3 Houston Astros MVP candidates, and 1 player who should be benched

Astros need to bench Martin Maldonado

Let’s start with the obvious — we know why Martin Maldonado is still on this team and why he hasn’t been benched already. The Astros pitching staff has a great rapport with the veteran catcher, teammates love him, and he’s a strong veteran in the clubhouse. Make no mistake, that stuff definitely matters.

But for a team with this roster, they can’t be giving up consistent easy outs when they get to the bottom of the order and, frankly, that’s what Maldonado is. He’s hitting just .186 on the season with an OPS of just .550 over 14 games this season and has totaled just 12 bases on the year.

Yes, that’s a small sample size for 2023, but it’s also just on par for the hitter that Maldonado has been for some time. The 36-year-old had the same .186 batting average for the 2022 season and hit an even-worse .172 in the 2021 season. He’s a net-negative when he’s in the lineup.

What makes this all the more painful is that one of the Astros top prospects, 24-year-old Korey Lee, is in Triple-A waiting to be called up. Yes, he might not hit for a great average either after hitting .238 for Sugarland last year, but he offers much more in terms of pop as he homered in essentially 1-of-4 games last season. That’s an asset if the catcher isn’t going to hit for average, an asset that Maldonado with 27 home runs over 238 games in 2021 and 2022 combined, doesn’t bring to the table.

In all honesty, benching Maldonado is probably not going to happen. But at some point, watching the veteran catcher flail way at the plate again and again is going to become too much of a problem to ignore while there is young talent in the organization waiting.