The Astros are once again staring at the same bullpen question: how do you replace value without paying for name recognition?
Steven Okert was the kind of arm Houston leaned on when the game got tight. Over the last two seasons, he handled pressure in difficult spots and showed up in 42% of the team’s games.
He also posted a 1.66 ERA in 55 appearances, which puts him in rare company. Across the last three seasons, only two left-handed relievers have carried an ERA under 2.00 while pitching on one day of rest, and Okert is one of them.
The other is Alex Vesia, the former Dodger with a 1.24 ERA in 59 relief appearances, a pitcher who already drew a separate column about why he should be a key option for Houston.
But Okert may no longer be the answer for the Astros, at least not at the price the market now demands. Houston paid $3.525 million for two seasons of Okert, while his current free-agent value is around $6.6 million for one year. That makes the search for a comparable arm tricky, because relievers who can hold up under heavy usage and still produce at that level are not exactly sitting around for bargain-bin money.
One name that fits the general shape of the need is JoJo Romero. The left-hander split last season between the St.
Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers, then helped out of the bullpen after the deadline and was part of the group that helped win the World Series. His projected AAV sits at $6 million, which is close to what Houston might have had to pay to keep Okert.
Romero also comes with the kind of workload profile teams like. Since 2024, he has logged at least 55 relief appearances in consecutive seasons.
At 30, he is younger than Okert, who will turn 36 in July 2027, and that age gap likely matters in how Houston is weighing the options. The Astros may have already decided the risk of regression was too high to bring Okert back.
Still, Romero is not a clean fit without some real questions attached. His underlying numbers have been uneven, and his 3.67 xFIP in 2026 was his best mark over the last three seasons. That was enough to ease some concern after a 4.12 figure last year, but the profile is still a little shaky.
The improvements came from a few places. His strikeout rate rose from 7.78 in 2024 to 8.63 this year, and his walks dropped from 4.28 BB/9 to 2.88.
His ground-ball rate also remained a calling card, which is part of why Milwaukee wanted him. Even so, there are clear warning signs.
Romero slipped from the 79th percentile in Pitching to the 44th, which is not where you want to see a middle-inning lefty who is supposed to handle pressure. His sinker was his most efficient pitch in 2026, used 45.3% of the time and producing a +6 Run Value, but it is not his best bat-missing weapon. That pitch generated only a 14.5% whiff rate.
That leaves the changeup and sweeper as his main answers in big counts, and both took steps backward. The league’s xSLG against the sweeper jumped from .260 to .422, and its Run Value fell from +9 to +0 in 2026. The changeup was a little steadier in terms of hard contact - its xSLG improved from .317 to .303 - but it no longer finishes hitters the way it once did, with Run Value dropping from +1 to -3.
One thing Romero still does well is handle left-handed hitters. Over his career, lefties have hit just .202/.281/.301 against him in 389 matchups. That leaves Houston with a familiar decision: trust Romero to clean up the inconsistency and rediscover the sweeper-changeup mix, or look elsewhere, possibly toward a right-handed arm instead of further reinforcing the left side of the bullpen.
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