Astros, Framber Valdez Avoid Arbitration

The Astros and left-hander Framber Valdez have agreed to an $18MM salary to avoid arbitration, per a report from Chandler Rome of The Athletic. The deal comes in just $200K over Valdez’s $17.8MM projection from MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz and represents a $5.9MM raise over Valdez’s 2024 salary. Valdez is represented by Octagon.

The 31-year-old southpaw was dominant as ever for Houston last season. In 28 starts for the club, Valdez posted an excellent 2.91 ERA in 176 1/3 innings of work with a 3.25 FIP while striking out 24% of opponents and walking just 7.8%. Perhaps most impressively, Valdez generated an excellent 60.6% groundball rate that led all qualified major league hurlers this year. While Valdez was snubbed from making his third career All-Star appearance, the lefty finished in the top ten of AL Cy Young award voting for the third consecutive season and even earned some down-ballot consideration for the AL MVP award. That strong performance earned Valdez a deal that comes in slightly above projections ahead for his final season before he hits free agency in the fall.

If there was a downside to Valdez’s strong 2024 campaign, it was his health early in the year. The lefty missed most of April due to a bout of elbow soreness that sent him to the shelf after just two starts. While even the mildest elbow issues can cause alarm among fans due to their association with Tommy John surgery, Valdez evidently wasn’t slowed down significantly by the issue. While he made just 28 starts this year as opposed to 31 the prior two seasons, he was healthy and effective as always after returning to the mound on April 28 and showed no signs of losing steam as the year dragged on. In fact, it was just the opposite. While much of the Astros rotation was plagued with injury issues throughout the summer as they struggled to come back from an early-season deficit in the standings, Valdez was utterly dominant down the stretch with a 1.96 ERA in 12 starts after the All-Star break that helped Houston pull away from the Mariners in the AL West late in the second half.

In 2025, Valdez figures to be the club’s undisputed ace with future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander having departed for San Francisco in free agency. He’ll lead a rotation that also figures to include Hunter Brown, Spencer Arrighetti, Ronel Blanco, and Hayden Wesneski to open the season, with additional help from Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers Jr. expected later in the year. The losses of Verlander and outfielder Kyle Tucker along with the all-but-official departure of longtime third baseman Alex Bregman and the possibility of trading veteran reliever Ryan Pressly leave the Astros looking quite different as compared to the club that won the World Series in 2022, and with Valdez just one year from free agency things could look even more different this time next year.

Earlier this winter, there were questions over whether Valdez would remain in Houston for the 2025 or if the club would deal him ahead of his final year of team control as they had Tucker. Those rumors have died down at this point, however, and the club now plans to keep him in the fold for the coming season. It’s unclear how seriously the Astros will pursue a reunion with Valdez when he reaches free agency next season; at one point the sides engaged in extension talks but the same could be said for both Bregman and Tucker, both of whom will be playing elsewhere next season. In the meantime, the Astros have brought in Isaac Paredes and Christian Walker to help bolster the offense, as they try to get back to the ALCS in 2025 after failing to make it there last year for the first time since 2016.