In honor of Opening Day tomorrow, I contributed my predictions for the 2025 Astros to The Crawfish Boxes’ Starting Nine! Go give it a look to see how everyone evaluated the team’s chances for this season. For posterity’s sake, I’ll re-post my blurb here, with a few extra thoughts:
It’s difficult to not feel like the 2025 Astros are worse on paper than the 2024 Astros. This was the most disappointing offseason for the team in recent memory, honestly probably since the mid-2000s? (Those early 2010 teams were bad, but most of the disappointment with them came from during the season rather than in between them.)
Trading Kyle Tucker made sense, but losing him a year before free agency made it sting more than other homegrown stars like Carlos Correa and George Springer actually leaving as free agents; it was like there was time to prepare yourself mentally with those, while this happened relatively all-at-once. Although speaking of that, we had another one of those cases in Alex Bregman leaving, but with the additional frustration of a brief window where it seemed like Houston might somehow manage bring him back on a short deal, hope that collapsed pretty rapidly. Ryan Pressly was dealt out, and Yusei Kikuchi and Justin Verlander signed elsewhere, all of which make sense in isolation but do bring back stark concerns of just how thin the pitching staff felt at times last year. Really, given the constant rumors swirling around Framber Valdez, it feels kind of shocking that there weren’t even more high-profile departures.
But on further reflection, there were some interesting additions. I keep forgetting that the team signed Christian Walker, since bringing in a big free agent clashed with the “everyone is leaving” vibes emanating the rest of the winter. Really, things weren’t nearly as dire as they felt at times. Isaac Paredes and Brendan Rodgers feel like they could be surprisingly solid pieces of a team this year (much has already been said about Paredes being a good fit for not-Minute Maid Park, and I feel like the Astros’ development side might be able to get more out of Rodgers* than the Rockies’), while Cam Smith^ and Hayden Wesneski feel like they could be longer-term pieces who still have a chance to make a big impact this year.
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Showing posts with label The Crawfish Boxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Crawfish Boxes. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Thursday, March 28, 2024
2024 Opening Day Astros Predictions
It’s Opening Day, so I once again contributed to The Crawfish Boxes’ annual Astros Prediction piece! Things seemed pretty rough at times in 2023, but I think Houston is poised to see something of a bounce-back this season; go check it out if you want to see why, as well as everyone else’s thoughts!
Also, one tidbit I wanted to note: I went back and looked at my prior predictions. I’m generally fairly close on record, but I’m not sure how important that is (I guess it’s slightly notable that I keep saying “the Astros will be good”, and then they are, but that’s more about not getting too pessimistic and predicting doom). The more interesting thing was the “bold predictions” section, a recurring category where we have to get specific about some aspect of the Astros’ upcoming year. I actually have a pretty decent track record there, which shocked me a little.
In 2019: “[T]his is the year that the Astros score 900 runs, becoming the first team to do so since the 2009 Yankees.”
The 2019 Astros did indeed reach 900 runs scored as a team! They technically didn’t lead the league, because there was an offensive uptick league wide that made things a little easier, but by just about any stat that adjusts for park and era, the 2019 team was historic (for example, they had the highest team wRC+ in post-integration MLB history at 124, a mark which the Braves topped last year).
In 2020: “The Astros won’t miss Gerrit Cole.”
I mean, you’d always rather have more good players, but the 2020 rotation didn’t miss a beat without him (outside of the whole Pandemic), finishing tied for third in rotation WAR according to Fangraphs. We had to do two extra bold predictions this year, and my results with those were more mixed; Carlos Correa did not lead a continued offensive onslaught, but the division was much closer and Houston didn’t clinch a playoff spot until the third-to-last day of the season.
2021 didn’t really have a bold prediction section, just to discuss your X-Factors and concerns. I said I was concerned about age and health. Both of those factors turned out fine in the end, but I didn’t give anything specific and measurable, so I don’t know that I can count this one.
In 2022: “Justin Verlander basically picks up where he left off back in 2019, with an All-Star-level campaign that even draws a few Cy Young votes.”
Verlander would return from Tommy John surgery and in fact win his third Cy Young Award, not just draw some votes.
In 2023: “Kyle Tucker takes another step forward and ends up getting the most MVP votes of anyone on the team.”
Tucker had probably his best season yet last year, finishing a homer shy of 30-30 and landing fifth in MVP voting (behind Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Julio Rodriguez). Yeah, Jose Altuve or Yordan Alvarez probably would have finished higher if they were healthy, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
If you’re curious to see what I predicted this year, you can once again check out my full 2024 piece here! And if you want to see everyone else’s predictions, here are the other entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Also, one tidbit I wanted to note: I went back and looked at my prior predictions. I’m generally fairly close on record, but I’m not sure how important that is (I guess it’s slightly notable that I keep saying “the Astros will be good”, and then they are, but that’s more about not getting too pessimistic and predicting doom). The more interesting thing was the “bold predictions” section, a recurring category where we have to get specific about some aspect of the Astros’ upcoming year. I actually have a pretty decent track record there, which shocked me a little.
In 2019: “[T]his is the year that the Astros score 900 runs, becoming the first team to do so since the 2009 Yankees.”
The 2019 Astros did indeed reach 900 runs scored as a team! They technically didn’t lead the league, because there was an offensive uptick league wide that made things a little easier, but by just about any stat that adjusts for park and era, the 2019 team was historic (for example, they had the highest team wRC+ in post-integration MLB history at 124, a mark which the Braves topped last year).
In 2020: “The Astros won’t miss Gerrit Cole.”
I mean, you’d always rather have more good players, but the 2020 rotation didn’t miss a beat without him (outside of the whole Pandemic), finishing tied for third in rotation WAR according to Fangraphs. We had to do two extra bold predictions this year, and my results with those were more mixed; Carlos Correa did not lead a continued offensive onslaught, but the division was much closer and Houston didn’t clinch a playoff spot until the third-to-last day of the season.
2021 didn’t really have a bold prediction section, just to discuss your X-Factors and concerns. I said I was concerned about age and health. Both of those factors turned out fine in the end, but I didn’t give anything specific and measurable, so I don’t know that I can count this one.
In 2022: “Justin Verlander basically picks up where he left off back in 2019, with an All-Star-level campaign that even draws a few Cy Young votes.”
Verlander would return from Tommy John surgery and in fact win his third Cy Young Award, not just draw some votes.
In 2023: “Kyle Tucker takes another step forward and ends up getting the most MVP votes of anyone on the team.”
Tucker had probably his best season yet last year, finishing a homer shy of 30-30 and landing fifth in MVP voting (behind Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Julio Rodriguez). Yeah, Jose Altuve or Yordan Alvarez probably would have finished higher if they were healthy, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
If you’re curious to see what I predicted this year, you can once again check out my full 2024 piece here! And if you want to see everyone else’s predictions, here are the other entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
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