Astros receive first Christian Christmas gift

The Astros makeover continues. A week after trading star outfielder Kyle Tucker to Chicago, Houston dove into the free agent market and found a replacement: first baseman Christian Walker, now the beneficiary of a brand new three-year, $60 million contract.

Walker didn’t establish himself as a major league starter until he was nearly 30; he spent the mid-2010s behind Chris Davis, Freddie Freeman, Joey Votto and Paul Goldschmidt, in that order. But since taking over the Diamondbacks’ first base job after Goldschmidt was traded, Walker has established himself as one of the most consistent players at the position. Over the past three seasons, he has posted WRC+ ratings of 122, 119 and 119 and posted WAR totals of 3.9, 3.9 and 3.0. That downturn in 2024 was characterized by an indirect strain that cost Walker the month of August. If he played 162 games, he would be right around 3.9 WAR again.

The former South Carolina star is 33, a little old for a big free agent signing, especially as a first baseman, and even more so as a right-handed first baseman. But he will be a tremendous asset for the Astros and will be greatly missed by the Diamondbacks.

Want to know why this is a great deal for Houston? Come check this out. Check it out. Check it out. That’s every season of 200 or more plate appearances by an Astros first baseman since 2015. That’s when the process ended and the Astros got good. Think about how many All-Stars have passed through Houston over the past decade. And other than a couple of seasons before Yuli Gurriel’s bat speed faded, none of that magic happened at first base.

I don’t know, some of those Marwin Gonzalez and Tyler White seasons look OK. Are you sure we’re not just spoiled by how good the Astros have been at other positions?

NO.

Houston has many superlative qualities. It is Space City, the energy capital of America, the most air-conditioned city in the world. But most of all, it’s the Mecca of poor play at first base. Over the last three seasons, the Astros first baseman has two cumulative wins under replacement level. Not only is that the worst in the league, it’s also the worst number at any infield position in that time period.

Not counting DH – where about a third of the league is underwater; that positional adjustment is a cruel mistress: There are nine positions where a team has achieved a complete win under substitution since 2022.

Aside from the Astros, every other team on this list was crap. And the White Sox are in it twice, because they sucked twice. If anything, it’s impressive that the Astros have managed to make the playoffs in each of the last three years – and win a World Series along the way – while anchored in this critically important position.

That said, it’s not as if the Astros weren’t aware of their shortcomings. Walker’s reported $20 million salary will make him the Astros’ second-highest paid player, behind Jose Altuve. It’s a fun trivia, then, that even before this signing, the Astros’ second-largest salary had already gone to a mid-30s first baseman on a three-year contract: José Abreu.

For those of you who haven’t followed Abreu’s brief tenure with the Astros, here’s an illustration in the form of a rocket launch:

And this wasn’t a case of the Astros signing Abreu and not realizing he had been washed for years. The 2020 MVP was still really good in 2022; his 3.8 WAR that season was comparable to Walker’s average performance over the past three years.

Suddenly my optimism about Walker’s signing is a little less boundless.

Well, let’s talk about how this is different. First, Walker is younger now than Abreu was then. The two-time College World Series champion will turn 34 one day after Opening Day next spring, while Abreu was 36 when he first suited up for the Astros. In your mid-30s, a two-year age difference probably matters less than how much fiber you eat and how much time you spend stretching your hip flexors, but it’s a favorable figure.

Plus, Walker is the better athlete. It’s not fast, at least not anymore. I’m sure you all remember when he won a College World Series game with his legs. Oh, isn’t it? Well, it can’t hurt to watch it again.

It was fun, but those days in Omaha were long gone.

Throwback closer: Walker was the best defensive first baseman in the league in 2024, while Abreu is a bigger, bulkier physical presence, and DHed 35 times a year dating back to his rookie season. The defensive difference between the two is worth about a win per season, which is not insubstantial. How this will contribute to its eventual decline remains to be seen. I would speculate that Walker will age better than Abreu, but that’s just speculation.

The difficult thing about avoiding another situation with Abreu is that there were yellow flags around him at the time, certainly, but few red flags. Abreu has always been more of a spray hitter and ground ball hitter than Walker. In his last two years in Chicago, he changed his game somewhat. He started walking more and in 2022 he reduced his strikeout rate by nearly a quarter. At the same time, he cut his home run total in half from the previous year, but also increased his batting average by 43 points and continued to make hard contact at an elite rate.

When he signed with the Astros, I had no illusions that he was still the guy who won MVP in 2020 by hitting 19 homers in 60 games. Instead, I thought Houston was getting a replacement for Michael Brantley: a high-OBP line hitter who would hit maybe 20 home runs and 30 or 40 doubles. It wasn’t until after arriving in Houston that Abreu’s bat completely clicked.

I realize a lot of ink has been spilled on a guy who is no longer with the Astros, but it’s important to note the ways in which Walker is a completely different hitter. FanGraphs doesn’t have a site-wide editorial stance on individual players, but many of us here like Walker as a player. For me, that was mostly because he was one of the best players on my favorite college baseball team when it won back-to-back national championships.

But for my colleagues, who had the misfortune of not attending the University of South Carolina, Walker’s selling point is that he is a process fanatic. That big bald head of his is a bottomless storehouse of hitting information, and he’s one of the most empirically savvy hitters you’ll find. Watch this 2023 interview with David Laurila to get a sense of how Walker thinks. And for more on the real-world effects of Walker’s studies, see this 2022 story by Ben Clemens.

In 2024, Walker ranked 25th out of 129 qualified hitters in HardHit%, 24th (in ascending order) in GB/FB ratio and 48th in pull rate. He hits a lot and generally doesn’t put up a huge BABIP, but when Walker puts the ball in play, he puts it where he can cause damage.

Here’s the argument in visual form. As much as I enjoy writing about the impact of Crawford Boxes on powerful right-handed hitters for the third time in eight days — I don’t feel crazy in the slightest — here’s Walker’s 2024 spray chart, laid out on the silhouette of Minute Maid Park.

It looks like Walker could do quite well there.

Paying $20 million a year for three seasons for a 34-year-old seems like a risk. But no contender had a greater need at a single position than the Astros at first base. Walker is considered the second-best free agent first baseman, behind Pete Alonso, and over the next three seasons, I bet the difference between the two will be less than you think.

So if this is a risk, it’s a calculated one. If you want a sure thing, you’d better be prepared to pay a lot more than the Astros did.