HOUSTON \u2014 Houston Astros general manager Dana Brown and manager Joe Espada will remain in their roles for the 2026 season, a team source told The Athletic on Tuesday, ending a week\u2019s worth of uncertainty within the organization about its future.<\/p>\n
Both Brown and Espada will continue on their current contracts, which run through the 2026 season, prompting some question as to what the future holds for both men following next year.<\/p>\n
Brown refused to comment on his contract status during an awkward, end-of-season media availability last week, during which his future remained in doubt. Ditto for Espada, whom Brown hired to replace Dusty Baker before the 2024 season.<\/p>\n
Since that news conference last Tuesday, multiple members of the organization had operated with hesitancy about the immediate future of both Brown and Espada following Houston\u2019s failure to make the postseason, as did a number of agents and rival executives.<\/p>\n
A slew of injuries staggered the Astros\u2019 pursuit of a ninth consecutive playoff appearance, as did underwhelming performances from their highest-paid players. The eight players making at least $10 million on Houston\u2019s season-opening payroll combined to accrue just 6.6 Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball-Reference.<\/p>\n
According to both Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs, no team lost more potential value to the injured list than the Astros, who still finished with an identical record to the Detroit Tigers, who are currently playing in the ALDS. At one point in July, Houston had 18 players on the injured list.<\/p>\n
American League All-Stars Jeremy Pe\u00f1a, Isaac Paredes and Josh Hader all spent substantial time on the injured list. Hader is one of those aforementioned six players. So is slugger Yordan Alvarez, who appeared in just 48 games after fracturing his right hand in early May and spraining his left ankle in September.<\/p>\n
Neither Pe\u00f1a nor Alvarez played during the team\u2019s final road trip, a 3-3 journey through West Sacramento and Anaheim.<\/p>\n
Last week, Brown acknowledged some organizational mishandling of Alvarez\u2019s hand injury, which became a theme of this star-crossed season. Houston\u2019s much-maligned \u201creturn to play procedure\u201d came under fire during both Alvarez and Jake Meyers\u2019 recoveries from injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cPotentially more imaging, I think that may have helped us,\u201d Brown said. \u201cBut it\u2019s difficult when imaging is telling you one thing \u2014 you try to go with what you\u2019re seeing \u2014 but maybe we (could have) gotten more imaging with Alvarez.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown, 58, has overseen two American League West titles and one trip to the ALCS in 2023. Espada, who served as the club\u2019s bench coach for the first six years of his Astros tenure, has a 175-148 record during his first two seasons as a skipper. He finished fourth in American League Manager of the Year voting in 2024.<\/p>\n
Many hailed Espada as a front-runner for the award at points this season. After sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Fourth of July weekend, Houston reached 20 games over .500 and, according to FanGraphs, had 98.3 percent odds to make the postseason.<\/p>\n
Those odds remained as high as 90.3 percent on Sept. 1. Houston finished the season\u2019s final month 12-13 \u2014 its third consecutive month with a sub-.500 record \u2014 leaving the Astros outside of October baseball for the first time since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Houston Astros general manager Dana Brown and manager Joe Espada will remain in their roles for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":284818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2382,1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-284817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-houston-astros","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115334987432699026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}