The Astros Finally Release José Abreu
After a year of caressing hopes for a triumphant return of José Abreu’s salad days, the Astros released the veteran first baseman on Friday, ending his disappointing tenure in Houston. It would be an understatement to say the 37-year-old Abreu struggled this season; across 35 games, he batted .124/.167/.195 with two home runs, for an wRC+ of 2 and a WAR that I won’t repeat due to the possibility of children reading. The Astros still owe Abreu a hair under $31 million of the three-year deal he signed soon after the 2022 season, though they’ll be on the hook for slightly less than that if another team signs him for the pro-rated league minimum.
If David Ortiz’s magnificent final season represents the optimal scenario for a beloved veteran slugger to reach retirement, then Abreu’s time with the Astros exemplifies the other far end of the spectrum. During his nine years with the White Sox, from 2014-22, Abreu was one of the most consistent sluggers in baseball, batting .292/.354/.506 with 243 home runs, a 133 wRC+, and 28.3 WAR. He had five 30-homer seasons, and that doesn’t include the shortened 2020 campaign, when he smacked 19 longballs, a full-season pace of 51, en route to winning the AL MVP award. With Chicago, he also earned AL Rookie of the Year honors (2014), made three All-Star teams (’14, ’18, ’19), and won three Silver Sluggers (’14, ’18, ’20). When he became a free agent after his age-35 season and the White Sox didn’t show much interest in bringing him back, Abreu quickly signed with the Astros, who had won the World Series a few weeks earlier.
It seemed like the ideal destination for his three-year autumnal epilogue. Houston wasn’t counting on him to be the centerpiece of the lineup; rather, his role would be to shore up first base and/or designated hitter for a few years and support stars like Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman. With the Astros coming off a 106-win season and a World Series championship, with many of their core players returning, it certainly appeared that his new team would provide Abreu a better chance to win a ring than he would’ve had with the clearly fading White Sox. To get an idea of what the reasonable expectations were for Abreu when he signed with Houston, let’s look at his three-year ZiPS projections heading into the 2023 season:
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | .279 | .351 | .451 | 537 | 73 | 150 | 33 | 1 | 19 | 86 | 49 | 124 | 1 | 120 | -1 | 2.4 |
| 2024 | .269 | .340 | .427 | 475 | 60 | 128 | 28 | 1 | 15 | 71 | 42 | 114 | 0 | 111 | -1 | 1.4 |
| 2025 | .260 | .332 | .410 | 407 | 50 | 106 | 23 | 1 | 12 | 57 | 36 | 103 | 0 | 104 | -2 | 0.8 |
While ZiPS was skeptical that Abreu would be an everyday starter for all three years in Houston, it broadly thought he would be an adequate average-ish option for a year or two. Abreu got off to a wretched start last year, hitting .214/.262/.253 with no home runs through May 14 while starting 39 of the team’s first 40 games. As I wrote last April, there wasn’t even a hint that his struggles were a fluke; his plate discipline had deteriorated and his power evaporated like a puddle after a July thunderstorm in Texas.
There are some highly concerning issues in Abreu’s early-season profile this year that weren’t present in other early starts. When he struggles, he still generally hits the ball extremely hard. This year, his exit velocity has averaged 86.6 mph with an overall hard-hit rate of 36.7% — extremely low numbers for him. He was lousy last April, hitting .217/.308/.348, but he was still crushing pitches he connected with, resulting in a 94.6 mph average EV and a hard-hit rate of 59.6%. He also struggled in April 2021, hitting .213/.296/.394, but with a 92.1 mph EV and a 53.7% hard-hit rate — not quite as good as 2022, but worlds better than where those numbers currently stand. He got off to good starts in 2018 and ’19, so they’re not particularly helpful, and he crushed the ball in August of 2020 (I did not include any 2020 seasons in the April numbers, as the year was just too weird).
Abreu played somewhat better over the rest of the 2023 campaign, hitting .246/.309/.435 with 18 homers across 102 games and capping things off with four homers in the postseason. Rather than taking Abreu’s early-season woes as a warning that the end was near, the Astros proceeded to do very little to pick up another bat over the offseason; their biggest move to add some boom to the lineup came when they acquired Trey Cabbage from the Los Angeles Angels. Given Houston’s ALCS elimination at the hands of its cross-state rivals, the Texas Rangers, and its 90-72 record being its weakest since 2016, it’s hard to guess why the Astros took such a lackadaisical approach to a possible issue. Whether it has to do with the front office overhaul after James Click left is a topic for another day.
This season started off even worse for Abreu. He hit .111/.161/.123 with no homers, for an OPS (.284) that was even lower than the career OPS of Hall of Fame pitcher/extremely awkward hitter Randy Johnson (.305). His exit velocity numbers looked a lot like they did the previous April, and he failed to hit a single barrel. Things were so rough that Abreu agreed to be optioned to the minors to figure things out, leading to the rather odd sight of a former MVP debuting in the minors at age 37; he went straight to the majors 10 years ago after the White Sox signed him as an international free agent out of Cuba, and he never even played in the minors on an injury rehab assignment. Abreu did get back to Houston after a stint in Rookie-ball and a couple games with Triple-A Sugar Land, and he even hit two homers this month. But the writing was on the wall, and with the Mariners finally putting some space between them and the rest of the AL West, the Astros clearly could not afford to wait endlessly for another revival that may never come.
Over the short term, Jon Singleton is likely to continue to get the majority of the playing time at first base with Abreu out of the picture, but saying Singleton improves the team is damning with faint praise; while it was cool to see him come back to the majors after a decade away, he’s not really a productive major league bat. Singleton turns 33 later this year and is a .183/.294/.322 career hitter in the majors, with projections that rank from terrible (.214/.327/.388 in Steamer, .215/.324/.376 in ZiPS) to even more terrible (THE BAT at .193/.289/.343). Rookie Joey Loperfido would seem to be the obvious in-house solution to replace Abreu, but he’s primarily been an outfielder to this point and the organization hasn’t given him many starts at first base in Triple-A, which seems inconsistent with the idea that the Astros will offer him the next crack at the job. A big improvement here likely would require a larger trade, and I’m frankly not sure the decision-makers in Houston right now are equipped to move swiftly and deftly.
What’s next for Abreu? While the natural inclination would be a return to the White Sox, I think that would be a dreadful idea. Mal Tiempo doesn’t bring bad weather to opposing pitchers anymore, and I can’t help but feel that everything good he’ll be remembered for in Chicago is in the past. The Sox need to use their losing season more productively than a farewell tour for Abreu, and a bench bat with the Pale Hose won’t get Abreu one last run in the playoffs. Perhaps the Dodgers will sign him in July and he’ll slug .700 in 100 at-bats in a part-time role, because they’re the Dodgers.
A fun player for a long time and a great leader for the team and his city, Abreu’s almost certainly going to fall short of the Hall of Fame, perhaps even dropping off the ballot after his first year of eligibility. It would be shocking if he added much to his career 263 homers or 26.3 WAR (which is actually two wins less than it was when he left the White Sox), and we’ve yet to see the Hall of Fame voters credit foreign play to get a borderline player over the top. Ichiro Suzuki will easily make the Hall of Fame when he debuts on the ballot in the upcoming election, but that would be the case even if he had never played in Japan. I wrote a little about the possibility of including Abreu’s time in Cuba to evaluate his Hall of Fame case back in 2021, but that was more of a theoretical exercise than a serious expectation he’ll get votes.
No, Abreu is not going out on his best, but the cruelty of time in baseball isn’t that different from life. At some point, all of us will lose our ability to do the things we’re great at, the things we love, and eventually, anything at all. It’s just that as a ballplayer, his transition comes at a relatively younger age under very public scrutiny. I’ve always been a fan of the Orson Welles quote on the subject, and it’s one I’ve said that I’d like to have on my eventual epitaph: “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” If this is the melancholy final chapter of the story of Abreu’s baseball career, it was still a volume that was wonderful to read.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
He’s done unless he wants to sign a minor league deal and work his way back. Or, he could take his millions and figure out how to get into coaching. I don’t know enough about Abreu to know if he would be good at that or not, but it seems like it has more promise than him returning to being a 2-win player.
He seems very well done. Would it not warm hearts – and can’t White Sox faithful use all the heart warming they can get at this point? – if he did the one-day contract thing with Chicago and retired a White Sock?
That or hope Dusty Baker signs on for another managing gig.
For the Astros, if they can play their way back into the wild card race by the deadline I would think they might want to see if they can trade for Pete Alonso or Christian Walker. Or they could just punt on the year (somehow I doubt Jim Crane will allow that).
According to FanGraphs, currently the Diamondbacks have slightly better playoff odds than the Astros do.
Far fewer players are able to make it to age 40 in the majors than when I first got hooked on baseball in the 1990s and 2000s.
There are a lot of stars on incredibly long contracts now. The Padres have Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts signed past their 41st birthdays. I think that the expectation is that they will be out of the majors before the expiration of those contracts.
Steroids helped that a lot.
Sure, but also in the 1990s, MLB added four new teams which creates more jobs for aging players. And expansion watered down the majors which allowed established players to hang around. Also, teams back then valued “veteran presence” more and defense less.
Here’s the number of players, age 40+, who had 50 PA / 10 IP over these decades:
1950-1959: 9 position players / 12 pitchers
1960-1969: 6 position players / 10 pitchers
1970-1979: 9 position players / 7 pitchers
1980-1989: 19 position players / 20 pitchers
1990-1999: 22 position players / 19 pitchers
2000-2009: 28 position players / 36 pitchers
2010-2019: 18 position players / 21 pitchers
2020-2024: 3 position players / 5 pitchers
Here’s the number of players, age 40+, who had 50 PA / 10 IP over these decades AND a WAR greater than zero:
1950-1959: 6 position players / 11 pitchers
1960-1969: 2 position players / 6 pitchers
1970-1979: 6 position players / 7 pitchers
1980-1989: 15 position players / 17 pitchers
1990-1999: 10 position players / 14 pitchers
2000-2009: 15 position players / 24 pitchers
2010-2019: 7 position players / 13 pitchers
2020-2024: 2 position players / 4 pitchers
MLB expanded to 18 teams in 1960, 20 in 1961, and 24 in 1968. Expansion then didn’t increase older players then. Nor did it when MLB expanded to 26 teams in 1976. In 1992, MLB expanded to 28 teams, then to 30 teams in 1997.
There’s some indication that in the 1990s, players made it to 40 and may have been kept for non-performance related reasons. Names like Paul Molitor, George Brett, Andre Dawson, and Eddie Murray show up as negative WAR players.
In the 2000s and 2010s, you have players playing out the end of their contracts, and about half are still worth something at 40.
By the 2020s, the players 40+ who are still in MLB can hang with the young guys.
I think that steroids are a big, unspoken part of why teams felt comfortable with players 40+ from 1980-2009. I’d also wager that the collective bargaining agreement in the 1990s, and player favorable contracts, also allowed some players to play into their 40s.
A player being productive when they are 40 has long been the historical outlier, and we are finally returning to that norm after years of it being disturbed by PEDs.
Thanks for the numbers, this is great info! It is odd to me that the real jump was in the 1980’s, presumably before the Roid era Not sure how to explain that. The 90s and 00s look like a plateau more than a greater increase that would Roid linked, at least for productive players.
You’re a year early on all those expansion years. Expansion occurred in 1961, 1962, 1969, 1977, 1993, and 1998.
I thought steroids were bad because they increased injuries and made players more fragile?
People use “steroids” as a catch all term. In reality there are many many different substances/compounds that all do different things. Some definitely do help your body heal after injury (HGH being the one most people have heard of). many also help your recover faster which helps you not get injured in the first place. Not to mention that just being naturally stronger tends to give you some protection from injury as well.
What you are probably thinking off is anabolic steroids. Those are what bodybuilders and athletes use to build muscle. They dont cause injuries, per se, but what they do is allow you to get bigger and stronger and push harder than your body could naturally handle. So your weaker points (ligaments, tendons, cartilage) cant take the stress and fail. Especially in older players who already have put alot of miles on those weak points.
Pitching today is just nastier and more velocity and from what I recall about ball players aging, they have to cheat to catch up with the heaters. Miguel Cabrera is probably more likely the future of aging sluggers than David Ortiz.
That was probably the norm historically, too. Or players didn’t even get the opportunity to show what they could do at age 40.
Ortiz was linked to steroids, was he not?
When the Jays signed Turner I took a look at how many 39 year olds have any level of success or a 100 wRC+ or higher. Over the past 10 years it’s basically David Ortiz, Nelson Cruz, and 1 or 2 other players. Everyone else is in a platoon role or below 100 wRC+.
You can’t expect an everyday starter after a certain point. I never liked the Abreu contract for what it’s worth but yeah players don’t play as long as they used to and it’s obvious why.
You don’t always need league average offense to be a deserving starter. For example, Yadier Molina last put up a 100+ wRC+ in his Age 35 season, but he was still a deserving starter after that, except maybe only in his final year due to the Cardinals having no better options.
Pujols put up a 110 in his actual 39-year-old season
As a fan of the team, I’m worried about the direction this organization is headed. The front office has been stripped of analytically minded people, and decisions have become a lot less methodical and are becoming more knee-jerk reactions. I think the most critical and effective punishment they received for the sign-stealing scandal wasn’t from the MLB, but rather when Jim Crane fired Jeff Luhnow. I’m not blaming Crane for doing so, but he had a great successor in James Click, who he also fired for reasons I am not even sure of.
I hope this isn’t coming off as preachy (it probably is lol), but it’s hard to watch how much the culture has changed in only the last two years.
Well they recently worked out human poopstain Trevor Bauer, so at least they’ve got that going for them!
I’m more than fine with Luhnow getting cut loose; while he was instrumental in creating the dynasty, he also fostered the culture that enabled the sign-stealing to reach the egregious level it did and, more importantly, the culture that saw trading for Roberto Osuna as arbitrage and not morally deplorable, and enabled somebody like Brandon Taubman to feel entitled to yell at female reporters about how smart that move was. Also he was a key driving force in the gutting of the minor leagues, so add that to his ledger, too.
Click’s release is what really grinds my gears, he brought a similar analytic mindset from his time in Tampa Bay without the ruthless McKinsey angle of the previous regime, made some good trades and signings to get the team another championship, this time tentatively scandal free, and all he got for it was the boot. It’s almost certainly related to moves like the Abreu signing and Montero re-signing that his contract wasn’t renewed- Crane wanted to make those sort of moves, and Bagwell was in his ear talking that stuff up, and Click didn’t want to go along with it. Now Jim Crane has what he wanted, and while the dynasty was always going to end, it is astounding how quickly a team that went to 7 straight ALCS’s and returned most of the same lineup will be lucky to finish .500.
Luhnow doesn’t get nearly enough hate for what he did to the minors.
And he gets quite a bit of hate for it.
It will never cease to baffle me that Crane looked at 6 straight ALCS appearances w/ 2 titles and was like, “this isn’t working, we gotta get these nerds outta here.”
You keep this up and we’re going to rebrand you as “cogent comment”
It would be a terrible idea for the White Sox to bring him back. He would take playing time away from Vaughn and Sheets. Those guys may not be terribly good, but they are at least young and have a better chance of contributing or getting hot enough to generate trade value than Abreu does. Granted, the odds of somebody offering a decent return for any of them are really low, but they are still better bounce back candidates than Abreu.
Of course, Reinsdorf liked him so there’s a good chance he will be back because hiring the owner’s buddies has been more important than winning games for years now.
A 1 day contract wouldn’t hurt anybody.
It could be his ticket to HOF. Dan didn’t consider the Reinsdorf – La Russa axis.
Knowing Jerry Reinsdorf, there is a non-zero chance that he’ll give serious consideration to having Abreu be the next Manager after the season is over.
You mean player-manager, right? 🙂
This reminded me of something: why do oldheads constantly bemoan the “loss” of things like old hitters, or pitchers throwing complete games but never the lack of player managers? Why do people understand THAT to be a relic of bygone eras so much more easily?
I think Abreu’s chances of getting a ring are still better with the Astros (with their lousy odds of going all the way this season) than they would be had he stayed with the White Sox.
Technically, Abreu, like Albert Pujols, still counts as one of the rare players with a significant career to never play in a minor league injury rehab assignment.
Two thoughts:
1) My wRC+ this year is only 2 points behind Abreu’s! Ye gads.
2) Trey Cabbage is a 75-grade name.
Your presumed wRC+ of 0/0 is an indeterminant form that can potentially have any single answer depending on its context (as any number x 0 = 0).
While it does make sense to equate it to 0 in the context of batting average or ERA, in the context of, well, a context neutral stat like wRC+, it should equate to worse than anyone who has ever taken a Major League plate appearance.
Translation; Your wRC+ isnt 0, its more like -5000.
If it seemed like they held onto him too long, it appears to have been out of respect more than anything – via his player page, Abreu has exactly 10.000 years of service time.
That’s not updated in-season. His 10.000 days of service time just reflect the fact that he was on the roster on Opening Day in 2014 and stayed in the majors for 10 years, through 2023.
Gotcha, thank you!
I dunno, a wRC+ of 2 is also pretty NSFW
Zips still projects him for about a 100 wrc+ for the rest of the season…
Its wild how bad the 1b position is league wide.
Why does everyone say Loperfido? Trey Cabbage played more games a F3 (12) in AAA then he played any other position.WE NEED CABBAGE AT FIRST!
I can’t speak for everyone, but I think Loperfido simply has higher upside than Cabbage and probably not a lot of “now” difference.
Stl Cardinals: Beware
Dude went from Pito to Puto real fast.