After a Breakout Season, Cristian Javier Earned Himself a Nice Extension

Depending on what your expectations were for the 2022 postseason, you likely saw Cristian Javier as the third or fourth starter for the Astros entering October. Dusty Baker agreed, as Javier didn’t get a start until the ALCS against the Yankees. But Javier clearly had different plans. When given the chance, he was dominant: in 12.2 innings, he pitched to a 0.71 era; in his two starts, he gave up a single hit across 11.1 innings facing the imposing lineups of the Yankees and Phillies. That performance plus his 3.4 fWAR in 148.2 regular-season innings put him on the map as one of the league’s best young pitchers. And last week, the Astros rewarded him as such by handing him a five year, $64 million extension.

After Houston announced the hiring of long-time Braves scouting executive Dana Brown as the team’s new general manager, I wondered if he would bring along his former organization’s tendency to extend players into their would-be free-agent years. It didn’t take long for that idea to come to reality. Javier was set to enter his three arbitration years in his age 26–28 seasons; those years have been bought out with salaries escalating from $3 million in 2023 to $7 million in ’24 and $10 million in ’25. His age-29 and 30 seasons will come at the price of $21 million per year, with an opportunity to escalate it from $500,000 to $2 million per year if he finishes at or near the top of the Cy Young ballot.

Even with free-agent departure after free-agent departure, Houston’s rotation remained strong due to the development of Framber Valdez and now Javier. But with the departure of Justin Verlander, the rotation looked like it was finally hitting a point of potential vulnerability. Extending Javier, then, provides the Astros some semblance of certainty beyond 2025. And with their entire starting lineup other than Martín Maldonado locked up through at least ’25, they needed to invest in their rotation.

On the surface, you may look at Javier’s 3.4 fWAR and think he is only slightly above average; even at a 30-start rate, that equates to about four wins, which is great but not quite elite. But that isn’t completely representative of his potential. This was the first year where he was given a full opportunity as a starter, and down the stretch of the season, he was dominant: in his 70.1 innings in the second half, he limited batters to a .152 average against with a 1.79 ERA.

To understand better how Javier is so successful, I’ll turn to Michael Ajeto of Baseball Prospectus, who wrote a fantastic summary of him after Game 4 of the World Series. In the piece, Ajeto describes the performance as a perfect one-game representation of Javier’s skills and tendencies: “He basically took his fastball and dared the Phillies to hit it.”

This is Javier’s approach when he is at his best. Because of the pitch’s elite properties that play perfectly at the top half of the zone, he can spam his four-seamer without the worry that hitters will eventually get used to it. It’s as if the ball is coming out of a revved up pitching machine five and a half feet off the ground, and whether you know it’s coming or not doesn’t make hitting it any easier. The illusion of the pitch rising from an extremely low arm slot makes it difficult with for a hitter with a high attack angle to get their bat or barrel on the ball consistently, especially if the pitch is at the top of the zone. As Ajeto points out, this leads to a bunch of whiffs and batted balls with extremely high launch angles, like it did against the Phillies. If you can’t get on plane, all you can do is swipe the bottom quarter of the ball and give a fielder a can of corn fly ball. It’s a sustainable, sticky trait that Javier can always fall back on.

I have a lot of memories from the 2022 season, but some of those are more vivid than others. One was Javier’s contributions in the World Series for the Astros’ combined no-hitter. A second was his other combined no-hitter from earlier in the year, which I watched while on a trip to the Carolinas to visit my partner’s family. The Yankees were in a three-game series against the Astros, and my partner’s grandfather, a longtime Yankees fan most familiar with the Mickey Mantle era, wanted to watch the game that day. The matchup was Gerrit Cole versus Javier in Yankee Stadium. As the Astros’ starter toed the rubber in the first, he asked, “Who is Cristian Javier?”

It was a sweltering mid-June day game that was perfect for those two four-seamer dominant pitchers. It was also the first time that I really watched Javier pitch, and it was wildly impressive. He churned through the Yankees’ lineup in what appeared to be the most effortless six no-hit innings I’ve ever seen. He threw his four-seamer 79 times out of his 115 pitches that day; Yankees hitters posted a .047 xBA against it, almost identical to the .075 mark from his performance in the World Series. The game was only a prelude to the rest of Javier’s great season, and likely his career. After that no-hitter, his World Series gem, and this extension, I don’t think any baseball fan will need to ask, “Who is Cristian Javier?”