While the 2026 Houston Astros navigate one of the most difficult stretches in recent franchise history, a handful of players who wore the orange and blue not long ago are thriving elsewhere. Some left by choice. Some were traded. One was dealt for a reliever and a catching prospect who both became key contributors and then went on to have the best season of his career anyway.
But it is worth noting where those players ended up.
Mauricio Dubón, Atlanta Braves
Dubón was a fan favorite in Houston: a versatile, high-energy utility player whose defense was legitimately special and whose bat was, to put it charitably, a work in progress. The Astros declined to bring him back after 2024. Atlanta later acquired him in a trade for shortstop Nick Allen.
Dubón grew up in Honduras watching the Braves on TBS—the only baseball regularly available to him. “Everybody grew up a Braves fan in Honduras,” he said after the trade was announced. “My brother’s a Braves fan. When the trade happened, there was a lot of emotion back home.” Early in spring training, he sat down with Chipper Jones, his childhood idol. “There’s no coincidence that he came here, talked to me a little bit and I got three hits after it,” Dubón said. “Listening to him talk and picking his brain, he’s just able to simplify stuff and make it make sense. It’s just different when a guy like that talks.”
He hit .313/.360/.475 in his first 22 games as a Brave, driving in 14 runs while filling holes all over the diamond as injuries mounted around him. He has covered shortstop while Ha-Seong Kim recovered, shifted to the outfield as Michael Harris II’s quad and Ronald Acuña Jr.’s hamstring flared up, and posted a 108 wRC+ on the season. The bat was always the question. In Atlanta, it has answered.
Jesús Sánchez, Toronto Blue Jays
The Astros traded Sánchez to Toronto in February in exchange for Joey Loperfido. His half-season in Houston had been rough: a .199/.269/.342 line in 160 plate appearances after hitting .253/.319/.428 over nearly 1,300 plate appearances with Miami. The Astros kept him anyway, agreed to a $6.8 million deal for 2026, then moved him when the Loperfido opportunity arose.
The Blue Jays knew what they were getting, and they also knew what they wanted to change. Hitting coach David Popkins was direct about the diagnosis. “He went over to Houston, and they had some ideas for him to change some things and I think they didn’t quite resonate with his personality and who he is as a hitter,” Popkins told MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson. “It kind of went more towards weakness prevention than his strengths, so we’re shifting him back more towards, ‘We want you to do what you do well.'”
Through his first 20 games as a Blue Jay, Sánchez was slashing .261/.315/.400 with five extra-base hits and 11 RBI—solid, consistent production from a player who looked lost in Houston. The power is real. Toronto is letting him use it.
Phil Maton, Chicago Cubs
Maton left Houston after 2023, bounced through Tampa Bay and the Mets in 2024, then put together the best season of his career in 2025 split between the Cardinals and Texas Rangers: a 2.79 ERA across 61⅓ innings, with a curveball spin rate that led all of Major League Baseball and contact-quality numbers in the 99th percentile. Hitters were making the weakest possible contact against him. The Cubs signed him to a two-year, $14.5 million deal this offseason. He is currently on the injured list with a velocity concern, but the 2025 season was the real thing.
Myles Straw, Toronto Blue Jays
Straw is the player the Astros traded to get Maton and Yainer Díaz. After spending parts of four seasons in Cleveland and appearing in just seven games in 2024, he landed in Toronto and quietly had the second-best season of his career.
He slashed .262/.313/.367 with four home runs, 12 stolen bases, and a 91 wRC+—above his career average—while posting elite defensive numbers in center field. His 15 Defensive Runs Saved ranked among the best in the majors despite playing fewer innings than nearly every outfielder above him. His 2.9 bWAR was his second-best single-season mark. The Blue Jays’ beat writers were genuinely surprised. So, probably, was Straw.
The Astros made the right call trading him—Díaz became one of the better offensive catchers in the American League, and Maton contributed to a World Series run. But Straw landed on his feet too, which is the kind of thing that happens when a player finally gets consistent playing time and a team that believes in him.
The Astros’ current struggles are primarily a product of injuries and pitching chaos, not personnel mistakes. These moves, by and large, made sense when they were made.
The players who left are doing fine. It is the ones who stayed who are struggling.
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