At some point in a 162-game season, almost everybody gets hot. A bench player strings together a few hits. A September call-up has a terrific week. Someone who hasn’t done much all year suddenly looks unstoppable for a few games.
The Astros have spent six months searching for outfield offense. And somehow, after all of the players they’ve tried, a FanGraphs search shared Sunday on Reddit produced a remarkable result: with the innings requirement removed, there still wasn’t an Astros outfielder in the search with a wRC+ above the league-average mark of 100.
There is one important exception to explain. Yordan Alvarez has played some left field this season and, obviously, has been far above league average at the plate. But FanGraphs categorizes him primarily as a designated hitter, so he does not appear among the outfielders in the original search. In a separate positional calculation shared in the same discussion, Alvarez was the only Astro above league average among 16 players who had taken at least one plate appearance while playing in the outfield.
The statistic is strange enough on its own, but the Astros’ season-long effort to fix the problem makes it considerably stranger.
The Astros Knew They Had a Problem
By early July, Houston was already shaking up an outfield that wasn’t producing enough. On July 4, the Astros optioned Opening Day center fielder Jake Meyers and Opening Day left fielder Joey Loperfido to Triple-A Sugar Land. LaMonte Wade Jr. returned from the injured list, and Zach Dezenzo was recalled.
At the time, Astros outfielders had combined for a .673 OPS, fourth-lowest in the majors. Manager Joe Espada said Houston was “trying to get some production” from the group.
Three days later, general manager Dana Brown made the problem even clearer. “I’ve said it multiple times, we need a left-handed bat, because we need more offense in the outfield,” Brown said.
The numbers had gotten slightly worse. Astros outfielders entered July 7 with a .670 OPS, tied for third-lowest in MLB. Houston had already started nine different players in left field and six in center. Brown called a left-handed bat the team’s “main need” approaching the trade deadline, and the search continued.
The Astros Finally Got Their Outfielder
By late July, Brown wasn’t even limiting the search to left-handed hitters. “We’ve been looking for a left-handed bat, but at this point we’ll take whatever production we can get in the outfield,” he said on July 26.
On Aug. 3, Houston finally made its biggest move to address the problem. The Astros acquired Daulton Varsho and cash from Toronto for Spencer Arrighetti. Varsho gave Houston the left-handed bat it had been seeking and a center fielder who won a Gold Glove in 2024.
That didn’t end the search for production. By Sept. 1, Houston had used 10 different starters in left field and eight in center. Cam Smith had provided considerably more stability in right, receiving the overwhelming majority of the starts there.
After all of that movement, Astros outfielders had a combined .660 OPS, ranking 29th among MLB’s 30 teams. The Astros hadn’t ignored the problem; they just hadn’t solved it.
The Warning Signs Were There in July
The outfield’s offensive problems weren’t a September development. FanGraphs included Houston’s center field among its “Replacement-Level Killers” in July. Through July 12, Astros center fielders had combined to hit .220/.280/.352 with a 76 wRC+ and 0.4 WAR. The assessment from FanGraphs was concise: “none of this has worked well.”
That was before the trade deadline, before Varsho, and before another month and a half of trying to coax more offense from the outfield. Which brings us back to the statistic that started this whole thing.
Nobody Even Accidentally Got Above Average
A wRC+ of 100 represents league-average offensive production. Anything above 100 is above average; anything below it is below average. Sunday’s search removed the innings requirement, and still, no Astros outfielder in those results finished above 100.
That is what makes the finding more interesting than another statistic telling us Houston’s outfield hasn’t hit. This wasn’t one bad month from three players who kept their jobs anyway.
The Astros sent their Opening Day left fielder and center fielder to Triple-A and tried different combinations. Their general manager publicly identified outfield offense as the team’s biggest deadline need. Weeks later, he was willing to take “whatever production” he could get, and Houston eventually traded for Varsho.
Yet the progression of the numbers barely moved: .673 OPS and fourth-lowest in MLB on July 4; .670 and tied for third-lowest three days later; .660 and 29th in the majors entering September.
There are plenty of ways to describe an outfield that struggled offensively for an entire season, but this might be the strangest: Take away the innings requirement, search the Astros’ outfield, and you still can’t find one above-average hitter in the results.
After six months of trying to fix it, that’s almost difficult to accomplish on purpose.
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