What Is the Astros "Offensive Identity" That They "Got Away From" in 2024?

The Astros have been a high-contact, low walk rate team in recent years. But they took that to new levels in 2024, and need to get back to better strike zone judgment in 2025.

In an end of the season press conference that focused heavily on potential offseason additions and subtractions, the most meaningful comments by manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown may have been about the players team likely to return for 2025.

Espada said, “At times, we kind of got away from our offensive identity, and we'll continue to preach and coach and teach…what has made us successful in years past.”

Brown followed up on Espada by saying “I think quality of at bats is what we are going to preach to the the guys. Get back to having quality at bats…And sometimes our guys got away from that.”

What did Espada and Brown mean by talking about the team’s “offensive identity” and "having quality at bats.” And how did the Astros “get away” from that in 2024?

The Golden Era Astros Offensive Identity

To get a sense of the Astros offensive identity over time, I made graphs for four measures of batting skill—Chase Rate, Swing Rate, Swinging Strike Rate, and Walk Rate—since 2016.

I chose to start in 2016 because the Astros changed their offensive approach in 2017, emphasizing striking out less and making more contact. They did this by improving the players on their roster—George Springer cut his strikeout rate by more than 5%—by getting better contact hitters (Yuli Gurriel and Alex Bregman entered 2017 with full time jobs) and acquiring better contact hitters (e.g. Nori Aoki).

You can see the improvement in 2017 especially in the team’s Swing Rate—down to below league average—and its Swinging Strike Rate—down 3.0% from 2016.

From 2017 to 2019, the Astros played ideal offensive ball—swinging more than the average club, but also whiffing less and walking more. There’s a reason those teams won so many games and scored so many runs.

Starting in 2020, the Astros walk rate declined to around league average across several seasons. In 2021, they swung less often than the average team, but that increased to about league average in 2022 and 2023. They still whiffed less often despite chasing more than average. The Astros were a high contact team—generating offense by making high levels of contact and having a high batting average.

In 2024, the Astros offensive identity didn’t really change. They remained a high contact, high batting average team. Their batting average was 3rd in the majors and their strikeout rate was 2nd lowest.

But they became an even more extreme version of a high swing rate team. They swung at 2.0% more pitches than they did in 2023. To do that, they chased more—over 1/3 of all their swings in 2024 were on pitches outside of the strike zone. These swing decisions produced worse swing outcomes. The Astros whiffed on 10.8% of their swings—their worst since 2016.

The results were worse in 2024 as well. They only hit 190 home runs (10th best in the majors), down from 221 in 2021, 214 in 2022, and 222 in 2023. Their walk rate dropped even more precipitously. It was 27th best in the majors in 2024, after being 11th 11th in 2021, 8th in 2022, and 15th in 2023.

A Nearly Team-Wide Issue

I’ve looked at team wide numbers, but that leads to the question of which players are causing the team’s big spikes in swinging and chasing pitches. And the answer to that—provided in the bar charts below—is just about all of them.

The bars compare the chase, swing, walk, and swinging strike rates for 8 of the team’s regulars in both 2023 (blue) and 2024 (orange). And they show that on all of these measures, just about every player moved in the wrong direction.

Well, it’s not every player. Kyle Tucker had clear improvements—swinging and chasing less and walking more. Yainer Diaz has more modest improvements—though Yainer’s swing and chase rates are so high that they almost couldn’t get higher.

But among the other six on the chart, there are clear changes, especially in swing and chase rates. For example, Jose Altuve chased 7% more pitches in 2024 and swung at 6% more. He also swing and missed more often—on 10% of his swings in 2024. As a result, his walk rate declined 4%.

The pattern from Altuve is similar to lots of other Astros regulars. Yordan Alvarez swung at 4% more pitches in 2024; Jeremy Pena chased 3% more often when he swung. Chas McCormick whiffed on 3% more pitches and Alex Bregman walked 6% less often.

Not every player moved in the bad direction on every metric, but overall, most did. And that leads to a clear conclusion—whatever prompted the Astros to alter their “offensive identity” in 2024 was clearly a team wide issue. It was not caused by the slump of one or two players, but a larger issue that affected just about every player on the team.

The responsibility for improving the Astros swing decisions will fall to long-time hitting coaches Alex Cintron (L) and Troy Snitker (R).

How to Fix the Issue

The numbers I marshalled here support the idea that the Astros need to address their aggression at the plate. They swung more often in 2024 than they had in previous seasons and it lead to less contact. In short, Espada and Brown are correct in their diagnosis of one of the team’s problems.

The more difficult question becomes what to do about it. One possibility is to acquire players with more patience at the plate—those who are less likely to chase pitches out of the strike zone and thus swing less often.

Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle suggests LaMonte Wade of the Giants—he “posted a .380 on-base percentage this past season with a 20.2% chase rate and a 15.5% walk rate that ranked fourth-highest among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances”—as a potential trade target.

Kawahara also notes the potential for the Astros to add a left handed free agent outfielder with more patience—Michael Conforto, Alex Verdugo, Max Kepler, and David Peralta are the suggestions. Kawahara quotes Brown from the general managers meeting as noting that acquiring a left-handed hitter who “sees a lot of pitches” as “a priority for us.”

But the effect of adding one player one a team’s offensive profile is small. And if the Astros lose Alex Bregman in free agency, it will take away the team’s most patient hitter. The overall effect of an addition of Wade and a subtraction of Bregman would be neutral at best.

Regardless of what personnel moves the Astros front office makes, the need for improvement in strike zone judgment will rest on the Astros coaching staff. They will need to get the returning players to well, return to what they have done in previous years.

How can the coaching staff go about doing that? That unfortunately is beyond my baseball knowledge—my hitting abilities peaked in t-ball, and my analytics knowledge is primarily based on what the number say, not how to make them better.

What I can comment on is that the Astros will entrust the same coaching staff to fix the problem that was in place while the problem developed. The Astros will have Alex Cintron and Troy Snitker as their hitting coaches again in the 2025. These two have shared this role since the 2019 season.

Broadly, the choice to retain Cintron and Snitker reflects how the team has handled its coaching staff over the Golden Era. The team has emphasized stability—Cintron and Snitker have now served in the same role for 3 different manager—and internal development—both Cintron and Snitker have worked their way up in the Astros system to earn promotions to their current positions.

Is stability a good thing? Obviously, there is no single answer to that question. Like all things, it has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is of course that Cintron and Snitker know the swings of the Astros hitters better than anybody, and know what adjustments have worked and have not worked in the past. They also know what they tried in 2024 that did not work.

Internal improvement is the only way that the Astros will get back to their “offensive identity” in 2025. The question is are Alex Cintron and Troy Snitker up to the task?