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The team has made no significant new investment into an offense that was 21st in MLB last season.
While there has been an obvious and understandable focus on pitching this offseason for the Houston Astros after being devastated by pitching injuries in 2025, it shouldn’t be ignored that this was not a good offensive team last season.
Injuries certainly played a part in that as well, as did underperformance from the expected norm from several players. So far, there seems to be a sense of expectation from the team and players that they will be healthier this season (because they can’t possibly be less healthy than last season, right?) and therefore more productive.
Jose Altuve expressed as much with Robert Flores and Cliff Floyd on MLB Network:
Is that enough to make this offense a legitimate threat again, or are there too many players who are slowing down or unproven to count on?
Last season Altuve pulled the ball more than ever. He also went up the middle less than ever. He played through a foot injury in September that hampered him as well. About 2 weeks ago, Chandler Rome of The Athletic spoke with Altuve, who said he found a flaw in his stance and intends to change it for this season and therefore he expects his production to return to previous levels.
Which Altuve performs this season is a big question for the Astros. Will he return to the high average, high on-base, high OPS player he was as recently as 2023, or is Father Time finally slowing down the Astros future Hall of Fame 2B and will he look more like the player who posted full season career lows in both average on on-base in 2025?
Jeremy Pena had a career year in 2025. Are those numbers going to be the new normal? Pena explained the changes he made that led to his breakout success:
Pena significantly outperformed his career metrics in AVG, OBP, SLG and OPS last season. Maintaining that improvement means he’s a perennial all-star. Regressing to the norm means he won’t be leading off very long and he will be back at the bottom of the order. It’s a big swing.
A healthy Yordan Alvarez is of course one of the biggest additions to the lineup. Alvarez played only 48 games last season, and 29 of those were essentially with a broken hand.
In the 19 games (18 starts) Yordan made when he returned from the hand fracture, he slashed .369/.462/.569. Those are numbers that make pitchers terrified.
A healthy Yordan is the one true elite bat in the lineup, a .300 hitter with a .400 OBP and a .950+ OPS. 30+ HR power and the ability to hit righties and lefties equally well, he’s a hitter with almost no weakness (other than injury).
Which Carlos Correa do the Astros get this season? Correa was clearly rejuvenated by returning to Houston last season, and he is both happy and excited to be back with Houston.
Correa played 144 games last season. He has played at least 135 games in 4 of the last 5 seasons. Correa has also had wild fluctuations in his performance.
In this snippet of Correa’s performance from baseballreference.com, Correa has put together some very strong seasons and a couple of clunkers as well. The production clearly ramped up last season once he returned to Houston, but expecting more than 18-20 HR from Correa may be expecting too much. If Correa can maintain the high average and on-base, and deliver doubles and clutch hits, that could be exactly what this offense – which has struggled in clutch situations the past couple of seasons – may need. It also fits in line with the Astros new focus on patience at the plate, drawing walks, and making opposing pitchers work.
Isaac Paredes is another interesting case. He was in the midst of arguably his best season before tearing his hamstring. He heroically tried to play through it at the end of the season to help the Astros in their playoff push, but it was plainly clear he was significantly compromised and his performance showed that.
Can Paredes match the career-high level of production he showed pre-injury last season? It’s a tall ask, because it’s a tall ask to expect any player to maintain a career-high level of performance. He’s also 27 years old, and it’s quite possible his best baseball is still to come.
How will Paredes fare early in the season returning from a very significant hamstring injury for which he did not have surgery? How will he handle playing multiple positions, including one that he hasn’t played in a long time? Paredes swing is practically designed for the Crawford Boxes, yet his home/road splits are not nearly what you’d expect:
Paredes was far more productive than I think people realize on the road last season. That bodes well for his ability to maintain his level of production. I am far more concerned with how well equipped he is to play physically following a significant injury and if the mental toll of constantly moving around the diamond (something new to him) has an adverse impact on his production.
Christian Walker came to Houston with people having high expectations. While he’s never been a high average or high on-base hitter, he has always been a strong power hitter and he was the winner of three straight Gold Gloves coming to the Astros. Then things went very sideways early on.
An oblique injury March 5 sidelined him for the rest of Spring Training, though he returned for Opening Day. Walker got off to a terrible start, but had a much better second half. However a further examination of that tells a somewhat different story.
As you can see from Walker’s splits on baseballreference.com, Walker performed much better in the second half than the first, giving hope for a 2026 resurgence.
However, when you break it down by month, Walker really only hit for any kind of average and on-base in July. While his power surged in August/September, his average and on-base were still below career norms in those months.
Walker turns 35 in a month. Is a rebound coming? It very well could be, but maybe it’s not as big a rebound as his gross second half numbers suggest and more closely related to his last two months of the season?
Will Yainer Diaz ever fulfill his offensive promise? Yainer has not shown any progression at the plate in terms of plate discipline. He still swings at everything, and while he doesn’t strike out a ton, the soft contact he makes rolling over pitches he should be laying off leads to a lot of easy groundball outs and a lot of double plays.
Yainer led the league in GIDP in 2024 with 22, and has bounced into 47 double plays in 3 seasons.
The power he displayed his rookie season hasn’t translated, mainly because he gives away too many AB swinging at pitches he should be laying off. His walk rate is atrocious, walking only 20 times in 567 PA last season. Diaz has 56 career walks in 1572 PA. That’s about 3.5% of his PA, just hideous.
The fact Yainer’s plate discipline has remained non-existent is very troubling for his production. It’s not just the batting average that’s dropped. His OPS has plummeted. With the Astros newfound focus on selectivity at the plate, Diaz is the one player who could most benefit from a change in approach. Simply being more selective in what he swings at could have a profound impact on his production, allowing him to square up more balls and generate more extra base hits.
Yainer could be a player with a nice uptick this season if he can embrace and execute the team’s new offensive philosophy and be more patient and selective. Or he can continue to be what he has become, which is a mediocre hitter whose power is the only saving grace in his offensive game – provided of course he hits the ball in the air.
Jake Meyers is also coming off a career year, at least for average and on-base. Meyers completely sacrificed any and all power for more contact, and with his speed it’s not necessarily a bad approach. He is also the most volatile player in the lineup as far as expected production.
With more thanks to our friends at baseballreference.com, Meyers produced at a rate he never approached in regards to average and on-base. His walk rate increased, he stole more bases (especially in regards to number of PA and number of SB), his hit rate exploded. Despite the total lack of any HR power, his SLG was still right in line with where it had been the previous two seasons, further underlying that for him, focusing more on contact was 100% the right move.
There are a couple of things that still should concern you about Meyers. This is the biggest one:
Those home/road splits are fantastically wild. Jake couldn’t hit at home to save his life last season, yet he was an absolute road warrior. His performance on the road last season is flabbergasting, considering his previous levels of production overall and his home production. Everything is better when he gets out of Houston. AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, walk rate, SB rate, K rate – it’s like he becomes a totally different player.
The second concern is sustainability. How much of last year was a super hot streak and how much was a real change?
Meyers didn’t start the season well, but hit about .330 for 9 weeks from May through the first week of July when he suffered a calf injury that cost him 2 months of the season. Upon returning, he was absolutely awful, but it cannot be ruled out he was still not 100% during those final 15 games.
If Meyers can take his new approach of forget the HRs, make contact, draw walks, steal bases and continue it even close to his May-July production, he is a weapon at the bottom of the order. A player with that offensive profile in the 9 spot gives the team the ‘double leadoff’ look when the lineup turns over, and gives Pena/Yordan/Altuve more opportunities to drive in runs.
Teams that have good offenses get production at the bottom of the order. There is no set in stone dynamic for how that production comes. It doesn’t have to be HRs. Keeping the lineup churning works too, and sometimes it works better.
There is entirely too much unknown with Cam Smith or Zach Cole, but if either player (hopefully both) can be league average, it’s a huge boost for the bottom of the lineup. Cole is likely more advanced on the power profile right now, but both could be 20 HR, 20 SB players with regular playing time and league average production. Those are very strong profiles at the bottom of the order for two guys likely to bat between 7-9 in the lineup.
So what does this team’s production look like over the course of the season? How many players match or exceed expectation, how many fall below?
To me, it’s more than just health. It’s the progression of several players (Diaz, Meyers, Smith, Cole) as much as the health of others (Alvarez, Altuve, Pena, Correa, Paredes) even though it’s the bigger names that have the health and it’s the younger, supporting names that need to make the most progression. They can’t have the big guys at the top surrounded by easy outs at the bottom.
Do you think being healthy is the single biggest key for the offense to get back into the top-10 in runs scored?