and August have usually been when he is at his best during his career. More importantly, Tucker is just 26 and will still have plenty of prime years left that would be covered by a potential extension.

There are certainly some hurdles to a potential deal, though. First, Tucker is represented by Excel who is not exactly known for leaving money on the table. Many are thinking that for a deal to get done, he is going to need a deal in excess of $200 million which is definitely a large financial commitment especially for an owner like Jim Crane.

Secondly, the timing right now is a little difficult for an extension as Kyle still has two years of team control after the 2023 season. It may make more sense for both sides to wait for at least one more arbitration hearing/settlement to get a better sense of his current value and then go from there.

All of that said, Tucker is the kind of dynamic young player that Houston should be looking to build around. Everyday players that can defend, hit, hit for power, and produce on the base paths are hard to come by and Kyle checks all of those boxes. There is certainly a chance that he could become too expensive or require too many years in a deal, but the Astros should make a good faith effort to try.

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.