SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Most teams use MLB’s annual general managers’ meetings to lay the foundation for the winter, meeting with every agency about their available players or beginning cursory trade talks with rival clubs.
The Houston Astros are no different. Third-year general manager Dana Brown and his lieutenants spent most of the week touching base with all corners of the baseball world at the sprawling JW Marriott in San Antonio. Nothing Brown said on Tuesday raised many eyebrows, though the bullishness with which he talked about Alex Bregman accentuated how serious the club is taking its pursuit of a reunion.
Bregman and third base remain the team’s “biggest priority,” but there are far broader questions about the state of Houston’s roster and how it can best balance its present and future. Brown has repeated that “nothing is off the table.” Here are some observations and information about what that may entail:
Pressly on the move?
The Astros have had internal discussions about trading setup man Ryan Pressly, according to two people briefed on the conversations, perhaps a signal that Brown is exploring avenues to get further away from the luxury tax. Most outside approximations put the Astros around $10 million below the first threshold when accounting for their projected arbitration salaries.
Pressly will make $14 million next season, but his contract contains a full no-trade clause, giving him autonomy to veto or approve any potential deal. The situation would require both sides working together to find a suitable landing spot for Pressly, who turns 36 in December.
Asked on Tuesday afternoon whether he is exploring trading pieces of his major-league roster, Brown didn’t dismiss the possibility.
“If we can use a major-league piece to get two pieces that will help us solve problems, I would welcome that if that deal shows up,” Brown said. “But I don’t want to trade major-league pieces and weaken the team. It has to make sense for the team and it has to feel like we’re getting better.”
Any team in need of a closer should profile as a logical destination for Pressly, whom Houston demoted to a setup role last season after signing Josh Hader to a five-year, $95 million deal. Hader’s presence, coupled with Bryan Abreu’s continued dominance, does make Pressly expendable.
Josh Hader took over as Astros closer in 2024, pushing Ryan Pressly out of the role he’d held since 2021. (Thomas Shea / Imagn Images)
Before Hader’s arrival, Pressly had been Houston’s closer for the previous four seasons, a stretch in which he saved 102 games, posted a 2.99 ERA and authored a streak of 22 2/3 postseason innings without allowing an earned run.
A three-run eighth inning during Game 2 of this year’s Wild Card Series ended Pressly’s playoff prowess and offered a fitting conclusion to his uneven season. Pressly posted a 3.49 ERA, 3.10 FIP and 1.34 WHIP across 59 appearances.
Pressly’s 9.2 hits per nine innings were his most in any 162-game season since 2016. His whiff rate fell to 26.9 percent — 4 percent below his career average — while hitters chased at a 31.5 percent clip against him.
Brown and manager Joe Espada kept Pressly informed during the team’s pursuit of Hader last season. Upon Hader’s arrival, Pressly maintained a professional disposition and declared himself amenable to whatever helped the team win. Publicly, he said all the right things.
Still, Pressly’s performance this season invites wonder whether he had difficulties adjusting to a new role. It stands to reason Pressly would relish another opportunity to close, but whether he’s willing to leave Houston — his wife’s hometown and where both of his children were born — is a legitimate question.
Are other trades in the offing?
That Pressly is being dangled in trade talks prompts wonder whether either Framber Valdez or Kyle Tucker could join him. Both players are projected to make more than $15 million in their final year of arbitration eligibility and nothing Brown said Tuesday made it seem like Houston is hellbent on extending either.
“I don’t think we’re going to be in the business of giving multiple seven-year deals or multiple eight-year deals, but if there’s an opportunity to sign a guy that we feel is going to be good for six or seven years, I think (owner Jim Crane) would do it,” Brown said.
Tucker, who will turn 28 in January, will command the exact sort of deal Crane swears off. Making either him or Valdez available would elicit the sort of return Houston needs to replenish its farm system. Pressly’s salary, age and suspect 2024 will not yield anywhere near the same prospect haul.
Perception is important, though. Trading either Valdez or Tucker could signal that Houston is headed for a rebuild. Whether Crane could handle that is a question one league source raised this week. This is the same owner who has famously boasted the team’s championship window will never close under his watch.
Dealing either Valdez or Tucker should not prevent the Astros from contending in 2025, though it would make the task more difficult.
A meeting of the minds
After acknowledging the Astros “got away” from their offensive approach, Brown, Espada and members of Houston’s front office met with hitting coaches Troy Snitker and Alex Cintrón after the season in hopes of rediscovering it.
“We need to start seeing more pitches. We’ve been far too aggressive too early in the count. Second and third, no outs, we’re swinging at breaking balls early in the count. We need to get away from that,” Brown said.
“We need to hunt the fastball, we need to be a little bit more patient, and aggressive in zone, not so much aggressive out of the zone. I think if we can do that, that’s going to make a big difference.”
No lineup in baseball saw fewer pitches per plate appearance than Houston’s. Only one had a higher chase rate and just two swung more frequently. Missing Tucker for 79 games is an obvious cause for the change, but even with Tucker in tow, Houston still constructed a roster full of free-swinging hitters with tendencies to chase.
Jose Altuve had a career-high 17.5 percent strikeout rate this season, above his career average of 12.8 percent. (Erik Williams / Imagn Images)
If Alex Bregman departs in free agency, it will rob the club of perhaps its most patient hitter, though Bregman’s swing rate skyrocketed and walk rate plummeted during his platform year.
Brown mentioned Jeremy Peña and Yainer Diaz as hitters who could benefit from becoming more patient, but overhauling their entire offensive approach is impossible. Adding an external left-handed hitter who “sees a lot of pitches” would “be a priority for us,” Brown said.
Brown described the meeting with Cintrón and Snitker as “a nice conversation” with two men who absorbed an avalanche of public scrutiny for some of the Astros’ offensive shortcomings.
Cintrón and Snitker just finished their seventh season as Houston’s major-league hitting coaches, a stretch in which Houston’s lineup has resided atop almost all of the sport’s offensive leaderboards. Even in this oft-criticized season, the club still finished with baseball’s second-highest batting average and seventh-highest OPS.
“I don’t know if we should be in the business of blaming coaches for a lack of production, particularly when these same players have had success with these same hitting coaches,” Brown said.
Losing leverage?
The inability of Brown to articulate — or even comprehend — a contingency plan if Bregman signs elsewhere underscores the dearth of highly talented position players on the free-agent market and within Houston’s farm system.
It may also eliminate any leverage Brown may have in negotiations with agent Scott Boras, who acknowledged on Wednesday that Bregman has created “a market that the Astros are very aware is very healthy for him.”
Boras also reiterated that Bregman would be willing to play second base for any interested teams. Asked whether teams have courted Bregman as a second baseman, Boras replied “of course,” only increasing the number of teams that could get involved.
Boras has already negotiated the longest and most lucrative contract of Crane’s ownership tenure — Jose Altuve’s six-year, $151 million extension before the 2018 season. Exceeding it may be necessary.
“I can’t get into the particulars of years, AAV or money or things like that, but just understand, we are having productive conversations,” Brown said. “My vision is for Bregman to be here.”
Another Boras client
Hunter Brown and the Astros had mutual interest in a contract extension as recently as last spring training, people briefed on the discussions said this week. One breakout season and two agent switches later, it’s difficult to envision one ever materializing.
Brown hired Boras to represent him last week, joining the sport’s most renowned agency perhaps with an eye already on free agency. Boras almost always advises his clients to test the open market and rarely consummates the sort of pre-arbitration extension Brown and the Astros explored earlier this year. It’s not impossible — fellow Boras client Lance McCullers Jr. got a five-year, $85 million extension — but it is far from the norm.
Brown isn’t arbitration-eligible until next winter and won’t hit free agency until after the 2028 season. His superb season ended with a 2.51 ERA across his final 147 innings, positioning the 26-year-old among the sport’s budding superstar pitchers. Provided that continues, Boras will ensure he gets paid like one.
(Top photo of Ryan Pressly: Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)
