I wrote up my predictions for the Astros in 2026 as part of The Launch Angle's Season Preview. I'm adding my part here for posterity, but definitely go check the full thing at to see where the group consensus lands! This season's predictions are definitely the most polarizing one in at least a decade, so there's a lot to cover. And if you're an Astros fan, definitely check out The Launch Angle this year!
I feel like I’ve seen a lot of doom and gloom around predictions for the Astros in 2026. And I don’t know that I can blame it all; the 2025 team missed the postseason for the first time since 2016, suffered from a rash of bad luck along the way, and in the offseason lost long-time ace Framber Valdez, continuing a multi-year run of high-profile free agency departures.
And yet… I feel like it’s important to remember that somehow, the 2025 team wasn’t nearly as much of a disaster as it felt like at times. In last year’s preseason predictions, I guessed that the squad would finish with an 88-74 record, good for second place in the AL West and a Wild Card spot. The end result was instead 77-75, good for second place in the AL West and missing out on the last Wild Card spot by a tiebreaker. That one game difference was incredibly consequential, but this team was more or less where I expected.
Of course, how the 2025 team got to that end point was extremely unusual. If I had known going into the year that Yordan Alvarez would miss over 110 games (not to mention his as poorly as he did in the first few weeks of the season), that Yainer Diaz would be a below-average hitter, that Jose Altuve would struggle in the outfield, that Christian Walker would take several months to heat up, that Chas McCormick would play so poorly that he would get demoted, that Framber would somehow go on a protracted meltdown to close out the season, that Josh Hader would go down at a critical point, that Lance McCullers Jr. would return from injury looking totally spent but still rack up substantial innings anyway, that the rest of the rotation as a whole would continue to get generally bad luck on the injury front… Frankly, that all sounds like a disaster scenario taken together. I think if you had just told me the Yordan tidbit prior to my 2025 prediction, I would have knocked a full 5 wins off my estimate, let alone any of the other news.
And I think that’s why I… actually feel somewhat optimistic about 2026? Don’t get me wrong, this version of the team is still a far cry from the 2022 Championship team. But taking a team that missed something like 18 Wins Above Replacement due to injuries* (far ahead of anyone else) all the way to the brink of the playoffs feels like a big deal, and it provides a very obvious answer to the question “where will your potential improvement in 2026 come from?” Even mediocre injury luck in 2026 would be a huge step up over what the team got in 2025, and hopefully the new medical team can manage that.
*I also strongly suspect the Astros were also missing out on some additional value in the form of “guys playing through injuries, especially during that desperate stretch run”. Take a look at Isaac Paredes, who we thought was certainly done for the regular season at least. By some miracle, he returned for that final stretch… only to go .185/.241/.296 in eight games. Jake Meyers couldn’t even make it to season’s end before going back on the IL, and hit .204/.271/.204 in the fifteen games he mustered in between those stints. I have a hunch that Yordan was playing through some issues at the start of the season before his first IL stint; his slash line for those first 29 games was a bizarrely poor .210/.306/.340, and his 19 games after returning saw him immediately turn things around, to the tune of a .369/.462/.569 line. And this isn’t even counting Altuve, who gutted out the whole season but was apparently playing through a foot injury (which could explain his poor performance in August and September).
Really, there are other areas for improvement, too. New acquisitions Mike Burrows and Tatsuya Imai looked strong in Spring Training, as did Cristian Javier. Hopefully those three will be able to cover for Framber’s departure. And Hunter Brown’s stellar 2026 showed that the team would still have an ace, at the very least.
On the offense, getting anything from Yordan in 2026 would obviously be an improvement, and a full season at his peak alone would account for a full 4-to-5 Win swing. A full season of Carlos Correa could also be massive, and even better health for established guys like Jeremy Peña, Jake Meyers and Isaac Paredes could contribute a few wins here or there. And between potential growth from Cam Smith or Yainer Diaz, or late-career bouncebacks from Walker or Altuve, or young players like Brice Matthews or Zach Cole or Joey Loperfido establishing themselves…
I don’t think all of those bets will come up in the team’s favor, but I do think there’s a lot of potential upside there and just a few of them paying off will make a big difference. And it does give them a lot of room to try different configurations out, if one thing or another isn’t working. If, say, Walker isn’t panning out, Paredes starts more at first; if LMJ looks spent, Spencer Arrighetti is staying warm down in the Sugar Land rotation; and so on. Having plenty of options with potential upside and finding the best fit for the moment seems like it was the strategy this offseason, and I think it makes sense.
Even with the improvements, I’m left in a similar place that I was last season. I think this still looks like a better team than the Rangers and Athletics right now, even with their retooling (the Angels are also here); conversely, I don’t think it’s enough to catch them up to the Mariners, not unless a whole bunch goes right in Houston or wrong in Seattle. I think the total gains for the team will be enough to offset any potential shortfallings, leaving them up a win or two… let’s go with an 89-73 record, second place in the AL West.
The bigger question for me is: will that be enough to make the postseason? The AL this year feels like it’s heavy with good teams; the Orioles, Red Sox, and Tigers all made splashy moves to improve over the offseason; the Blue Jays had a great 2025 and brought in Dylan Cease to replace Bo Bichette; the Yankees and Mariners are starting from strong 2025 seasons; I like some of the moves the Royals, A’s, and Rangers made… but realistically, they can’t all be better in 2026 than they were in 2025, there aren’t enough wins to go around for that. Somebody is going to be losing out here.
And that’s where I think the Astros and their flexibility are at an advantage, actually. If Aaron Judge goes down for an extended period, I don’t know if the Yankees could recover from that. Ditto the Royals and Bobby Witt Jr., or the Orioles and Gunnar Henderson, or the Rangers with Corey Seager… But if the Astros already almost made it work in 2025 with Yordan missing most of the year; they seem to be better suited to working around that type of singular, major blow, possibly because they’ve already had to do that and built the roster accordingly. (Now, if they see the kind of widespread injuries that cost them 2025, that does look pretty bleak, but I’m also not sure if any of these other teams could survive that either.)
Realistically, since expanding the postseason, 89 wins has been enough to claim one of the last two Wild Card spots. There are a lot of other contenders, but as long as the Astros can hit that mark, they’re fine. So I’ll predict they make it in. Will they go far once they’re there? Well, who can say this far out, we have no idea what state every roster will be in by the end of the year, anything can happen in October, etc.… but right now, I’ll say they at least make the Division Series.
A Baseball Blog - Scientific and Speculative Thoughts from Third Base
That roster sounds so unfamiliar to me. Having been a fan for the past twenty years this feels like a massive change with so many new names.
ReplyDeleteLet’s hope health stays with them this year and your predictions are correct!