Astro for Life: Altuve Signs Five-Year Extension
“Jose Altuve will be an Astro for life,” read the club’s announcement on Tuesday afternoon. Under different circumstances, that could be construed as a threat. But Altuve will be well-remunerated for the remainder of his time in Houston: His new contract extension will run for five years, starting in 2025, and pay him a guaranteed $125 million.
This is the third long-term contract Altuve has signed with the Astros, the club that signed him as a 16-year-old out of Venezuela all the way back in 2007. By the time it’s over, he will have spent some 23 seasons in the organization, 19 of them in the major leagues. The phrasing of the announcement is a little more concrete than any prediction about 2029 ought to be. It’s possible that Altuve will continue playing once his deal expires. But when it does, he’ll be seven months short of his 40th birthday. That seems like as good a time as any to plan on wrapping things up.
A month ago, I noted with astonishment that 2024 was a contract year for both Altuve and Alex Bregman. Losing both would be a jarring shift in identity for the Astros — Altuve in particular. He’s been with the club so long he was an everyday player back when the Astros wore brick red and pinstripes and played in the National League.
Altuve is already third in franchise history in WAR, pitchers and position players included. He’s fifth in home runs, third in runs, third in stolen bases, third in hits, and fourth in games played. For all the categories in which he ranks third, he trails, in some order, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio. He’s in the process of leapfrogging the likes of Lance Berkman, Jimmy Wynn, Roy Oswalt, and Jose Cruz in the others.
All of this is to say that Altuve is the kind of player whose contract doesn’t lend itself to easy critique. The Astros aren’t bidding for his services against other clubs, because he’s worth more to them — and vice-versa — than any other team in the league.
Houston is going to retire Altuve’s number. Based on numbers and accolades, Altuve is on track to make the Hall of Fame. It remains to be seen if the BBWAA voters keep him out for his role in the sign-stealing scandal, and if so, whether that public outrage subsides in time to get him in through a subsequent select committee. Early returns on Carlos Beltrán suggest that Altuve will pay some price, but with another decade to process those events, and Beltrán to soak up most of the opprobrium as the first man over the top, maybe it won’t be enough to keep him out.
Altuve crossed the 2,000-hit threshold last season, and it does not seem like he’s anywhere close to done compiling. In 2020, amid the shortened season, the pandemic, and the peak of public criticism after the banging scheme was revealed, Altuve hit just .219/.286/.344 in 48 games, and suffered a bout of defensive yips in the playoffs. But he’s since rebounded.
He hit 31 home runs and was worth 5.3 WAR in 2021, despite posting only a 128 wRC+, which pails in comparison to his offensive production over the next two seasons. In 2022, he hit .300/.387/.533, a 164 wRC+, which was a hair higher than his MVP campaign of 2017. Last year, he broke his thumb at the World Baseball Classic, then went back on the IL in July with a strained oblique. Those injuries limited him to 90 games, but in those 90 games Altuve was as good as ever: .311/.393/.522, for a 154 wRC+ and 4.0 WAR. More than that, Altuve has evolved after his horrendous 2020 campaign, trading a bit of that preternatural contact ability for more thump as he heads into his mid-30s.
All of which is to say that he’s still a great player, and should remain so for a little while. But the track record for handing out $25 million-a-year extensions that start in a player’s age-35 season — insofar as such a track record exists — is not good.
I’ve delayed getting into the details of Altuve’s contract, and how he figures to perform on this final Astros deal, because this is the rare long-term contract that isn’t really about performance. It’s a victory lap for one of the most important players in franchise history, a rare bit of sentimentality from one of the most ruthlessly unsentimental organizations in the sport.
Altuve’s contract breaks down as follows: A $15 million signing bonus, followed by a $30 million annual salary from 2025 to 2027, and a $10 million annual salary in the final two seasons of the deal.
The deal being frontloaded doesn’t matter in terms of the competitive balance tax, but it does speak to the likelihood that Altuve will probably start to decline pretty severely by the time 2029 rolls around. Don’t take my word for it: Here’s what ZiPS has to say on the issue.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | .277 | .352 | .467 | 469 | 86 | 130 | 27 | 1 | 20 | 67 | 50 | 82 | 10 | 126 | -3 | 3.4 |
| 2025 | .268 | .343 | .442 | 441 | 78 | 118 | 24 | 1 | 17 | 59 | 47 | 79 | 8 | 117 | -3 | 2.6 |
| 2026 | .264 | .339 | .428 | 402 | 68 | 106 | 22 | 1 | 14 | 50 | 42 | 75 | 6 | 112 | -4 | 1.9 |
| 2027 | .256 | .330 | .406 | 360 | 58 | 92 | 19 | 1 | 11 | 42 | 37 | 70 | 5 | 104 | -5 | 1.2 |
| 2028 | .244 | .320 | .375 | 299 | 46 | 73 | 15 | 0 | 8 | 33 | 31 | 61 | 4 | 93 | -5 | 0.5 |
| 2029 | .237 | .311 | .355 | 211 | 31 | 50 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 21 | 21 | 45 | 2 | 86 | -4 | 0.1 |
If Altuve stays healthy, the outlook is more optimistic. But while he has generally been pretty durable, and the late start to 2023 was a one-off impact injury, we’d expect those nagging aches and pains to start to add up over the next six seasons.
But the Astros aren’t really concerned with the next six seasons, and nor should they be. They’re on an unprecedented run of seven straight ALCS appearances, which includes four pennants and two World Series. Altuve will be a foundational piece of the bid for an eighth consecutive trip to the ALCS. If he’s healthy, he will almost certainly remain integral to Houston’s lineup in 2025 and probably 2026 as well.
After that? Honestly, who cares? Particularly when you consider that Altuve’s first long-term contract with the Astros, which ran from 2014 to 2017 and influenced the first two seasons of the seven-year contract that’s about to expire, was one of the biggest underpays of its era. When Altuve was AL MVP in 2017, he made just $4.5 million. In the ensuing two seasons put together, he made $12.5 million. The Astros owe him.
And even now, $25 million a year isn’t what it used to be. In 2024, that would be the 31st-highest contract AAV in baseball. Once Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, and Jordan Montgomery sign, it might get knocked down a couple more rungs. By 2029, there’ll be a new CBA in force, and in all likelihood the competitive balance tax threshold will go up once more.
Keeping Altuve in the lineup in the short term obviously helps the Astros in the short term. In the long term, this extension ends the uncertainty surrounding the future of a franchise legend, indicates a positive and competitive trajectory for the ballclub, and all but eliminates the possibility of Altuve ending his career with one of those awkward Ichiro-on-the-Yankees experiences. It’s not ruthlessly efficient, but it’s right.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
I hate Altuve for his role in the trash banging, but I 100% love this deal for him and the Astros. Great for the player, team, and fans.
You hate that he told the team he wanted nothing to do with the scheme?
Shhhh, narrative!
I’d ask to imagine how truly shitty Cora and, especially, Hinch are as coaches, leaders, and men…but we don’t really have to:
Their teams’ performance without cheating speaks for itself.
LOL
Not sure why the commenters on this site carry so much water for Altuve. He’s their best player and he just let everyone cheat. If he said hey this isn’t cool, we need to stop – they would’ve stopped. He was complicit by association and also benefitted from extra traffic on the bases, tired pitchers, etc. He is definitely not innocent.
True to some extent but if that’s the standard then the majority of ballplayers are guilty.
Do you judge Mookie and Judge for not stopping their team’s cheating?
How many other teams were doing similar shenanigans? You really think it was just HOU, BOS, and NYY?
What about all the sticky substances used by pitchers throughout MLB history?
The steroid era?
These are the most competitive athletes on the planet. If they know that other players and teams are gaining an edge unethically and getting away with it… What do you expect to happen?
That’s why MLB has to diligently enforce the rules. If they allow an environment of cheating then you will get lots of it. Too much money and pride at stake to expect players to handicap themselves with an honor code that the league itself is not enforcing
I thought MLB enforced the rules on electronic sign stealing rather well. They didn’t let it go on for too long before issuing an official warning, then whenever they had proof, they brought down the hammer.
As for sticky substances, that’s always been an ongoing battle ever since they were first banned that umpires have done their best to enforce without causing too many disruptions to the games.
They let it go on for long enough that the majority of MLB teams were suspicious of one another and all 3 of the teams that got caught(BOS, HOU, NYY) were at the top of the AL during that timeframe. If the big boys are doing it do you think the others weren’t?
It’s not like those 3 teams had fancy expensive schemes. They were crude, cheap and replicable. Even the cheapskates who run the A’s could justify the expense if they were tempted to go that route(who knows if they did).
They caught BOS and NYY red-handed and doled out weak ineffective punishments and promised a harsher response to future offenders and spent the next 2 seasons doing nothing but issuing empty threats.
They eventually hammered the Astros because their earlier punishments were impotent and their threats were being ignored, at least by some(how many, who knows?).
I’ll give the league credit for eventually implementing pitch comm but I can’t give them a passing grade from where I stand
That was how they became big boys! The little guys weren’t and lost accordingly l.
How do you explain the Astros continued dominance?
Or the strong playoff seasons that the Yankees put up in 21 and 22?
The Red Sox fell off but even they had a good 21 without Mookie and made the ALCS.
Far more likely they became the big boys of the era by… Consistently putting a top team on the field and not getting too unlucky with injuries
You’re comparing apples to oranges. The Astros cheating was way worse than any other cheating in the history of baseball. If the Yankees did this you’d be furious. But you’re okay with it because you’re an Astros fan lol. Be serious.
That’s some claim you make considering we’ll never know the entire history of cheating in MLB history. We only know about what was uncovered publicly.
We don’t even have all the details on the sign stealing era. MLB investigated itself and had total control of the entire process and you’re saying I need to “get serious” and trust the results of an obviously limited and self-serving “investigation”…
On top of that your knowledge is so supreme that you claim to know how I would react if the Yankees had done this.
Hate to burst your bubble but I didn’t give a hoot when BOS and NYY got busted 2 years before the Astros because I accepted human nature long ago and am not surprised when people try and gain an edge unethically. In fact I’ve come to expect it in environments that are not effectively policed.
That’s why I always stress that it is the job of MLB to police and enforce the rules
Beltran will/should soak up most of the opprobrium not because he’s the first man over the top, but because he was the person that came up with, led, and implemented the trash can banging scheme. It’s really not that hard to distinguish between Beltran and anyone else on the 2017 Astros on that ground.
It’s not like he went out of his way to stop it though, and regardless of whether Beltran was the grisly veteran “clubhouse leader” or not, Altuve was already pretty entrenched with the franchise as its face, so he at least had some influence he could’ve used.
It’s true, everyone who was still employed by the Astros said Beltran (who no longer worked for the Astros) was the guy who did it all and who am I to question the always upstanding gentlemen in that org
We also know that Jim Crane had absolutely NOTHING to do with the cheating scheme that involved material alterations to his property, including after Beltran left.
Beltran traded for Osuna, too!!!!!!
Give me a break. MLB had a cheating problem that it did nothing to address for years and then they scapegoated the Astros to save face and make an example of to try and deter the rest of the cheaters.
MLB didn’t adopt pitch comm league wide because of one bad apple.
Altuve has taken the blame for the failure of the commissioner/MLB. It’s absurd that he’s spent the last several years as a villain and been mercilessly booed and heckled for something he didn’t participate in
Whoever said it was going on for years?! As far as we know, it didn’t become a problem outside of isolated incidents until that 2017 season or the year before.
The Astros and the Red Sox weren’t scapegoated. They were simply the teams that actually got caught. It also worked very well to deter the rest of the cheaters.
“As far as we know”
The tech to implement these type of schemes has been cheaply accessable long before 2016-2017. And human nature hasn’t changed.
I think the scale and duration of the sign stealing era has been minimized for obvious PR reasons. MLB has no financial incentive to give the fans full disclosure.
Much better to “clear” the rest of the league and blame a scapegoat or 2 and then market the scapegoats as villains in an otherwise fair and just league.
Notice how you don’t include NYY in your comments and we haven’t discussed the numerous allegations against LAD… I’m sure the league likes it that way.
“Isolated incidents”
If these incidents were never uncovered, how long were they in operation?
YA DOOD!!!!!
It was BELTRÁN who made Alex Cora come up with the idea to put a TV in the Astros’ dugout!!!
More to the point:
We should also be impressed that managed to simultaneously be the ONLY REASON Hinch’s team kept fucking cheating in 2018…and not only FORCED the Red Sox to hire Alex Cora, but forced Cora to convince that Red Sox team to start fucking cheating even more aggressively than they had before the Manfred letter written in response to the Red Sox being caught fucking cheating.
The true proof of Beltran’s evil is that Torre told every manager before the 2018 season that what Cora and Hinch had done the year before was 100% fucking cheating…and Cora and Hinch kept doing it in Beltran’s absence.
Honestly it’s kind of perfect that Joe Torre was the guy delivering that message.
The guy who managed the steroid era Yankees dynasty with rosters full of roided-up players telling the current crop of managers to quit cheating during the sign-stealing era… Lol!
Sure, Cora/Beltran, Beltran/Cora. No one disputes they were the ringleaders. But Cora’s (non-existent) HOF case wasn’t mentioned in this article and isn’t really relevant.
I’m not saying Beltran deserves all the blame, or that Altuve/Bregman/Springer deserve none of the blame, but if there’s a player who should logically be singled out for his involvement in the sign-stealing scandal, it’s Beltran. I don’t think there’s any reasonable debate on this.
What we know:
Beltran told the team what everyone else was cracking signs in the video replay room.
Cora had the great idea to install a TV monitor in the dugout so they could do it all time.
Hinch not only kept the video monitor in the dugout after Manfred’s “I know there’s been a gray area to this point, but now we’re officially saying this is cheating” letter (which was not sent to players)…but after Cora left the team.
Bravo to the Astros for actually front-loading this extension. Normally, I’d hate any long-term deal that lasts until the player is 39, but here it mostly works.
Your comment makes intuitive sense, but I think the sentiment is misleading. A team should always prefer to backload the extension over front-loading it, even if it means that the pay does not align with the production. It’s all about time value of money.
To use this contract as an example, the Astros would be strictly better off paying $10M the first two years and $30M the final three rather than the current structure, because they could take the extra $20M per year in the first two years, invest that money, earn interest for four years, and use the principle in years 4 and 5. If they did so, they would tie up money at the same times as this contract, but the interest would represent free money to them compared to the actual contract.
The interest isn’t peanuts either – at current Treasury rates of ~5%, that’s $8M saved ($1M per year for 4 years on both $20M deferred). You can go get a solid bench bat for that, all based off contract structure.
If it was about financial sense ît wouldn’t be a 5 yr extension
Probably doesn’t matter, but by having a much lower salary at the end, Astros are removing money as an incentive for Altuve not to retire. Reverse the payout and the incentives become misaligned
No, the value of the yearly payroll matters A LOT more than the time value of the money. It’s easily worth losing that extra couple million or so in overall value to inflation to ensure that the team has enough money to spend elsewhere on the roster when Altuve’s production will likely be much lower in 2028 and 2029.
There would also be no investment in a backloaded deal when there’s no deferred money involved! The extra money from the earlier years would just be reallocated elsewhere on the roster. Do you really think teams just set aside some money during years when they get excess value from their roster compared to the payroll and save or invest it for years when they have more albatross contracts on the books? Absolutely not! That’s not how annual payrolls work.
This isn’t an absolute yes or no answer, it comes down to maximizing winning windows or sustaining success. As you said if they back loaded the contract they would have more money to re-invest in the current roster. Are the Astros in win now mode or do the Astros believe they can be competitive with an older Altuve?
However the Astros situation is a bit more unique since they are dancing around the luxury tax threshold. Being “cap” space taken up by Altuve is averaged out for the length of his contract the structure of this contract makes a lot of sense. The Astros know they can’t spend more this off-season without aggressively exceeding the luxury tax threshold, so why not front load the contract to give relief in future years. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Astros and Altuve already knew the overall sum of the contract going into the off-season and just waited till the end of the off season to structure it. Because if the Astros decided to go all in and blow the luxury tax threshold out of the water, back loading Altuve’s contract make more sense since luxury tax penalties are more daunting than inflation.
We’ve got an unusually high number of one-team players likely headed for the Hall of Fame in recent and near-future years. Helton and Mauer just got in. Posey and Molina will likely join them before long. Felix Hernandez will get strong consideration. Kershaw is still on track. We’ll see if Votto actually changes teams this offseason. Now we’ve got Altuve likely to do it, as well.
Good for them!
A little further behind but Jose Ramirez, Aaron Judge, and Mike Trout could join the list as well.
Let’s hope Trout does not. He deserves better
It’s nice when you see a contract and everyone can just agree it’s good. Good for the Astros, good for Altuve, good for the game. Probably a slight (maybe ~10-20%) overpay by the Astros by strict on-field value, but definitely worth it to keep him in an Astro jersey for his career. It doesn’t always work out for the team and/or player, but here there was no reason for it not to.
I feel like this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think this is a terrible move by the Astros. It’s a huge overpay based on the ZiPS projections – $125M for a total of 6.3 WAR, or $19M per WAR. I’m sure the Astros expect him to produce more than ZiPS, but more importantly, I would think they could have made this same move in a year’s time. I don’t think they got any significant discount for acting early, and they take on additional risk by guaranteeing the money now before watching his age 34 season play out.
Sure, the Astros are a big-market team with a high payroll, but at the end of the day, all teams (except maybe the Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees) are resource-constrained. It’s easy to yadda yadda over this part as Baumann does (“After that? Honestly, who cares?”), but the front office should care! These are resources that could potentially go towards extending guys like Tucker. It’s easy to say ownership should just spend more, but A) they usually won’t and B) even if they do, at the end of the day, they will eventually hit a limit (see: Padres).
I agree that it’s nice to see a player stay with the same team for his whole career, and I would even agree it’s fair to pay a premium for the extra value fans and the team get from that. This just feels like too much of a premium, or at least guaranteed too early.
Solid reasoning but I disagree.
Altuve isn’t comparable to Springer, Correa, Cole, Bregman, or Tucker. Altuve is Astros royalty like Bagwell and Biggio. You don’t play hardball with him and make him play this year under unnecessary uncertainty
Absolutely. As a fan, he means more than just the numbers. He is the face of this era of Astros baseball (highs and lows). Keeping him home was the priority, and if he’s healthy and relatively productive, it might only be an “overpay” for a year or two before those last two reduced years. At the end of the day, as business-like as baseball has become, and lord knows the Astros had their part to play in shaping that culture, it’s still entertainment. I love winning, but I’d rather lose 100 games again than see him wear another team’s uniform.
Exactly. I plan on buying an Altuve jersey from the team store this season to show my support of his extension
I agree Kev08. I was shocked they gave him that much and for that long. I took a quick look and most HOF level 2B (Alomar, Biggio, Sandberg, Morgan, Utley) took a huge step backwards around age 33-35. Maybe Altuve can be the exception but the odds are against him.
Crane’s already destroyed Altuve’s reputation and legacy.
The least he could do was pay him.
Altuve’s reputation and legacy have been assymetrically altered IMO. Some will forever hold the banging scheme against him. He’s not blameless regardless of how active a participant he was.
However I can’t help but respect him more for how he has not only played since then, but how he has conducted himself. This fall from grace could have ruined him and instead he seems to have overcome it with humility and hard work while not making any excuses publicly.
Who doesn’t love a good redemption story?
Who cares if it’s an overpay. People complain because clubs aren’t loyal to players. People then complain players aren’t loyal to clubs. They found him as a teenager and underpaid him for years, if they are overpaying now maybe they wanted to do right for him. I remember when Salvador Perez signed his extension and espns fantasy duo, whoever they are, complained about the overpay, I never listened to those jokers again. Geez, I thought I was a jaded, cynical person. He’s the size of Spud Webb and is a multi time all star, mvp and World Series champ and now likely an Astros Lifer and HoFer. I bet there’s plenty of Rays, Brewers or Mariners fans that would take that from any one of their young stars, but all they can do is hope.
I think the evidence regarding Beltran is too mixed to suggest Altuve will pay a price for the scandal.
First, Beltran was painted as a leader of the cheating. Altuve was not.
Second, Beltran already had a massive jump in his hall of fame support, considering what happened around him. This year’s crowded ballot knocked most players down, but Beltran had a 10% jump and easily garnered majority support.
Third, while Altuve would finish his career with about 6 fewer WAR based on these projections (more by rWAR), Altuve has (or should have) the clear cut accomplishments that more likely lead to quick or immediate induction, playing his whole career for one team, the MVP award, .300 career average, and perhaps most importantly, 3000 hits.
I think Beltran’s vote total next year will tell us a lot. If he bumps up again, it will seem likely that he’s on his way to induction. And if Beltran is in the hall of fame, it’s very hard to see Altuve having trouble. Could he get the one-year penalty so he’s not first ballot? That honestly feels like as far as it’s likely to go.
ETA: I just realized that Altuve is very far from 3000 hits, and could easily fall short. That would alter this a bit, but I’m not rewriting it.
The aging curve for 5’6 players looks a fair bit different than players over 6′. ZiPS accounts for height ‘to a lesser extent’ but Altuve is built like a fist and has made a career out of exceeding expectations.
For example, I wonder if ZiPS would have projected a 5’7 Joe Morgan to be worth nearly 16 WAR for his age 35-40 seasons. He won the silver slugger and received down ballot MVP votes in his age 38 season.
All this is to say if Altuve ZiPS hits was on a Vegas board, I would be confident in taking the over because I just don’t see an age 37 Altuve having less than 400 AB and 100 hits or an age 39 Altuve with 200 AB and 50 hits. That seems way off IMO.
I would say that being “built like a fist” isn’t necessarily a good thing for avoiding decline in your mid-late 30s.
I would agree if you are a Giancarlo Stanton sized fist. A Joe Morgan sized fist on the other hand…