This Astros Pitcher Is The Next Horrible Contract The Team Must Swallow And Let Go

It’s never easy for a team to afford to spend millions of dollars when a contract goes bad. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Houston Astros had to do when they released Jose Abreu earlier this year after his physicality and bat failed him.

Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and if a team is looking to fight like the Astros, the band-aid just has to be ripped off for the good of the team. However, Abreu’s terrible contract may not be the only one Houston needs to cut its losses.

From the day Rafael Montero signed a three-year, $34.5 million deal with Houston, the Astros’ decision was highly questionable. Paying a reliever top dollar after a career season that followed several mediocre seasons is almost never a good idea, but that’s ultimately the decision that was made.

A year and a half after signing that deal, Montero’s contract now looks like an abomination. He wasn’t good last year and looks worse in many ways in 2024, to the point where the Astros may have to admit their mistake and send him home like they did with Abreu.

This isn’t a situation where a player gets paid more than he’s worth and then gets criticized for every little thing just because everyone’s been looking at him. He’s just been objectively bad. After posting a 5.08 ERA in 68 appearances last season, where he missed bats but struggled to find the strike zone, 2024 has been another massive regression.

Sure, Montero’s 4.32 ERA this season is a marginal improvement over last year, but his strikeout rate has dropped to a career-worst 5.7 K/9, and all of his peripherals, including xERA, average exit velocity, whiff rate, barrel%, and hard-slugging% are among the worst in the league in 2024. It’s honestly kind of a miracle that Montero has had this much success this season.

Worse yet, the Astros have so messed up the reliever market with his contract that it may have led Hector Neris to have unreasonable expectations and head into free agency. He was great in Houston, so why wouldn’t he think he could get a salary like Montero (narrator: he didn’t)? On top of that, Houston must now feel obligated to at least try to get some value out of Montero, and now he’s one of the Astros’ most used relievers despite being one of their worst options in most situations.

In short, having Montero on the roster is a disaster, and the financial side should be considered a sunk cost. Houston needs real depth in the bullpen if they want to continue their turnaround this season, and Montero is simply not the answer. Unfortunately, that process can only begin by getting rid of him altogether.

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