Young Houston Astros Starter Named Dark Horse ERA Leader

While the starting rotation projects as a strength for the Houston Astros, Hunter Brown has the potential to elevate the group to an even higher tier.

Sep 11, 2024; Houston, Texas, USA; Houston Astros starting pitcher Hunter Brown (58) reacts after getting an out during the fifth inning against the Oakland Athletics at Minute Maid Park. | Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

The Houston Astros project to have one of the better starting rotations in all of Major League Baseball in 2025.

Ace Framber Valdez is poised to lead the way once again, and the unit could get massive reinforcements in the form of the return from injuries of pitchers like Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers Jr.

But former top prospect Hunter Brown, who established himself one of the better young starting pitchers in the game in the back half of the 2024 campaign, has the potential to usurp Valdez as the team's best pitcher and elevate the potential of Houston's rotation to new heights.

In a piece on MLB.com drafting dark horse candidates to lead MLB in various statistical categories, Brown was named by Thomas Harrigan as his pick to lead the league in ERA.

"Over his final 22 starts, Brown pitched to a 2.31 ERA with 138 strikeouts and 39 walks (3.54 K/BB ratio) in 132 2/3 innings," Harrigan noted. "He led MLB in fastball run value (+24) during that stretch, a stark contrast to his first nine starts (-11). On the year, Brown tied for the MLB lead (minimum 300 batted balls) with a 30.3% hard-hit rate allowed, down from 44.4% (13th percentile) in 2023."

Harrigan noted that Brown's new sinker offering was a major factor in his success, and that is certainly the case. According to Baseball Savant, Brown surrendered an average exit velocity of 77.3 mph against the pitch, by far the lowest in his arsenal.

One more reason for optimism for Brown in 2025 is that he actually was very unlucky with the sinker last year. Despite the weak exit velocity allowed, opposing hitters still put up a .267 batting average against the pitch compared to a .241 expected batting average.

If Brown gets better luck with balls in play on his sinker, he could quickly transform into a run-preventing juggernaut. There is also a strong chance his whiff rates improves, as it fell drastically for his changeup (37% to 29.6%) when comparing 2023 to 2024.

There is no question that Brown has begun to make good on the immense upside he flashed as a prospect, peaking at No. 43 on the MLB.com top 100 in 2023.

The results are already there for Brown, as he showed for most of last season, and in looking under the hood, there is plenty of reason to believe that the Astros could have another homegrown Cy Young candidate on their hands.