Hunter Brown Taking Next Step, Becoming Legit Staff Ace For Astros

The Houston Astros dynasty has shown signs of decline recently. Their seven-year streak of making it as least as far as the ALCS was snapped last offseason, and since then, mainstays Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker have been subtracted from the roster. On top of it all, slugger Yordan Alvarez hasn’t looked like himself this season.

But the club is still hanging around, a bit over .500 in the AL West. A big reason why has been the breakthrough of righty starter Hunter Brown, who is 5-1, 1.67, with a glittering 49/10 K/BB in his first 43 innings. At age 26, he has seemingly wrested the role of staff ace from lefthander Framber Valdez.

The Astros drafted Brown on the 5th round in 2019 out of Wayne State University in Michigan. While he was highly regarded coming up through the minors (he ranked #49 and #56 on my purely statistically based minor league starting pitcher rankings in 2022 and 2023) , it’s pretty safe to say that the Astros didn’t see this level of dominance coming. Fact is, he’s a totally different pitcher now than he was when he first arrived on the MLB scene to stay in 2023.

While he certainly showed promise back then, he was basically a three-pitch guy who didn’t have much of a feel for managing contact. He threw his four-seamer almost half of the time, with his slider and knuckle-curve each thrown about a quarter of the time. None of the three offerings rated as above average according to my system that grades pitches based on bat-missing and contact management relative to the league. None of Brown’s three offerings were above average at either discipline. Of the three, only his four-seamer earned even an average “B” grade. His K/BB profile was his strong suit, enabling him to post a 93 “Tru” ERA- (my batted ball-based proxy for ERA- and FIP-) despite a subpar 109 Adjusted Contact Score. Mind you, these figures were better than his 120 ERA-, 103 FIP- and ugly 134 Unadjusted Contact Score, but it was clear that Brown still had some work to do to reach his potential.

And he did take major steps forward in 2024, though his K/BB profile was little changed. He was a different man contact management-wise, throttling exit speeds across all batted ball types to the tune of a full standard deviation or more lower than league average. His Adjusted Contact Score plunged to 88, not far off of the pace of AL Contact Manager of the Year Corbin Burnes’ 85. His 81 “Tru”- once again outpaced both his ERA- and FIP- (both at 88).

What changes did Brown make to achieve these results? Well, he added three pitches, a changeup, cutter and most importantly a sinker, while reducing his slider usage sharply. All five graded out as average or better, with his “A+” sinker and “B+” cutter leading the way. The sinker was far above average at both bat-missing and contact management, while the cutter was a fairly effective contact management pitch. While the four-seamer only earned a “B” grade, its whiff rate improved sharply to 11.9%, over a full standard deviation better than league average. If you squinted hard enough, you could see two plus fastballs in there, and that’s what the great ones, like Zack Wheeler, possess.

Now it’s way too early to be issuing any pitch grades for 2025, but we can identify some new developments and trends that are driving Brown’s early dominance.

First, his K rate is way up, to 31.0% in the early going. And all roads lead right back to those two fastballs when you seek out the reason why. His four-seamer’s pitch-specific whiff rate has now moved up from 8.8% in 2023 to 11.9% in 2024 to 13.3% in 2025. Pretty impressive.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s going on with his sinker in the early going. Its whiff rate is way up at 10.9%, over twice the 2024 MLB average, moving up from 6.5% in 2024.

Now Brown’s numbers actually have a solid bit of good fortune baked into them on the contact management front thus far. Hitters are batting a lusty .050 (2 for 40) on grounders against him this year – they “should be” hitting .223 AVG-.243 SLG. Overall, his “Tru”- of 80 is way higher than his 43 ERA- and 42 FIP-. Honestly, his “Tru”- is almost identical to the pitcher profiled here yesterday, Max Fried (78). I had some concerns about some of Fried’s underlying numbers, however. I have none re: Brown.

His 2025 108 Adjusted Contact Score (vs. 68 Unadjusted) is primed to come down. Sure, he’s been a bit fortunate with his sinker, allowing a bunch of well hit grounders that almost all have been converted into outs. It remains a fine contact management pitch. But it now appears that his four-seamer, which was hit hard in both 2023 and 2024, has now joined it as an authority-suppressing pitch. Bank on it – Brown’s Adjusted Contact Score will be above average at season’s end, though probably not as good as last season. With his newfound bat-missing skills – his overall whiff rate is up to 12.1% this season – he should be on the short list of potential AL Cy Young winners.

Really good pitchers miss bats, manage contact, minimize walks and go deep into ballgames. The truly great ones among them can dominate with their fastball(s). Hunter Brown checks every single one of those boxes.