Houston Astros Have Contract Extension Candidate in Starting Rotation

One of the looming questions this season for the Houston Astros will be what to do with staff ace Framber Valdez.

He and the Astros avoided arbitration with a one-year contract this offseason. But the left-hander is due to hit free agency after the season and, lately, the Astros have had trouble hanging onto free agents.

Valdez, now 31 years old, may wish to test the market, especially if his 2025 goes like his 2022, when he went 17-6 with a 2.82 ERA, made the All-Star Game and finished fifth in American League Cy Young voting.

If Houston can’t extend him during the season or re-sign him after, the Astros do have another extension candidate within their rotation, one that might be easier to keep.

MLB.com identified 14 players that are worthy of contract extensions this season and it identified an Astros starting pitcher — Hunter Brown.

Brown had somewhat of a breakthrough last season, his second full year in the Majors. The right-hander went 11-9 with a 3.49 ERA in 170 innings, with 179 strikeouts and 60 walks. Notably, his ERA dropped by more than a point from 2023.

In his first full year in 2022 he, at times, seemed to press. Last season he looked far more comfortable in the rotation and rose to be the Astros’ third option in the rotation. He made his first postseason start against the Detroit Tigers in the AL Wild Card series.

MLB.com noted that the Astros have a history of working out extensions with pre-arbitration players. Brown isn’t eligible for arbitration until next offseason and can’t be a free agent until 2029.

He’s also represented by Wasserman, an agency that has a reputation for working with teams on extension like this on behalf of their clients, unlike Scott Boras, who prefers to take his clients to market.

The Astros selected Brown, a Detroit, Mich., native, in the fifth round of the 2019 MLB draft. Unlike many MLB prospects, he didn’t pitch in Division I baseball. He threw at Detroit-based Wayne State, a Division II school that plays in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Brown had a stellar three-year career there, as he was named an all-American, finished with the program record in winning percentage (.824 / 14-3) and second in strikeouts per nine innings (10.06).

He worked his way through the minor leagues and in 2022 he was named to the MLB Futures Game, the Pacific Coast League pitcher of the year and the Astros’ minor league pitcher of the year after he went 9-4 with 2.55 ERA in 23 games (14 starts) with 134 strikeouts and 45 walks for Triple-A Sugar Land.

He earned a promotion due to an injury to his childhood idol, Justin Verlander, and went 2-0 with a 0.89 ERA in seven games (two starts) with Houston in 2022. He followed that with a full season with the Astros in 2023, as he went 11-13 with a 5.09 ERA in 31 games (29 starts), with 178 strikeouts and 55 walks in 155.2 innings.

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