2024 Team Previews: Houston Astros
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
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Astros Intro
Remember when the Astros were terrible? I do. For a few years there, they made me feel a lot better about the Pirates.
Jose Altuve and Jordan Lyles were on that team, and both are still in the league today (for different reasons…). And man, Altuve just signed a five year extension! What a legend that guy is.
Remember when the National League had 16 teams and the American League had 14? That was weird. Math and evenness and fairness really weren’t the priority in sports for a long time. Maybe that’s too broad of a statement, but it is really weird to imagine that they had one division with six teams and another with just four. That must have been real nice for those four AL West teams.
The Astros have turned into a powerhouse. Winning records (sans 2020) in every season sine 2014, and a couple of World Series titles along the way. Really impressive stuff.
I would say that things seem to be maybe on the downslope for them right now. The core has gotten old, to say the least, and while they don’t have any problems with depth at any position, they are coming up shorter in a few areas than what we’ve come to be used to. They did squeak out another division title in 2023, but with what the Rangers can do offensively and that young, exciting Mariners squad - I think the AL West is open for battle this year.
Hitters
Kyle Tucker
Age: 27
Pos: OF
Another year, another elite roto finish for Kyle Tucker. He was one homer shy of his first 30-30 season, and he’s now put together a really fantastic three-run year.
2021: .294/.359/.557, 30 HR, 14 SB, 83 R, 92 RBI
2022: .259/.332/.485, 31 HR, 24 SB, 72 R, 109 RBI
2023: .284/.369/.517, 29 HR, 30 SB, 97 R, 112 RBI
He finally got to move up in the batting order a bit and the R+RBI came up because of it. Tucker is a locked-in first round bat once again.
The Brl% stayed true at 10.6%, but he was able to drop the K% to 13.8% last year while raising the walk rate to 10.7%. Very good stuff.
I don’t think I really need to prove anything more to anybody here.
In the average draft, Tucker goes #6 behind Acuna, J-Rod, Witt, Carroll, and Betts. Across 77 drafts in my dashboard at this moment, he has fallen past pick 10.
If you’re picking a draft slot, you’re shooting for #1 because Acuna basically laps the field these days. After that, I like the huge upside with J-Rod and Witt Jr., but really I don’t see much difference between picks 2 and 6.
If you’re not getting in the top six, I’d probably rather just pick at the end and hope for a nice starting combination of Jose Ramirez and Aaron Judge or something like that.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Mookie Betts, Corbin Carroll
JA: 639 PA, 94 R, 27 HR, 103 RBI, 25 SB, .274/.360/.488, .848 OPS
BatX: 642 PA, 99 R, 29 HR, 91 RBI, 22 SB, .282/.359/.511, .870 OPS
Yordan Alvarez
Age: 26
Pos: OF
The skills are never in question with Yordan. Since 2021, he’s 4th in the league with a .955 OPS and he’s one of just 10 hitters to have homered 100 times. Of that group of hitters, he has the highest batting average of the bunch at .291, so this guy is just one of the best hitters in the league right now, if not the best.
For fantasy purposes though, we have seen just two steals in three years and a few IL stints. He’s played 144, 135, and 114 games the last three seasons. You can take that a negative (“he’ll probably get hurt again”), or you can take that as a positive (“imagine what he’d do in 150 games”).
The most impressive thing about Alvarez is that he puts together the elite quality of contact with a high contact rate.
He’s fantastic, I don’t have to say anything else.
But the lack of steals keeps him out of the top 10, and this year he’s falling out of the top 15 more than half the time. His ADP makes him the #18 player and the #16 hitter off the board. I’m down to sign up for that in the middle of the second round. He has outfield eligibility locked in for this year, which is a big help as well.
I would love to start a draft Bobby Witt + Yordan Alvarez, and that’s doable if you’re picking #5 or so in a 12-team league.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper, Matt Olson
JA: 606 PA, 96 R, 35 HR, 109 RBI, 0 SB, .288/.400/.572, .972 OPS
BatX: 598 PA, 98 R, 39 HR, 107 RBI, 0 SB, .298/.396/.598, .994 OPS
Jose Altuve
Age: 33
Pos: 2B
Altuve finally broke down a bit after playing two full seasons as a 30+ year old. In 2023 he saw just 410 PAs, but didn’t have any trouble producing when on the field:
410 PA, .311/.393/.522, .915 OPS, 17 HR, 14 SB
That’s a cool 27-homer, 22-steal pace. His attempt rate on the steals came up two points to 13%, so that’s good to see. The last two seasons he’s gone 11.4% and that 13.2% after a very low 4.6% mark in 2021. We thought the steals might have been done for him, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Altuve was a beneficiary of a .348 BABIP last year, his highest mark in quite some time, so there should be some batting average regression here. But he still maintained a strong 81% Contact% and 17% K% while keeping the barrel rate around league average.
He does not hit the ball very hard, he never has, but he has these elite bat skills and is able to pull plenty of fly balls for cheaper homers.
The homers will keep coming as long as the skills don’t fall off. Altuve is one of just ten hitters with a HR/FB over 22% the last three seasons:
It’s a skill for him, so we don’t have to project regression there.
So we have a guy locked in to the lead-off spot on a great team with a good homer rate and the ability to still flirt with 20 steals.
Second base is also really shallow this year. There’s a clear top four and then a pretty significant drop-off. Here are those four with their ADPs.
Betts 5
Albies 23
Semien 28
Altuve 39
So Altuve is falling a bit. Any time we’re talking about a guy in his mid-thirties coming off a season with an injury and some good luck, I typically want to be on the fade side of that. But if my choice is between Altuve in the 4th or 5th round and going with someone like Andres Gimenez at second base, I’ll take Altuve there.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Ozzie Albies, Marcus Semien
JA: 638 PA, 98 R, 25 HR, 75 RBI, 15 SB, .261/.348/.450, .798 OPS
BatX: 616 PA, 87 R, 23 HR, 78 RBI, 12 SB, .270/.347/.454, .801 OPS
Alex Bregman
Age: 29
Pos: 3B
The ADP keeps dropping on Bregman from his 2017-2018 heights. And that makes sense, it would seem. The roto production really hasn’t been all that great these last three years:
2021: 400 PA, 54 R, 12 HR, 55 RBI, 1 SB, .270/.355/.422, .777 OPS
2022: 661 PA, 95 R, 23 HR, 94 RBI, 1 SB, .261/.368/.457, .824 OPS
2023: 724 PA, 103 R, 25 HR, 98 RBI, 3 SB, .262/.363/.441, .804 OPS
So maybe it was too harsh to say it hasn’t been “all that great”, a 103-25-98 counting stat line is huge. But you don’t get the steals or the good batting average with it, and there is really no path to a big breakout 35-homer season or anything like that.
The Brl% fell to a new low 5.4% last year, and his fly ball exit velocity was in the bottom fourth of the league.
Unlike Altuve, he hasn’t been able to put up high HR/FB rates in any of the last three years, going for 14% in each of these last three seasons. That could get even worse if he can’t pull the ball at the same rate, because this guy really doesn’t swing the bat very hard.
He’s a little bit Arraez-like, getting most of his damage done with consistent contact rather than loud contact.
But we have seen three straight 20+ homer seasons from Bregman, so we should expect it again this year. He’s a safety option at third base. There are probably at least a dozen 3Bs with more upside than him, but I have no problem taking the annual discount on him at this point. There aren’t too many guys with 200 R+RBI upside.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Nolan Arenado
JA: 659 PA, 91 R, 22 HR, 79 RBI, 4 SB, .267/.368/.442, .810 OPS
BatX: 652 PA, 88 R, 24 HR, 84 RBI, 1 SB, .266/.364/.456, .820 OPS
Yainer Diaz
Age: 25
Pos: C
People are very excited about Yainer this year, as he will finally be freed from the blocking of Martin Maldonado who left via free agency.
Diaz is basically the opposite of Maldonado, a suspect defender but a really good hitter. It’s unclear if that’s good for the Astros, but we know it’s good for our purposes.
2023:
377 PA, 51 R, 23 HR, 60 RBI, 0 SB, .282/.308/.538, .846 OPS
In the minors 2021-2022:
898 PA, .314/.359/.535, .894 OPS, 42 HR, 6 SB
You won’t get steals, but that’s not really a consideration at catcher because really only one or two guys can steal bags at the position.
Good contact, good barrels:
So the power is there for sure. He posted a .357 xwOBA and a 30% FB%, so everything checks out here. He doesn’t strike out much either under 20%.
The one thing that might hurt him is the aggressiveness at the plate. His 58.6% Swing% was sixth-highest in the league and that led to a 44% Chase% which was fourth-worst in the league.
We have explored over and over here and on my Twitter feed that swing rates don’t predict anything but walk rate, so it’s not something to let change your opinion. The one thing we could say is that maybe pitchers will just stop throwing him strikes, giving him the Javier Baez treatment. If he can’t help himself and still swings that much even while he’s seeing fewer strikes, you could see the performance suffer, but I doubt it will matter much.
He’s an enticing catcher pick, but the field is sharp on him. He’s the #5 catcher off the board on average, and to me that does feel a little high. You can get a guy like Logan O’Hoppe about 60 picks later (or Mitch Garver even later than that). Th my preferred method of attack at catcher this year. But Diaz could absolutely finish as the fantasy game’s top catcher, so the price is justified on that front.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Will Smith
JA: 441 PA, 57 R, 23 HRH, 67 RBI, 0 SB, .270/.306/.500, .806 OPS
BatX: 451 PA, 57 R, 19 HR, 65 RBI, 1 SB, .274/.310/.464, .774 OPS
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