WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Lance McCullers Jr. has spent much of his professional life fighting. Fighting opposing hitters. Fighting his own body. Fighting the clock on a career that has spent as much time in training rooms as it has on pitching mounds.
For a long stretch, it sometimes seemed the fighting itself had become the problem.
Not anymore.
“I think I just need to let go and stop trying to control everything, stop trying to micromanage everything,” McCullers said recently.
In the same breath, with the clarity that comes from hard-earned experience, he addressed the uncertainty surrounding his future with the Astros. This season marks the final year of the five-year, $85 million extension he signed before the 2022 campaign.
“I have no reservations about my future in baseball,” McCullers said. “If the future for me is to be home with my wife and two kids, I’ll be happy with that. I’ll be content with that. But if the future for me is to be in this game, if I can be healthy and help a team win, I’ll be happy with that, too.”
For a pitcher who debuted as a 21-year-old in 2015 and quickly became one of the faces of the Astros’ championship era, that kind of acceptance might once have sounded like resignation. Right now it looks more like wisdom.
A Simpler Focus on the Mound
In his second spring start Tuesday against Baltimore, McCullers threw three innings, allowing two runs on a solo home run while striking out four and walking one.
But afterward, he wasn’t talking about the strikeouts or the runs allowed. What stood out to him was something much simpler: nine first-pitch strikes in 13 batters faced.
“I’ve spent 10, 11 years chasing strikeouts and I think it can get you in bad spots,” McCullers said. “I really just want to be in the box, in the zone early, force the contact.”
That shift represents a meaningful philosophical change for a pitcher whose curveball helped him average better than a strikeout per inning during his best seasons.
“I think in the past it’s been, ‘Let’s wait this guy out,'” he said. “But now with the way my body’s moving, and the way I’m commanding the two-seam and the four-seam and the cutter, I feel like I can be in the box a lot more with a lot more confidence.”
The strikeouts, he believes, will come naturally.
They’re simply no longer the focus.
Rebuilding the Arsenal
McCullers has earned the right to rethink his approach.
Over the four seasons following his 2021 career-high of 162.1 innings, he made just 21 starts. Injuries piled up—forearm, foot, finger, and hand—disrupting what once looked like the trajectory of a frontline starter.
Last season was particularly difficult. McCullers posted a 6.51 ERA, the highest of his career, while walking 6.3 batters per nine innings. His sinker, once a key weapon, was hit hard, with opponents batting .333 against it.
So this spring has been about rebuilding.
Part of that process includes recommitting to his four-seam fastball, a pitch he had largely abandoned in recent years. McCullers used the pitch just 5.6% of the time last season, a sharp drop from the 25% usage rate it carried during his 2017 All-Star campaign.
Against Baltimore, the four-seamer reached 94.8 mph, his highest velocity in a big-league game since 2022. More importantly, he trusted it in a key moment, throwing it on a 3–2 count.
“I felt confident to rip a 3-2 four-seam,” McCullers said. “Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but for me that’s a big step forward.”
Espada Wants Aggression
Astros manager Joe Espada liked the velocity and the pitch mix.
What he liked even more was the mindset.
“When he is in the zone, his stuff is really good enough,” Espada said. “It’s when he gives up a hit or something worse happens out there for him to run away. No—continue to be aggressive.”
Espada believes McCullers doesn’t need to be perfect to succeed.
“We have a really good defense behind you,” Espada said. “You have a really good offense that’s going to score runs for you.”
Pitching With Nothing to Lose
Aggression and acceptance might sound like opposites. For McCullers this spring, they’ve become complementary.
He is pitching like someone who has let go of the need to control every outcome.
And in doing so, he may have rediscovered something that had been slipping away: freedom on the mound.
McCullers and Jose Altuve are the only two players remaining from both of Houston’s championship teams. Whatever role awaits him—a rotation spot, a bullpen transition, or simply another season contributing to a contender—McCullers appears genuinely at peace with the uncertainty.
For a pitcher whose career has been defined as much by perseverance as by talent, that peace might be exactly what allows him to move forward.