Three Areas Where the Astros Are Projected to Be Better in 2024..and One Where They are Not
The Astros are projected to have 5 more Wins Above Replacement in 2024, thanks to expected improvements from Hunter Brown, Jose Abreu, & their catchers. But Cristian Javier is not on that list.
The first player projections for the 2024 season posted at Fangraphs are the Steamer projections.Reviewing these shows some good news for Astros fans. There are three clear areas on the roster where we can expect improvement in the 2024 season, and thus, provides reasons to think the team could outperform the 90 wins it achieved in the 2023 season.
On a veteran team like the Astros, one would expect that the team’s projections for next year will look like its results from the previous season. That’s what Bregman’s numbers show. For example, Steamer projects that Alex Bregman will produce 4.5 Wins Above Replacement in 2024, which is basically the same as the 4.3 he produced in 2023.
And yet, the Astros are projected to record 47.3 fWAR in the 2024 season.1 That is a high number—at the moment is the third highest in the majors and the highest in the American League.2
That number is also notable because it is a higher fWAR than the Astros recorded in 2023. Last season, the Astros racked up 42.2 Wins Above Replacement. Thus, the Astros are projected to produce 5 more fWAR in 2024 than they did in 2023, and that “should” produce 5 more wins.
From where is this improvement coming? To answer that question, I have found three areas where these projections show the Astros can expect improvement in the 2024 season.
Hunter Brown
How good was Hunter Brown in 2023? By standard measures, he was not that good. Among starters who threw 130 innings or more, his 5.09 ERA was 10th worst in the majors. Under Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation, he produced only 0.1 wins above replacement, essentially the level of a AAA call-up.
But by other measures, he was much better. He struck out 26.8% of batters he faced in 2023 while walking 8.3% of them. That 18.5% difference between his K% and his BB% was the 23rd best in baseball and tops among Astros starters.
It’s good to strikeout batters not only because a pitcher records an out, but because one does not have to rely on batted ball luck to get that out. And batted ball luck went against Brown last year. He allowed a .330 batting average on balls in play (BABIP, much greater than the league average of .295.3 Brown also allowed a home run on 21.0% of all fly balls he allowed, which was the worst rate among MLB starters.
And for both of those measures, there is a good deal of luck involved. Sabrmetric research has shown that while these numbers will fluctuate from year to year, they will regress toward the mean. And that’s what Steamer projects for Brown. It has him pegged to give up 16 home runs in 2024, down from 26 in in 2023. It project Brown for a BABIP of .305. In short, they think his luck will even out.
And, as a result, Brown should produce more value for the 2024 Astros than he did in 2023. His ERA is projected at 3.79 and he is projected to product 2.5 fWAR. That’s the 47th highest projected fWAR among MLB pitchers. Thus, there are lots of reasons to think that Brown’s results will be better in 2024 than they were in 2023.
Jose Abreu
If you’re reading an Astros Substack, you probably already know this, but Jose Abreu was a bad baseball player over the course of the 2023 season. He slashed .237/.296/.383 for a .680 OPS. That was 13% below league average. And of course, Abreu is a first baseman, so the average at that position is much higher. As a result, Abreu was a below replacement player in 2023—producing -0.6 fWAR.
Steamer projects that Abreu will be better in 2024. It projects Abreu for a slash line of .261/.333/.421 for a .754 OPS, which is better in all three components than he hit in 2023. Now, Abreu’s rapid decline in 2023 might prompt one to question whether he is cooked. He certainly looked like it in the first half of the season, when he had a .630 OPS.
But in the second half of 2023, Abreu slashed .238/.313/.447 for an OPS of .760. It looks a lot like the projection Steamer has for Abreu for the 2024 season, and not like the first half of his 2023 season.
A .754 OPS is not good; it’s tied for the 169th best among all players projected by Steamer. And Abreu is projected for only 1.2 Wins above Replacement in 2024; the rule of thumb is that 2.0 is league average. But those numbers are much better than what we saw in 2024 from Abreu. It’s a potential two win improvement just from not being as godawful as he was in the first half of 2024. #FingersCrossed.
Catcher
Last year, Martin Maldonado started 116 games and hit .191/.258/.348. His .606 OPS was the 15th worst of any 2023 major leaguer with 300 or more plate appearances.4
Maldonado was a free agent and not brought back by the front office. Instead, they have talked up Yainer Diaz as the everyday catcher and signed Victor Caratini as the backup.
Both hit better than Maldonado. Diaz is projected for a slash line of .273/.312/.489 and Caratini for one of .246/.323/.396. In short, the Astros can expect a lot better production behind the plate in 2024.
But that comes with a caveat. Maldonado’s value is not at the plate, nor in his arm or his framing skills. It is in his ability to handle the pitching staff and to call pitches. He is noted for both his detailed preparation to understand hitter tendencies and weaknesses and for being essentially a permanent psychologist for Astros pitchers.
How much will the Astros miss Maldonado’s handling of the pitching staff? With qualitative factors such as this, it is hard to say. It is possible Maldonado’s absence will lead to negative effects on the pitching staff and will lead to the team giving up more runs. But it is impossible to quantify.
What we can quantify is this. The Astros got 0.8 Wins above Replacement from their catcher last year. That number is held down by the -1.2 Wins Above Replacement recorded by Maldonado. This season, Steamer projects 3.8 Wins Above Replacement from the combination of Diaz and Caratini.5 That’s an increase of 3 wins, assuming it does not come back from the pitching staff.
Cristian Javier, Not Projected To Improve
There was one projection that surprised me. In 2023, Cristian Javier had an ERA of 4.56, essentially a run below his career mark or 3.57. One would expect that his projection for 2024 would look closer to that career number than his 2023 number.
Instead, Javier is projected for an ERA of 4.67, which would be a career high.
What explains this? First of all, Javier is a pitcher who at his peak benefitted from low BABIPs. He had BABIPs of .194, .234, and .228 in his first three seasons in the majors. His BABIP regressed to .272 in 2023, which is closer to league average (.295). Steamer projects him for a BABIP of .282 for 2024. If Javier gives up more hits on batted balls, his ERA will suffer, as it did in 2023.
Javier also allowed more batted balls in 2023, which is to say that he struck out fewer batters. Javier struck out over 30% of the batters he faced in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, that declined to 23.1%, just above the league average of 22.7%.
Steamer does not project a return to Javier’s big strikeout ways in 2024; they project him to strike out 24.7% of batters in 2024. In short, Steamer projects Javier to look like the one we saw in 2023, and not the multiple no-hitter throwing version we saw in 2022.
Are these projections the “end all, be all” for player analysis? Of course not. But they do 1) use data across all players across many years (decades sometimes) and avoid the biases created through focusing on extremes or by relying on our emotions.
Can Cristian Javier overcome his low projection? Of course, many players will outperform their projection. Similarly, many will underperform their projection as well—just hopefully not Brown and Abreu.
Projections help us establish expectations for the upcoming season. We can expect better pitching from Hunter Brown and better hitting from Jose Abreu—it couldn’t be much worse. And based on these expectations, the whole team should be better in 2024. Here’s hoping.
The 47.3 figure comes from the Depth Charts projection on Fangraphs. At the moment, it takes the Steamer projections and then adjusts them for expected playing time on each roster.
The Yankees are just behind the Astros at 47.1, followed among AL teams by the Blue Jays (43.3), Twins (!) (41.7), Rays (40.9), Mariners (40.5), and the Rangers (39.3). These will change as more free agents are signed and trades are made this offseason.
That .330 BABIP was third worst in the majors among starters who threw 130 innings or more.
15th. Wow, so it could have been worse.
Well, Cesar Salazar is projected for 0.0 major league WAR in 19 plate appearances too.
Great post as always. One thing that doesn't make sense with Steamer’s projection is centerfield. They have Chas McCormick at 1.8 WAR (-1.2 Defense) and Meyers with 1.0 WAR (2.0 Defense). They both seem underrated in defense — especially given the positional bonus in CF. In 2023, Jake had 1.8 fWAR and Chas had 1.7 fWAR *just as centerfielders*.
The pitching had career performances in 2022.
Both Maldonado and Castro caught that regular season and had the same team ERAs. Castro then got hurt and the Astros acquired Christian Vasquez going into the postseason. Their historical performances that season is why they won in 2022. Why did Javier pitch a combined no hitter with Vasquez in the WS, but not with Maldonado last postseason? Nothing that Maldonado could have done helped the staff. By playing him, it hurt the team more than anything else. They had a higher winning percentage with Diaz and were barely a .500 team with Maldonado. Other teams did not give Maldonado credit for his intangibles just based on the contract that he got with the White Sox. Compare it, for example, with the contract that Christian Vasquez got from the Twins ($30,000,000/3 years). There's no comparison. The only one who gave Maldonado the type of platform he had with the Astros is Dusty. No one else is going to do that.