Framber Valdez and the Astros avoided arbitration by agreeing to an $18MM salary for the 2025 season, though these appear to have been the only contract talks between the two sides this winter. Valdez said at the start of camp that the club hadn’t yet discussed a long-term deal with his reps at Octagon, and the same has remained true throughout Spring Training, as the left-hander told Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle and other reporters yesterday.
Since Valdez is set for free agency after this season, he answered “Yes, I think so” when asked if he would indeed be testing the market. There is nothing stopping Valdez and the Astros from negotiating during the season, though most players prefer to end contract talks by Opening Day in order to avoid distractions once play officially gets underway. Things could be different if the two sides were perhaps restarting talks after some baseline discussions earlier in the offseason, yet Valdez’s comments indicate that the negotiations haven’t even gotten off the ground.
Valdez became a full-time member of Houston’s rotation in 2020, and the southpaw has since become a key part of the team’s success. He has a 3.12 ERA, 23.9% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate, and a whopping 62.2% grounder rate over 781 innings over the 2020-24 seasons. That grounder rate is the best of any qualified pitcher in baseball over the last five seasons, and Valdez’s 781 innings are the seventh-most of any pitcher. A broken finger cost Valdez about two months of the 2021 campaign and he had a minimal IL stint last season due to elbow soreness, but he has otherwise been the picture of health.
The big regular-season workload has been augmented by 85 innings of postseason ball, with Valdez posting a 4.34 ERA over five of Houston’s playoff runs. While his production has been a little more inconsistent, his best work came in the Astros’ 2022 World Series championship year, when Valdez delivered a 2.07 ERA over 25 innings to help Houston capture a ring.
Assuming Valdez delivers his usual numbers in 2025, he’ll be in line for a significant contract next winter as a front-of-the-rotation arm that offers both durability and experience on the biggest stage in the game. That said, the left-hander also turns 32 in November, and there are a couple of other red flags that might indicate why the Astros seem reluctant to explore an extension.
Valdez has gotten away with allowing a lot of hard contact, though his .282 BABIP from 2020-24 indicates only a bit of batted-ball luck. He doesn’t offer a lot of fastball velocity, instead primarily relying on a mix of his very effective slider and curveball to fool batters. The strikeout and walk rates are both generally above average but neither stand out, putting more pressure on Valdez’s grounder-heavy approach to keep being effective.
Astros GM Dana Brown said in December that the team would listen to what other teams had to say in trade offers for Valdez, though Brown reiterated Valdez’s importance to the rotation and hinted that he’d just be listening to offers out of due diligence more than any real desire to move the left-hander. As it turned out, the Astros dealt another pending free agent in Kyle Tucker, freeing up some payroll space while creating a hole in the outfield. It could be that Houston simply got a better offer for Tucker from the Cubs than they got from any other team that called about Valdez, or that the Astros felt it was more important to keep the rotation stable after a lot of injuries hit the pitching staff in 2024.
Houston has been relatively conservative in giving out long-term extensions during its run of success over the last decade. Two of the more prominent extensions went to pitchers — Cristian Javier’s five-year, $64MM deal just prior to the 2023 season, and Lance McCullers Jr.’s five-year, $85MM deal signed prior to Opening Day 2021. Neither of these contracts have panned out to date, as McCullers hasn’t pitched in over two seasons due to a variety of injuries, and Javier underwent a Tommy John surgery last June.
As stable and healthy has Valdez has been, those two deals are surely on the minds of Houston’s front office, especially since Valdez will be looking for a much higher salary. Barring an unexpected change of heart between the two sides, it certainly looks like Valdez will be the latest prominent Astros star to depart in free agency, while the Astros will at least recoup some draft compensation back via the qualifying offer.