WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — To save their season, the Houston Astros started someone with a World Series-clinching win on his resume. It’s forgotten amid the frustrating final chapter of Framber Valdez’s tenure with a team that turned him into a titan.
Scouting and signing Valdez for $10,000 in 2015 is among the shrewdest decisions from a franchise adept at authoring them. More famous faces have started games, stockpiled strikeouts and spearheaded rotations during the Astros’ golden era, though few proved more indispensable than Valdez.
He masked the departures of more high-profile names while morphing into the definition of durability. Since Valdez entered Houston’s rotation in 2020, only four other major-league pitchers have thrown more innings than the 973 he’s logged. His 3.23 ERA is better than all but one of them: Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler.
Valdez broke into the big leagues as a mop-up bullpen arm before becoming a perennial Cy Young Award contender. He made two All-Star teams while stymying the sport with a steady diet of sinkers and curveballs. His alter ego, “La Grasa,” adorned T-shirts worn occasionally inside the Astros’ clubhouse.
Valdez’s mere presence allowed Houston to better absorb attrition from Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke. Valdez required two injured-list stints in his eight-year Astros career, allowing the Astros to withstand other injuries that always impacted seasons.
Turning an older, overlooked international free agent into a four-time Opening Day starter is an accomplishment worth applauding across every level of a baseball operations department. Two miserable months do not change that fact. Valdez cratered this season when this club needed him most, but the same can be said for a slew of his teammates.
“It’s a long season, sometimes you’re going to have good and bad months. As a player, I’ve had some good ones and bad ones myself,” second baseman Jose Altuve said after Thursday’s 11-5 win against the A’s.
“But the good thing is that he’s always trying to do his best on the mound. And the most important thing: He did it today when we needed it.”
If that is Valdez’s last act in an Astros uniform, it is a fitting sendoff for an underappreciated southpaw who sometimes tested patience, but shined in some of Houston’s most pivotal games. Valdez swayed momentum in the 2021 ALCS with a stupendous showing in Game 5 at Fenway Park. He won two games during the 2022 World Series, including the clincher.
Thursday afternoon afforded similar stakes, even if it took place inside a minor-league stadium.
“I almost felt he rose to the level,” manager Joe Espada said. “This is a playoff atmosphere. It’s a must-win and he showed up today and gave us an incredible outing.”
Valdez struck out 10 across seven innings of one-run ball at Sutter Health Park, maintaining the Astros’ faint hope for the final American League playoff spot. Houston’s victory moved it within a half-game of the Detroit Tigers with three regular-season games to play.
“My main motivation today was keeping the team afloat and giving the team a chance to reach the postseason,” Valdez said through an interpreter. “Those bad starts, I always forget them. They’re bad starts. I don’t want to remember them. Just focus, attack the zone and keep the team afloat for a chance at the playoffs.”
Run support returned after an absence for so much of Valdez’s swoon. Houston averaged 2.2 runs during Valdez’s last 10 starts, a stretch in which the southpaw sported a 6.16 ERA and his team lost nine times. Valdez spiraled, but did so with a minuscule margin for error.
On Thursday, the Astros scored five runs in the first two frames, taking the sort of at-bats that eluded this lineup throughout its five-game losing streak. Carlos Correa coaxed a seven-pitch walk in the second. Victor Caratini worked a 12-pitch, two-out free pass in the fourth. Christian Walker whacked the next pitch into right field to score the game’s seventh run.
Caratini, Altuve and Isaac Paredes all collected a hit with runners in scoring position during the first two innings. Houston had two hits with runners in scoring position across the previous five games combined. Paredes, playing with pronounced limitations while still recovering from a hamstring strain, scored his team’s first run on a painstaking sprint from second base.
“Once you give Framber that lead,” Espada said, “he was able to capitalize and run with it.”
Valdez struck out five of the first nine A’s he faced, wielding the wicked curveball that disappeared during his doldrums. Five of his 10 strikeouts on Thursday featured just three pitches. All of those ended on his curveball. The pitch generated 21 swings. Thirteen of them were whiffs.
Twenty of Valdez’s 21 outs were either strikeouts or groundouts. No statistic better epitomizes his ethos. Since 2020, no major-league starting pitcher has a higher groundball rate than Valdez’s 61.5 percent clip. Commanding both his curveball and sinker down in the zone helps to maintain it.
Valdez did not across his previous 10 starts. Disaster struck. Couple that with the cross-up of rookie catcher César Salazar last month and it shifted the conversation around a career that should be celebrated.
The situation with Salazar has created obvious questions, but on the field, everything the Astros have appreciated about Valdez will be enticing to the 29 other teams on the open market this winter.
Valdez is a candidate for a one-year qualifying offer from the Astros, which the New York Post reported will be worth “roughly $22 million.” Valdez is all but certain to decline it in favor of a multi-year deal in free agency. No past contracts in Jim Crane’s ownership tenure suggests the Astros will be the club to provide it, even though starting pitching will be atop Houston’s offseason wish list.
“I’m going to remember everything,” Valdez said. “They signed me as a free agent and they trusted me all the way from the minor leagues to the major leagues and they trusted in me that I could do the job. I’m going to remember everything, but hopefully we go into the playoffs and I’ll have a chance to pitch there.”
On Thursday, he helped his cause.
(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)