We’ve had three United States presidential elections since the last American League Championship Series that didn’t feature either the Astros or the Yankees. Of the 16 available ALCS spots in the last eight seasons, the Astros or Yankees have occupied 11. They’ve played each other three times in that round in that span.
It stands to reason, then, that if you’re an AL club that wants to reach the World Series (and come on, who doesn’t?), you’d better assemble a club better than those in Houston and the Bronx.
That’s what makes this particular Hot Stove season so interesting. There are major makeovers taking place with the AL’s predominant clubs, and, one way or another, they’re going to have major pennant ramifications.
The latest bit of AL upending came Friday, when the Astros reportedly agreed to a deal with free-agent first baseman Christian Walker. Were this a normal offseason for the ‘Stros, Walker would simply be filling the hole that Jose Abreu had struggled to fill and sliding into a loaded lineup. But instead, this has been the offseason, more than any other in this era of Astros excellence, that has tested Houston’s staying power as an AL West force as the realities of age and earning power catch up to their core. And so the Walker signing signals so much more.
This Walker signing, combined with last week’s blockbuster trade sending Kyle Tucker to the Cubs, would appear to confirm what had seemed increasingly obvious for quite a while: Alex Bregman will be playing elsewhere in 2025. Houston landed Isaac Paredes in the Tucker deal, and rather than moving him to first base in the event of them re-signing Bregman or trading for Nolan Arenado (who reportedly Dikembe Mutombo’d a would-be trade from St. Louis with his no-trade clause), Paredes will man the hot corner, and Walker will play first.
As potential pivots from the Bregman era go, that’s not a bad one. Paredes didn’t hit much for the Cubs after a midseason 2024 trade, but, in two and a half seasons with the Rays, he was a productive force, with a 129 weighted runs created plus (or 29% better than the league average) in 1,377 plate appearances. And Walker is a three-time Gold Glove winner who has averaged 32 homers with an .813 OPS over the last three seasons with the Diamondbacks.
The only problem, of course, is that the above does not account for the sudden absence of the Astros’ best overall player in the 27-year-old Tucker. It had been pretty well established in the industry that, come 2025, the Astros would not be employing both Bregman and Tucker. Now, they won’t be employing either. And so while no one should be foolish enough to count out a club that has endured other significant cast changes and kept rolling right along with one AL West title after another and there is plenty of offseason left for Houston to resolve the hole Tucker left behind, this offseason of change, as well as another ring around Jose Altuve’s trunk, leaves them vulnerable.
Then you have the Yankees, who came in second in a Juan Soto bidding bender with the Mets in which the numbers and perks thrown around were so extraordinary that it doesn’t even lend itself to traditional baseball analysis. I wrote at the start of the offseason that, if the Yankees aren’t willing to go into extreme luxury tax territory for years on end, then going all-in on yet another bat that could be best suited to DH duties in the not-too-distant future makes less baseball (and long-term) sense than spreading their finances around and building a version of this club that is better situated from a run-prevention standpoint makes all the sense in the world. And the Yankees have done exactly that, moving on quickly from the Soto sweepstakes by inking starter Max Fried and trading for ace reliever Devin Williams and the versatile Cody Bellinger.
Alas, even a Pivot Advocate such as I can admit that the saner, more baseball-y outcome might not necessarily be the better one. Soto was the left-handed stick the Yankees had long sought, and his presence had a direct effect on Aaron Judge having the highest OPS+ by a right-handed AL/NL hitter in the modern era and the Yankees capturing their first AL pennant in 15 years. Fried’s iffy injury history, Bellinger’s inconsistent offensive track record and Williams’ inherently volatile role all make for a very real scenario in which the Yankees were still better off just giving Soto whatever he wanted (Yankee Stadium suite included).
All of which is to say that there’s no telling what this offseason of change means for the Astros and Yanks -- or, for that matter, the rest of the AL.
Though it’s been a relatively quiet winter thus far out of the AL Central, the fact that the oft-neglected division delivered three postseason clubs, including the ALCS runner-up Guardians, is not to be ignored. It will be especially interesting to see how the dust settles in Detroit -- a potential Bregman landing spot -- in the offseason after their second-half surge and Tarik Skubal’s Cy Young breakout.
In the East, Corbin Burnes’ free agency is a big hurdle for an Orioles club in need of the pitching to support an entertaining young position player core, but the three games that separated them from the Yankees in the regular season are not insurmountable. Even though Soto didn’t wind up taking their money, the Red Sox have essentially announced this winter that they’re ready to commit big dollars to ballplayers again, and they’ve made a substantial improvement to their rotation with Garrett Crochet.
The most noise in the West thus far has come from the also-ran A’s and Angels, which is … not what we expected coming into the winter. But considering the Rangers won a little thing called the World Series 14 months ago and the Mariners had an unfortunately-ill-fated 10-game lead on the Astros six months ago, it stands to reason that both of those ballclubs could be capable of being the one to end the Astros’ reign with the right moves. The Mariners are on the short list of most fascinating Hot Stove clubs from this point, given their desire to upgrade an offense in need and their potential willingness to move Luis Castillo from one of the best rotations in baseball to make that happen.
An awful lot of power shifted from one league to another with the Soto signing and the Tucker swap, and it will be fascinating to see if the power dynamics within the league shift, as well. For all we know, maybe the new-look Yankees and Astros might meet right back on the ALCS stage next October. But there might be an opportunity for others to make the most of their makeovers.