Astros reliever Ryan Pressly he threw a scoreless inning to take part in the Rays’ 3-2 victory on the evening. As The Athletic’s Chandler Rome points out (at X), that was the righty’s 45th appearance of the season. Combined with 65 appearances last year, Presly has reached 110 games since the start of 2023.
That’s the cap hit needed to vest the $14MM team option on his 2025 contract. Marc Berman of USA Today wrote in February that the pick requires Pressly not to finish the season on the injured list. (It’s not unusual for an offer to require a player to pass a physical at the end of the year.) Assuming he’s healthy at the end of the year, he’s officially under contract for the ’25 campaign at $14MM. It’s a common option, so Pressly doesn’t have the ability to turn it down in favor of free agency.
Pressly, who turns 36 in January, will enter his seventh full season with the Astros. Houston acquired him from the Twins at the 2019 trade deadline in what turned out to be a great deal. Pressly carries a 2.77 earned run average in 327 regular season appearances. He was even better in October, pitching 44 2/3 innings of 2.22 ERA ball in his playoff career.
While relief pitchers can be volatile, Pressly has been a year-round source of stability. He never had an ERA higher than 3.58 in any of his seasons with Houston. Pressly has reached at least 50 plate appearances in the previous four full seasons of his tenure with the Astros. He is well on his way to doing that again. He spent the 2020-23 seasons serving as Houston’s closer and has been among the top pitchers in the game.
Astros signed Josh Hader to a five-year, $95MM free agent deal late last season. That pushed Press into the setting role of the ’24 campaign. That wasn’t a case of his performance as an opportunity for Houston to build a three-headed monster with Hader, Pressly and Bryan Abreu behind the barn. That trio struggled to a 5.40 ERA in April, which is a big reason for the team’s slow start. They’ve dominated for the better part of three months since then, compiling a 2.56 ERA over 102 innings. The team has similarly turned its fortunes around, erasing a 10-game deficit on the Mariners to take a lopsided lead in the AL West race with two months to play.
Including tonight’s performance, Pressly owns a 3.38 ERA over 42 2/3 innings. He has 19 saves and two saves against the top six. Those generally strong results are over a career high .344 batting average. Pressly is striking out a quarter of his competitors with a low rate of 46.7% and a systematic walk percentage of 7%. While it’s a slight step down from his 2019-23 production, Pressly continues to turn in above-average performances late in games.
Astros representatives and Pressly in the Ballengee Group have put together two extensions over the years. In Spring Training 2019, they inked a two-year, $17.5MM deal with a ’22 trade option. By pressing he hit that mark, locked in his 2022 salary, and agreed to another two-year deal at the start of the season. That one guaranteed him $30MM – which equates to $14MM in salary for 2023-24 and at least a $2MM buyout in the ’25 buyout option. He is now set to increase his contract to $42MM over three seasons by getting a $12MM difference between next year’s asking price and the purchase price.
By pressing you join Jose Altuve ($30MM), Hader ($19MM), Lance McCullers Jr. ($17MM), Jordan Alvarez ($15MM), Cristian Javier ($10MM) and Victor Caratini ($6MM) on the books for next year. They are still looking for big salaries José Abreu ($19.5MM) and Rafael Montero ($11.5MM) to cap those three-year free agent deals. That’s $128MM in guaranteed obligations.
Framber Valdez again Kyle Tucker both will exceed $15MM in salaries in their final season of arbitration, while Bryan Abreu, Mauricio Dubón, Jeremy Peña, Luis Garcia again Jake Meyers are among their other players who are eligible for arbitration. Houston has a lot of commitments before deciding to re-sign Alex Bregman, Justin Verlander and the last day Yusei Kikuchi. There will be a lot more on GM Dana Brown’s plate next winter, but owner Jim Crane has shown wisdom in entering the second phase of the luxury tax penalty this year in pursuit of an eighth straight trip to the ALCS and beyond.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.
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