If the Astros do follow through on the idea of moving Jose Altuve into the primary DH role, then second base suddenly becomes one of the most important questions of their offseason. The good news is that the market has names. The less good news is that most of them come with real baggage, and the top end is going to cost a pretty penny.
At the very top sits Brandon Lowe, and the appeal is obvious. He hit 35 home runs for the Pittsburgh Pirates this season, a season that should have done a lot to raise his price.
The bat has real juice, and he’d probably give Houston a better offensive version of Christian Walker. But Lowe is also a classic power-first player with a career .250 batting average, and while his defense was excellent last season with a +13 Rfield, that hasn’t been the story over the full run of his career.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. brings a different kind of attraction. The loud numbers jump off the page: 19 home runs and 41 stolen bases last season, plus more than 30 homers the year before.
But the overall offensive picture is less eye-catching. He has produced an .800 OPS or better only twice, and his career mark sits at .759.
There’s plenty of flash there, but maybe not quite enough thunder to fully match it.
Luia Arraez is a different conversation entirely. He’s the kind of player who makes you think about what Jose Altuve would have looked like if he had stayed a pure contact hitter.
Like Altuve, Arraez owns three batting titles, and he can at least give you some left field if Houston wanted to shift back toward a more traditional setup. Still, the expectation is that he’ll get paid well beyond the production, with someone likely to hand him $20 million to play baseball.
Gleyber Torres falls a step below that top tier, but he may be closer to the range where the Astros are really shopping. His 2026 season was wrecked by injuries, and he was still paid $22 million on the qualifying offer, so another deal in that neighborhood can’t be ruled out if the wrong team gets aggressive.
Even so, a more realistic number feels closer to $10-15 million at this point. The offense would fit.
His 112 career OPS+ would play nicely in a lineup that doesn’t need another superstar so much as another reliable bat.
The cheaper tier opens up a couple of more practical possibilities. Jeff McNeil is officially tied to a $15 million A’s option, though the expectation is that they’ll buy him out.
His season in Sacramento was underwhelming in a run-scoring environment that should have helped him more, but he finished much stronger than he started. He remains a career .281 hitter and a high-contact type, which matters for an Astros offense that has trended more strikeout-heavy in recent years.
Jorge Polanco is the wild card, and the source on him is blunt: 2026 never happened. That season can either be read as the beginning of a decline or as a blip that creates a buying opportunity.
Houston had already looked into him when the idea of moving Altuve to left field was floating around, so he isn’t some new fit out of nowhere. If you believe the ugly season was just a one-off, there’s a path to seeing him as a bargain.
The trade market, for now, is much thinner. Ketel Marte is the one big name that stands out, and he comes with both star-level upside and a complicated profile.
Over 12 big league seasons, he has pushed himself onto the edge of the Hall of Fame discussion if he can string together two or three more productive years. But he has also been a major headache for the D-Backs over the last two seasons, which gives the whole thing a “take my wife, please” feel.
There’s also the contract to weigh. Marte is owed at least $76 million over four more seasons, with incentives that could push that higher, plus a vesting option for a fifth year.
He’d be 37 when the deal is done. Houston has already lived through the reality of depreciating assets with Jose Altuve and Christian Walker, and this feels like the kind of move another team would make.
Still, he belongs in the second base conversation.
In Other News...
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For a team like the Astros, the timing matters just as much as the performance. Houston always has October on its mind, and any rotation discussion naturally leads to arms who can survive high-leverage innings and elevate in the biggest moments. Peralta checks those boxes, but the bigger question is whether Tampa Bay sees him as more than a short-term solution, because his market value is climbing fast and his future will be one of the more closely watched pitching storylines of the winter. [Read more 🡒]
Astros Have A Jeremy Pea Decision That Could Shape Their Next Core
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Peas place in that conversation is only getting bigger because shortstops with real impact are hard to come by, and the market tends to reward them accordingly. For an organization already thinking about the future and the possibility of labor uncertainty down the road, his status adds another layer to a decision that goes well beyond one season. [Read more 🡒]
Astros Offense Has A Bigger Problem Than Just Power
The Astros spent much of the 2026 season doing what they have long done best at the plate: hitting the ball out of the park. Even with a league-leading 226 home runs, though, the run production never quite matched the raw power, which made their offense look more dangerous in bursts than truly complete over the long haul. The issue was not a lack of big swings so much as a lineup that leaned heavily on them, with less on-base presence than the clubs that tend to manufacture offense in more layered ways.
Milwaukee and Tampa Bay offered a useful contrast because they have more avenues to create runs when the long ball is not there, and Houston simply did not have that same margin for error. The lack of speed was part of it, too, and the Astros did not put pressure on defenses the way more efficient offenses do. For a team built to hit, the bigger concern was how rarely the rest of the attack helped when the home runs were not carrying the entire load. [Read more 🡒]