Today’s 12-3 loss to the White Sox ended the Astros’ five-game winning streak with a thud, but the win streak at least helped reverse some of the damage done by Houston’s 1-6 record in its previous seven games. The Astros remain under .500 at 52-55, but with a 32-24 mark over their last 56 contests.
With the Astros two games back of both the AL West lead and a wild card berth, GM Dana Brown reiterated again today on the Astros’ pregame radio show that “we would anticipate that we’re going to be buyers” at the trade deadline. “The division is wide open. The wild card is wide open. There’s some parity there. There’s a lot of teams bunched up. I think the team that gets hot is going to be the team that takes the run,” Brown said. (Hat tip to The Athletic’s Chandler Rome for the partial transcript of the interview.)
This has been Brown’s stance for close to two months now, even when things looked still looked a lot more dire for the Astros in the wake of their ugly 20-31 start. Brown has also been open about the team’s desire to add both outfield depth and left-handed hitting balance to a largely right-handed lineup, but Sunday’s comments included a desire for “whatever production we can get,” even if it’s another right-handed bat as an upgrade.
“We’re looking for some type of offensive bat that can play the outfield,” Brown said. “If it’s a left-handed bat, great, but any type of offensive upgrade that can help lengthen the lineup would be our focus.”
Any number of outfield candidates could be available if Houston expands its focus to right-handed bats as well, but sticking just to lefty swingers, the Astros are known to have already explored Rockies outfielders Mickey Moniak and Jake McCarthy. With the collapsing Blue Jays now looking like deadline sellers, Daulton Varsho or former Astro Jesus Sanchez are rental players who could on Houston’s radar.
How much financial flexibility Brown has in making deadline additions is an open question, as the assumption is that ownership would prefer to duck under the luxury tax threshold after two years of paying the tax. As per MLBTR’s Payroll Tracker, the Astros’ estimated tax number is roughly $235.6MM, providing only a bit of space under the $244MM threshold.
Houston already shaved $2.5MM off the books in the salary dump trade that sent Lance McCullers Jr. to the Brewers, with southpaw Colton Gordon added as a sweetener to convince Milwaukee to absorb a chunk of the $6.67MM remaining on McCullers’ deal. Rome speculates that the Astros might need to move money in order to properly address their deadline needs, and suggested that Cristian Javier or Christian Walker could be trade candidates in this context.
Javier is owed the remainder of his $21MM salary for 2026 plus another $21MM in 2027. Like McCullers, Javier’s last few seasons have been an injury-marred mess, so trading Javier would probably require Houston to eat most of the contract. Walker is owed the rest of his $20MM 2026 salary and $20MM more in 2027, but since the first baseman has been hitting decently well, the Astros might be able to get some kind of okay return while getting some more significant payroll savings. As Rome notes, however, moving Walker also creates another lineup hole that the Astros would need to address.
Perhaps due to salary alone, Walker might be the only somewhat major name the Astros would consider trading. Naturally the club isn’t moving any of its bigger names in the middle of a playoff push, as the Red Sox reportedly found out — 7 News’ Ari Alexander writes that the Sox “were shut down immediately” after inquiring about Jeremy Pena.
Since Pena is only under arbitration control through 2027, there was offseason speculation that he could be the player moved when the Astros were dealing with an infield surplus. Some of that trade buzz rose again when the Astros were off to their dreadful start, and seemed to be on the way to being deadline sellers. Of course, there is now no way Houston are moving a player who has been as hot as hitter in baseball over the last six weeks.
In other Astros news, Rome reports that Wake Forest University has offered a job to Astros offensive coordinator/director of hitting Dan Hennigan. There isn’t any word on whether or not Hennigan will accept, and the Astros are making efforts to retain Hennigan’s services.
Hennigan has been working in the director of hitting role for the last two seasons, and the addition of the offensive coordinator title made him an official member of the coaching staff. With Brown and manager Joe Espada both in the last year of their contracts, it isn’t surprising to see Hennigan (or perhaps other members of the organization) potentially looking to get ahead of a possible front office and dugout overhaul at season’s end, maybe whether or not Houston makes the playoffs.
