The Houston Astros' gamble on their starting rotation has not paid off, and Framber Valdez is now with Detroit after a winter in which Houston never landed the veteran arm it should have added. The move leaves the Astros facing a familiar kind of bill: not just for the pitching mistakes on the field, but for the choices that helped make them.
Valdez signed late into the winter after the long-term deal he wanted never materialized, and he ended up in Detroit on an opt-out-laden, short-term contract with a $38.33 million annual average value. Houston could have made a different choice. The Astros could have exceeded the luxury tax if they wanted, and with a few different decisions they could have kept Valdez and gone over the line by only a little bit.
Instead, the Astros opened the season without the veteran starter they should have added, and Valdez has already given Detroit a reminder of why he mattered. He blew up against the Minnesota Twins on April 8, but he has still made seven starts this season and logged 40 1/3 innings with a 3.35 ERA. That is not ace-level consistency, but it is the kind of production Houston has lacked while its rotation has drifted from one compromise to the next.
The background to all of this is simple. Houston treated the luxury-tax line as a self-imposed limit, and that made it nearly impossible for Dana Brown to fit a deal for Valdez under the threshold. Retaining him would not have been easy, but it was not impossible either, and the club had the power to push past the line if it chose to do so. That is why Brown is expected to absorb much of the heat now that the pitching staff's failures are landing in plain view.
The hard part for Houston is that the numbers point in two directions at once. The front office wanted flexibility, but the rotation needed certainty. Valdez, for all the cost of a late deal, would have come with a lower AAV on a longer agreement. The Astros chose the cleaner tax sheet over the steadier answer on the mound, and they are now living with the result.
