The Astros announced they have exercised a $13.35MM club option for infielder Isaac Paredes. Chandler Rome of The Athletic was among those to relay the info.
There was never any doubt this option would be picked up. Paredes put together a terrific 2026 season, delivering a .262/.360/.447 batting line with 25 homers, 27 doubles and a triple. He walked at a healthy 10.8% clip and struck out in a career-low 13.4% of his plate appearances. Metrics like Defensive Runs Saved (-7) and Outs Above Average (-4) panned his defensive work at the hot corner, but he also showed some versatility by helping out for brief spells at first base (58 innings) and second base (25 innings).
Paredes hit well both at home and on the road, but his swing is practically tailor-made for Houston’s Daikin Park, where the short porch down the left field line dovetails with Paredes’ extreme fly-ball, pull-oriented approach. He belted 14 homers in 324 plate appearances in Houston compared to 11 in 335 trips to the plate on the road.
The Astros enter the 2026-27 offseason with the same crowded infield they faced last winter. Paredes, Carlos Correa, Jeremy Peña, Jose Altuve and Christian Walker give them five infielders for four spots. There’s no real DH time available — not with MVP candidate Yordan Alvarez standing in that spot as one of the game’s top all-around hitters (if not the top all-around hitter). Houston tried in the past to move Altuve to left field, but that experiment wound up producing even worse defensive results than Altuve has been registering at second base as he moves into his late 30s.
Houston only brought Correa back at the 2025 trade deadline after Paredes was lost to what they expected was a season-ending injury. All the talk of a “surplus” last offseason faded quickly when Peña and Correa were injured early in the year. They’re both healthy now, and there’s a chance that the ‘Stros finally make a move to deal from that infield depth. They’ll have a new general manager in place — former Cardinals assistant GM Randy Flores nabbed the job recently — and each of Paredes, Peña and Walker is now just one year from free agency.
That all makes it easier to dump some of the $20MM Walker is still owed on the tail end of his three-year deal, and it creates greater justification for listening on Paredes or Peña. Trading the latter would be particularly difficult, but it’s a pretty similar situation to the one the Astros encountered with Kyle Tucker ahead of his final season of club control. Tucker was slated to be the top free agent in his class the following winter and was repped by an agency (Excel Sports Management) that rarely, if ever, negotiates extensions prior to free agency. Peña, repped by the Boras Corporation, is in a similar spot. Even if he were open to an extension, owner Jim Crane has never gone beyond six years or $150MM for a player in his tenure. Peña should be in line for a deal that would require Crane to completely break the precedent he’s established — something well north of $200MM.
For the time being, Paredes will be slated to return to the infield mix — though his exact role will be to be determined. Whether the Astros trade someone — perhaps even Paredes himself — will determine where he’s lining up, and one more good year should position him for a nice free agent deal.