Finding a Starting Pitcher On a Limited Budget: An Offseason Preview
The Astros have two clear holes--backup catcher and starting pitcher. Their budget cap limits their ability to address the rotation. They'll likely trade from excess at corner infielder.
The Astros enter the 2025-26 offseason in an unusual position, having missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Overall, the team has declined from its 2017-2022 peak when it played 101 win baseball on average. Since 2023, the Astros have won 90, 88, and 87 games.
Will that number go up or down next year? I covered the Astros status in my last article, arguing that despite expectations of decline next year (particularly in a Framber Valdez-less rotation), the team is likely to make moves to try to get back to the playoffs next season.
Thus, I do not expect a Kyle Tucker-like trade this offseason.
Part of the reason why I expect the team to push forward this offseason is that they already put their chips in for 2026 at the 2025 trade deadline. The three players the Astros acquired—Carlos Correa, Jesus Sanchez, and Ramon Urias—are all under Astros control for 2026.
The Sanchez deal is notable because it addresses one of the team’s weaknesses from 2025—corner outfield. I expect Sanchez—despite his poor play with the Astros last season—to start in left field on Opening Day. That will push Jose Altuve back to second base, covering the offensive hole there.
That leaves the team with two key holes to address this offseason—at backup catcher and in the rotation. I discuss how they might do this.
Payroll
I start as I usually do in the Offseason Preview by discussing the team’s payroll situation. In an ideal world, major league owners would try to spend as much as possible to get their team to the World Series. After all, that worked for the Dodgers and Blue Jays this year.
The history of baseball shows that team owners really like money, often more than winning. In the case of the Astros, Jim Crane has run the highest payrolls in Astros history, both in terms of raw dollars and in relation to other franchises. He has authorized luxury tax payments each of the last two seasons.
But it is likely he does not do that this season. I expect that the team’s payroll limit for 2026 is the first luxury tax threshold of $244 million. There are repeater penalties for going over the salary cap multiple years in a row. My educated guess is that Crane would like to avoid paying those this season and to reset their penalty structure for future seasons.
The good news from Crane’s standpoint is that he has a good bit of money coming off of his 2025 payroll. Contracts have mercifully expired for Jose Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly, three players the Astros were paying not to play for them in 2025.
The bad news is that the other major source of payroll lost to free agency is Framber Valdez. The Astros will have to replace the 31 starts, 192 innings and 3.8 wins above replacement Valdez had in 2025.
The other bit of bad news from the payroll standpoint is that much of the $63 million that went to Valdez, Abreu, Montero, and Pressly in 2025 is already spent. Carlos Correa will take up $21M off the luxury tax payroll in 2026, cutting into much of the savings. Much of the rest of the money will go to arbitration raises. The Astros paid $30.6 million to players in the arbitration system, minus Valdez’s salary. This season, they are projected to have 15 players in arbitration and MLBTradeRumors.com projects them to make $62.3 million.
Put those salaries together with the money owed on long-term contracts to Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Josh Hader, Cristian Javier, Lance McCullers, and Christian Walker, and Roster Resource at Fangraphs projects the Astros to have a current payroll of $227 million for 2026 for luxury tax purposes.
That leaves $17 million under the luxury tax payroll to address needs this offseason. In short, there’s not much to spend.
But, the Astros have relatively few holes to address this offseason. There are two positions the Astros feel compelled to address this offseason—starting pitcher and backup catcher. I’ll address these in reverse order because I think that’s how the front office will actually address them.
Backup Catcher
Victor Caratini has been the Astros backup catcher the last two seasons, and he has been excellent. He has slashed .263/.329/406 for an OPS+ of 105 in 660 plate appearances, filling in at first base and DH when needed. For $6M a season, Caratini has been the best backup catcher in baseball.
Caratini is a free agent, so one possibility is to bring him back at a salary similar to the $6 million a season he has been making. Caratini turned 32 in August, so age is a concern, but his consistency and above average stick mean he has a good chance of being a bargain at that price.
Caratini is unlikely to get an offer as a starting catcher, but he might get one in a job share at catcher. Or he might get a multi-year offer as a backup. If he takes that, then the Astros would have two alternatives for a backup catcher. One is a veteran, who usually sign contracts for $4 million a season. Candidates for such a contract include Christian Vazquez, James McCann, Elias Diaz, and Gary Sanchez.
The third alternative here is to give the backup job to Cesar Salazar, the defense first catcher who has had cups of coffee in the majors each of the last two seasons. Based on how little Joe Espada used Diaz in 2025, it seems the team’s evaluation of Salazar is that he is a AAA catcher. But he is inexpensive and could be paired with someone on a minor league contract to provide depth behind Yainer Diaz and allow money to be spent elsewhere, specifically on the rotation.
I expect the Astros to try to bring Caratini back, probably for something around $7 million for one season.
Starting Pitcher
The rotation for the Astros right now starts with Hunter Brown, which is a good place to start. And next is Cristian Javier, then Spencer Arrighetti, and I guess Jason Alexander is the 4th starter. And then Colton Gordon or J.P. France. Yes, it falls off quickly. I guess they could try Lance McCullers in the rotation again. They signed Nate Pearson and said they’d try him in the rotation, which, sure, why not.
The good news is that Josh Miller has proven to be a resourceful pitching coach, and he’s one of the franchise’s most valuable employees. The bad news is that you do not want to rely too much on pitching coach sorcery; that’s not an actual plan.
Instead, the Astros will target a starting pitcher this offseason. The need is quite clear. The question is how to get one.
Trading Christian Walker
Last offseason, the Astros acquired Isaac Paredes in the Kyle Tucker trade to play third base and signed Christian Walker as a free agent to play first base. At the trade deadline, the acquired Carlos Correa to play third base.
This worked in 2025 because Paredes was out for almost all of August and September with a hamstring injury. In 2026, it’s one too many corner infielders.
One of my expectations is that the Astros will trade one of these three corner infielders. In fact, Bob Nightengale of USA Today has already listed Walker as a player who is “on the block” at this week’s GM Meetings in Las Vegas.
Walker makes $20 million a season for the next two seasons and he was not worth his salary in 2025. For obvious reasons, that makes him difficult to trade. The Twins were actually interested in Walker as part of the Correa deal, but the Astros turned them down focusing instead on trying to win in 2025. That presumes there is interest in Walker—who had an acceptable .799 OPS after the All-Star break. But it’s likely the Twins were thinking of Walker to reduce the money they had to pay down on Correa’s contract.
If the Astros trade Walker, it will likely be just to clear salary space. There will not be much, if anything, in return. In fact, the Astros may have to send out money in the deal. Who would take on Walker’s contract? It’s obviously a limited pool of teams that 1) are willing to spend some money and 2) have a need a first base.
The Twins could be interested if they think they are contenders in 2026, but there are more rumors they are shopping their top starting pitchers (Pablo Lopez & Joe Ryan) than trying to add to their young core. The Padres could be interested in Walker as a replacement for free agent Luis Arraez and the Mets could take him on if they lost Pete Alonso. The Diamondbacks could take him back. But the market for this is limited, even if it is the most likely path for the Astros.
Signing a Free Agent Pitcher
The goal of trading Christian Walker is to free up salary space to sign a pitcher to cover the hole in the rotation. So who could the Astros sign in his place?
That depends on how much money the Astros have to spend. If Caratini signs for $7 million and the Astros trade away Walker’s whole contract, they would be $31 million under the $244 million payroll limit set by Crane.
The Astros have already been linked to Dylan Cease, who is usually ranked as the second-best free agent pitcher after Valdez. The Astros have been linked to Cease before, so there is probably interest. But signing him would require a larger commitment than the Astros have ever given a free agent pitcher before. It might require Jim Crane to have to give a contract for more than 5 free agent years, which he has never done before. In short, I would be quite surprised if the Astros signed Cease.
It is also unclear that the Astros have enough money under their self imposed budget to sign Cease. Tim Britton of The Athletic projects Cease to make $29 million a season over 6 years. Yes, that is under the $31 million the Astros have left. But that would leave precious little roo for the team to maneuver over the course of the season or to add at the trade deadline.
Instead, the Astros might be looking down the salary scale a little bit. The next tier of free agents includes pitchers such as Michael King, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Chris Bassitt. Britton projects those players to make between $21 and $25 million. Which one of these will they sign? My guess is that whichever of these free agents prices falls will end up in the Astros rotation next year.
The Alternative Path: Trading Isaac Paredes
I’ve sketched out in the last two sections what I think is the most likely scenario for the Astros offseason—trading Chrisitan Walker for salary space they use to sign a free agent pitcher.
But there are alternate paths the Astros could take. The most direct would be to trade Isaac Paredes for a starting pitcher. This would be from a different pool of players. Paredes is two years away from free agency, so I imagine it would be a player at a similar place in the free agency cycle.
But teams are reluctant to trade starting pitching for obvious reasons. It seems harder to find equal value in a trade for starting pitcher than in shipping out a bad contract.
There are names of pitchers before free agency who are on the trade block (c.f. Joe Ryan, Freddy Peralta, McKenzie Gore). I don’t expect the Astros to acquire any of them. Paredes does not fit with these teams future focused needs, nor is he fair value himself. It will take minor league capital to get these pitchers and the Astros will likely be outbid.
I would be surprised if the front office pursued this path, mostly because it is hard to find the match on the other end.
Few Holes But Big Stakes
The Astros enter this offseason with few holes, having addressed issues for the 2026 team at the 2025 trade deadline. That means the Astros will have a very focused offseason, looking primarily at the two positions I have highlighted here.
As I discussed in my last article, there is little reason to think that the front office will choose to retrench this offseason and build for the future. They are focused on 2026.
But the combination of having few holes but having missed the playoffs last season means that the Astros path back to October requires internal improvement and nailing the few moves they make this offseason. They need to get a starting pitcher this offseason with limited financial resources to do so. And they need to get a good starting pitcher despite those financial limits. It is a tough challenge for Dana Brown.