2025 Houston Astros preview: Hunter Brown embraces high expectations after breakthrough season

Justin Kelly sat in the stands at Comerica Park one night last May and beheld a familiar sight. The right-hander pitching for the Houston Astros mowed down hitters from his hometown team for five innings. From the first-base seats his former college catcher noted the method.

Hunter Brown and Kelly were batterymates for three seasons at Wayne State University. Kelly is now a strength coach at their downtown Detroit alma mater and tries to attend when Brown faces the Tigers back in the city where his path to burgeoning major-league ace began.

Brown emerged from the bullpen on this night. But as he pitched, what Kelly saw stirred his memory. Brown worked inside to right-handed hitters. He mixed in a two-seam fastball. He blew elevated four-seam fastballs by the swings of Tigers with no chance to catch up.

“That’s what he threw a lot in college,” Kelly said. “It took him kind of until his (draft) year to obviously develop the velocity that got him a lot of looks. But I remember catching him, we would throw a lot of two-seams in on guys’ hands to righties, and away from lefties, too.

“He didn’t have that big curveball either in college, so he was kind of like a two-seam and a slider, and then when he needed the strikeout he would just hump it up to 98 (mph), which always plays.”

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Astros pitching coach Josh Miller now pinpoints the outing Kelly observed as where Brown’s ascendant 2024 season pivoted. A dreadful first month dislodged Brown from Houston’s rotation and endangered his roster spot. For its final four months, Brown performed as one of the best pitchers in the sport.

That it ended with Brown starting a win-or-go-home playoff game against the same Tigers underscored the standing he had attained. Framber Valdez will front the Astros rotation this season as an impending free agent. Brown will join him there tasked with further validating a franchise’s long-held belief.

“I think he knows what he means to this rotation,” manager Joe Espada said of Brown this spring. “This guy can be an ace in any rotation. And we expect him to be an ace for this rotation for years to come.”

To suggest a return to college ways keyed Brown’s resurgence last season is overly simple. But re-adding the sinker, which he had not thrown since his Wayne State days, was critical, allowing him to keep right-handed hitters from leaning over the plate and enhancing the rest of his arsenal.

It became Brown’s second-most used pitch last season, though he did not start throwing it until May. And its return illustrated perhaps the most encouraging step the 26-year-old fireballer made toward another echelon in his major-league trajectory.

“I was able to make adjustments, I just really was,” Brown said. “Like in 2023, I thought I knew what worked from the beginning of the year. And I was kind of chasing that toward the end of the year, like ‘OK, when I was throwing x, y and z, this worked at the beginning of the year, why is it not working now? ’ Versus last year, I was kind of like OK, this isn’t working. What other route can I go? What can I do to just be better?”

A 9.78 ERA after six starts amplified the need to find something, as did his brief detour to the bullpen in Detroit.

“But I think I needed that,” Brown said. “I think it drove me to work harder, I guess, and maybe go down some paths of scouting and things like that, maybe looking if I’m tipping pitches. They always say success is easy, right. Whereas in adversity you can kind of find out who you are. And it wasn’t the first time.”

Examples line Brown’s baseball arc. He threw in the mid-80s as a high school senior in St. Clair Shores, a suburb of Detroit, and big college programs bypassed him. He started full-time at Wayne State only as a junior, after making his mechanics more consistent and hitting a growth spurt that helped his velocity.

“It wasn’t an easy course for him,” Wayne State baseball coach Ryan Kelley said. “But he worked hard to get there and found ways to adjust, found ways to get better, kept learning and was hungry to succeed.”

It’s why Kelley, who still exchanges the occasional text or phone call with Brown after his starts, was not concerned about Brown amid his struggles last April. Nor did Brown ever convey that he was in a “down moment,” his former coach said.

“I was kind of more excited to see how he was going to embrace the challenge and the opportunity to move forward,” Kelley said. “From my experience with him in his college days and in his minor league career, I knew he would be in a position mentally where he was going to find ways to overcome.”

Attacking hitters inside was a goal in college, Brown agrees, especially as his velocity crept into the mid- to high-90s. The approach still appeals to him. Adding the sinker gave Brown a pitch that naturally runs inside to right-handers and a third type of fastball along with his four-seamer and cutter.

“I think now the game is so breaking ball heavy and living away with your fastball — which I think is great and a lot of guys have success doing that — I tried that, I wasn’t like the best at it,” Brown said. “I still use it at times. But yeah, I like throwing inside. I think it’s kind of an art form and can kind of become almost like your identity.

“Hitters know. The same way that we (pitchers) know if a hitter jumps you. You watch Jose Altuve, he’s a guy that hits first-pitch fastballs. I think that hitters know that, ‘OK, Hunter’s going to throw me inside.’ It just becomes part of who you are and it can open up some other doors for you.”

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Right-handed hitters facing Brown slugged .499 in 2023 and .683 in the first month of last season. They slugged .330 against him after May 1 and the reintroduction of the two-seamer. Only eight starters who threw a two-seamer more often than Brown last year averaged on a higher velocity on it.

Brown had a 2.51 ERA after May 1. No qualified American League starter had a lower one in that span. Just three generated a higher ground-ball rate. Only Tarik Skubal, Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans accrued a higher FanGraphs WAR. Skubal won the AL Cy Young award and Lugo was a finalist.

“I saw him this offseason and said, ‘Man, that two-seam looks good,’” said Justin Kelly. “He kind of laughed and was like, ‘Yeah, I needed to try something after the first month.’

“Obviously, Hunter’s stuff helped him get there. But I think it’s just his tenacity and how he approaches day to day business, on and off the field.”

Brown continuing his emergence would behoove his current team. Rotations featuring Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Zack Greinke and Dallas Keuchel provided a backbone for the Astros’ golden era. Valdez has established himself as a bona fide ace yet could be entering his final season in a Houston uniform.

A top-10 finisher in Cy Young voting each of the past three years, Valdez will be in high demand if he hits free agency next winter. The Astros’ largest guaranteed contract to a starting pitcher under owner Jim Crane is an $85 million extension for Lance McCullers Jr., a figure Valdez could be poised to easily exceed.

Trading Kyle Tucker this offseason reflected Houston’s pessimism about extending the star right fielder. Valdez said at the start of spring training the team had not approached him about a possible extension. Houston opted not to trade Valdez over the winter but may need Brown to help bridge a transitional year.

“It happened right about June last year where he just got sick of being a guy with good stuff who wasn’t putting up the results, took it upon himself to make some changes and was just phenomenal for us,” Miller said. “I expect him to continue that and build on it and pitch confidently and trust his stuff. And we need him to be big this year.”

Verlander and Yusei Kikuchi marked two veteran departures from last year’s rotation, though Verlander was limited by injuries. Ronel Blanco, who broke through at age 30; Spencer Arrighetti, fresh off his rookie year; and newcomer Hayden Wesneski fill out the rotation the Astros will carry into this season.

Brown will enter his third full major-league season as a relative constant. He finished at least six innings in 19 of his final 22 starts last season. It included a July 6 outing at Minnesota that illustrated his growing regard. Brown allowed seven runs, but Espada left him on the mound to get through the sixth.

“I expect him to go deeper in the games,” Espada said this spring. “I think he has earned the respect, at least from me, to go deep in the game, big moments in the game, high pitch counts. I think he’s very much capable of getting out of a jam. I think he has earned that trust.”

Espada deemed it a “no-brainer” to start Brown in Game 2 of the wild-card series against the Tigers. The Detroit product responded with 5 ⅔ innings of one-run ball, departing before the Astros lost a late lead to end their season. It raised expectations for Brown entering this year. He embraces them.

“If I look back all the way to when I first got drafted, you want to climb up prospect rankings, you kind of want those things for yourself, because as a competitor those are achievable goals,” Brown said.

“I think once you have a good season, it’s great that the expectations are high. I think it’s a lot better than being in a spot where maybe people aren’t expecting too much out of you.”

Brown has known both situations. He has been a ballyhooed prospect and dealt with doubts. Rocked for a stretch that might have derailed a season, he responded.

“I think that speaks to who he is and where he’s from,” Ryan Kelley said. “Growing up in the Detroit area, battling through adversity, understanding challenges, embracing hard work. And ultimately, once you do have success, you’ve got to continue to work hard to maintain that.

“The way he carries himself and the way he’s professional about it, I think, is something that’s not easy to attain. And he’s continuing to do it at a high level.”