Yordan Alvarez is masking one of the Astros' biggest problems of 2026

There have been reports that Joe Espada will not be back next season regardless of how the rest of the season turns out. If that is the case, then it means that the assistant coaches will also come under scrutiny. The Astros way has been to retain assistant coaches even with a change in the manager post, but Dusty Baker left to retire and not because he was fired. So, this is a unique situation for the Astros.

Presumably, Espada is not coming back at least in part because Jim Crane and the remaining decision makers are not happy with how things are going overall. Therefore, we will immediately look at the hitting and pitching coaches. The Astros have one of the worst overall pitching staffs in baseball. That seems like an easy place to see change coming, but Victor Rodriguez is in his first season as the primary hitting coach. How can we assess the job he has done?

There are surface level numbers that all of us look at it, but they don't tell the entire story. Still, let's look at those boilerplate numbers to see if there is growth. The numbers for 2026 will be projected through the end of the season. First, we will look at the basic runs scored and slash statistics.

How is this team scoring that many more runs when their collective OPS scores are nearly identical. Well, we have seen a slightly uptick in power that could account for many of those runs. However, a lot of this is what we would call "noise" in the statistical world. For the casual fan, that would be an improvement in clutch hitting that can be attributed to either improved hitting approaches or random distribution.

The second point people will undoubtedly make is that Yordan Alvarez' health is responsible for the majority of those runs, which is also fair. It would be fair to point out that Christian Walker has been somewhat better than he was a year ago overall, but others have not been quite as good. It would be very fair to say that this offense goes as Yordan Alvarez goes.

Let's take a look at some fancier numbers.

Some of these numbers may be new to some of you. Secondary average (SEC) takes everything an offensive player does that is independent of batting average. So, we are talking isolated patience, isolated power, and base running. Since it does not include average, we can take the midpoint between batting average and secondary average and get a very good idea of the overall effectiveness of the hitter or team.

This is a better overall hitting team than it was a year ago. What becomes interesting is parsing out the difference between strikeouts and walks. There is a significant debate in the stats community as to the relative weight of the strikeout. Some old school stat guys consider a K like any other out, but some newer age stats people and your old school baseball fans know that is not universally true. A strikeout with a runner on third and one out is a killer. So, K numbers do have some value, but most would agree we are more interested in the K/BB ratio and we see a better ratio (2.76 versus 2.46) in 2026.

So, this begs the question: has he done enough to come back? This question is not as easy as it looks. On the one hand, this is a better offense than it was a year ago. On the other hand, you could argue that improvement is Yordan Alvarez and not anything the hitting coaches have done. Both are likely true in part.

it also should be pointed out that new managerial candidates usually want to assemble their own staff. The Astros should be careful not to lose out on a better candidate because they demand certain people stay on staff. If cleaning house will bring in a better manager they have to do it. This isn't to say that Victor Rodriguez has done a poor job, but this team is not good enough overall to keep its current manager, so the components that make up that team also have not been good enough.

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