Astros Starting Pitching Has Covered Up Offensive Flaws This Season

The Houston Astros' starting pitching has carried the team to begin the year.

Nick Ziegler | Apr 4, 2025

Apr 2, 2025; Houston, Texas, USA; Houston Astros starting pitcher Framber Valdez (59) delivers a pitch against the San Francisco Giants during the first inning at Daikin Park. / Erik Williams-Imagn Images

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Houston Astros

With the season off to a bit of a concerning start for the Houston Astros, there have at least been some positive takeaways early on.

Coming into the campaign, there was understandably a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Astros.

This winter, the team saw a massive roster overhaul, with key players departing and some new faces coming in.

Most of the turnover occurred in their lineup. Houston elected to trade Kyle Tucker to the Chicago Cubs and Alex Bregman left for the Boston Red Sox in free agency.

With two All-Star caliber players leaving, replacing that production on offense was always going to be challenging. However, the Astros did still have some key batters on the team and the new additions have some upside as well.

Due to the changes and the slow start on offense, there is understandable reason to be concerned about the state of the lineup. This unit hasn’t performed well with multiple key players under the Mendoza line early on.

However, what should be encouraging is that they are just one game under .500 despite the offense being very poor. Things will turn around for the lineup, especially for a player like Yordan Alvarez.

Thankfully, even though the batting order is struggling, the starting rotation has been living up to expectations.

As expected, the rotation is being led by Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez. Both of these pitchers were highly talked about coming into the season as potential Cy Young candidates in the American League, and they are doing well so far.

Spencer Arrighetti is another one of the arms that people have their eyes on for a potential breakout season. Like Brown, he was superb in the second half of the year and is off to a nice start.

While the back end of the rotation didn’t do great in their first start, Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski have been good as well.

Although Houston's offense has been pretty bad so far, it will certainly improve after a slow first week of the year.

If the lineup can catch up and support what appears to be a very good starting rotation, the Astros should overcome their slow start and climb back up in the standings.

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