Astros Rumors

Coming off their first non-playoff season since 2016, the Astros will hold off on any major organizational overhauls.  MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart reports that both general manager Dana Brown and manager Joe Espada will be back with the club in 2026, for Brown’s fourth season and Espada’s third season in their respective roles.

The news isn’t hugely surprising, as Brown said during the Astros’ end-of-season press conference last week that Espada would return, and the GM believed he would also remain in his position.  There has been no indication that team owner Jim Crane is dissatisfied with the job performance of either man, whereas by comparison, there were rumors for months in 2022 that Crane was clashing with ex-GM James Click (Brown’s predecessor).  Sure enough, the Astros parted ways with Click shortly after the 2022 season, despite the fact that Houston had just won the World Series.

Since winning that championship, the Astros’ win totals and finishes have gradually gone in reverse.  Houston won 90 games and the AL West in 2023 but fell just short of another pennant, losing to the Rangers in a seven-game ALCS.  In 2024, the Astros won 89 games and another division crown, but their streak of ALCS appearances was snapped when they were upset and swept by the Tigers in the wild card series.

This season saw the Astros win 87 games, the most of any club that didn’t reach the postseason.  The Tigers were again their nemesis, also winning 87 games and edging out the Astros for the final AL wild card berth due to the tiebreaker advantage (Detroit had a 4-2 record against Houston this year).  Even with the Tigers in full collapse mode for much of September, the Astros came undone in the final stretch, going 3-6 in their last nine games.

In this sense, Brown and Espada are somewhat victims of their own success — naturally, most teams would love to have a three-season run that included two division titles and 265 wins.  For this season in particular, there was also a clear reason for the Astros’ relative struggles, as Houston was absolutely ravaged by injuries.  Only four Astros players had more than 500 plate appearances, and Framber Valdez (192 IP) and Hunter Brown (185 1/3 IP) were the only hurlers to log more than 86 innings pitched.  Within this context, Espada found himself garnering some buzz as a Manager Of The Year candidate before the bottom finally fell out on his injury-riddled club.

It isn’t hard to imagine that the Astros would’ve made the playoffs if their team had been even reasonably healthy.  However, just counting on fewer injuries in 2026 might not be enough, plus the Astros have a big pair of potential holes to fill if Valdez or productive backup catcher Victor Caratini leave in free agency.

Going forward, Brown and Espada are both under contract through at least the 2026 season, though the specific terms of either man’s contract aren’t publicly known.  If 2026 is the last year of their deals, Crane could explore at least a brief extension just to make sure that neither is a lame duck, or the owner might want to see if the Astros can firmly get things turned around before making a further commitment.

For the first time since 2016, the Astros won’t be part of baseball’s postseason.  Houston was officially eliminated from wild card contention yesterday, ending an eight-year run for the club that included two World Series titles, four AL pennants, and seven AL West crowns (plus, since it can’t be overlooked, the infamous sign-stealing scandal).  The Astros won their season finale today to finish with a respectable 87-75 record, but a 3-6 record over their last nine games left Houston short of the playoffs.

The franchise doesn’t appear to be taking this near-miss lying down, as general manager Dana Brown told MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart and other reporters.  The Astros are planning “a complete look at all of our operations,” with Brown saying “we’ll have a full assessment of what we’re doing in this offseason, and so we’ll take a look and really think about the entire operation.”

While teams routinely take stock in what they’re doing after every season, it will be particularly interesting to see how the Astros respond after their eight-year stretch of October success has been interrupted.  This is the same franchise that parted ways with former GM James Click immediately after the 2022 World Series win, so owner Jim Crane is certainly no stranger to shake-ups even when things are seemingly going well.

Perhaps the most inevitable question is the fate of manager Joe Espada.  Brown stated that Espada is “under contract” for at least 2026, providing some clarity on Espada’s status since the terms of his deal weren’t made public when Espada succeeded Dusty Baker following the 2023 campaign.

Brown stopped short of confirming Espada’s return, but said “as far as I’m concerned, Joe worked hard through this season….I haven’t sat down and gone through it yet, but from my initial thought process, Joe did a good job.  He battled through all of the injuries and pressed a lot of the right buttons.”

Espada has a 175-148 record over his two years as Houston’s manager.  The 2024 season saw the Astros win the AL West again, but their streak of seven consecutive ALCS appearances was ended when the Tigers pulled the upset and swept Houston in two games in the wild card round.  With that early exit now followed by a playoff miss altogether, it might not be a shock if Crane decided a change was needed in the dugout, even if Espada’s overall record is quite solid.

Moving beyond the manager’s office, it isn’t out of the question that Brown himself could be feeling the heat.  Crane is considered to be more hands-on than most owners in baseball operations decisions, and senior advisor and ex-Astros great Jeff Bagwell is known to have an influential voice within the organization.

Houston’s health woes were brought up multiple times by Brown, and it is hard to argue that even an average amount of injury luck would’ve greatly improved the Astros’ season.  As it turned out, almost every player on the roster missed at least some time, and the Astros finished the year with a whopping 15 players on the IL.  The pitching staff was particularly hit hard, and the position-player mix was finally depleted to the point of no return when Jeremy Pena and Yordan Alvarez were sidelined in late September.  In Alvarez’s case, his ankle sprain came after he’d already missed close to four months recovering from a finger fracture.

“Losing Yordan and Peña for those last three series is what I really feel like hurt us,” Brown said, and the health issues as a whole were his “biggest frustration” with the 2025 campaign.  “There’s no magic bullet.  There’s nothing to point to to say, ’Oh, we got these many injuries because of this.’  We had freak accidents that happened.  There’s been multiple reasons why we had a lot of injuries.”

It could be that the Astros will view their health problems as a reason to hold off on wholesale changes this winter, if there’s a sense that fewer injuries will just naturally mean better results next year.  However, some of those injuries (i.e. multiple pitchers who underwent UCL-related surgeries) will linger into 2026 or even beyond, and there’s also the natural concern over how well the veteran core can continue to hold up.  Returning to the pitching, longtime staff stalwart Framber Valdez is heading for free agency, so that represents another rotation hole and a lot of innings that will need to be filled if Valdez isn’t retained.