After a 31-35 record in the second half — including six losses in their final nine games — plummeted the Houston Astros all the way out of the postseason, it was a given that big changes would be coming. This is a team that had made the playoffs in each of the last eight seasons, winning their division in seven of them (not to mention two World Series titles). To not even make it to October at all was unacceptable, especially after acquiring Carlos Correa and more big-name talent at the trade deadline.
And sure enough, it was only a matter of days before heads started rolling. GM Dana Brown and manager Joe Espada seem safe for now, but both the front office and coaching staff are going to look very different by the time 2026 rolls around. The headliner? Hitting coach Alex Cintron, who The Athletic's Chandler Rome reported had been let go on Thursday.
The Astros are parting ways with hitting coach Alex Cintrón, sources tell @TheAthletic, and more changes are expected on Houston's coaching staff - https://t.co/R8Hk1MBOza
— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) October 9, 2025
That sound you hear in the distance is every Astros fan in the greater Houston area rejoicing simultaneously. Cintron had become if not the primary scapegoat for the team's collapse then something very close to it, and it's not hard to see why: Houston was legitimately one of the worst offenses in baseball down the stretch of the 2025 season, with a .685 second-half OPS that was the sixth-lowest in the league — ahead of only the Cardinals, Angels, Pirates, Guardians and Nationals. No wonder the Astros had a hard time winning games.
You can hardly blame Astros fans for taking this as a win. This lineup was exasperating to watch for much of the year, and Cintron is the man ostensibly in charge of helping them put together quality at-bats. But while the hitting coach certainly does bear some responsibility for, you know, hitting, we'd caution anyone expecting this move to be the cure to what's ailed Houston's offense of late. Because whoever the Astros hire next is going to have largely the same players to work with, and it sure seems like that's the real problem this team faces.
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A new hitting coach won't be enough to fix what's broken with Astros offense
You don't have to search too hard to find what went wrong with the Astros at the plate this season. For starters, they were miserable against right-handed pitching, with a .706 OPS against righties that ranked 23rd in the league. And when you look at their lineup, it's not too hard to figure out why: Hardly any team gave more at-bats to right-handed hitters this season than Houston did, leaving them at a platoon disadvantage all too often.
Sure, Yordan Alvarez's injury didn't help matters there, and the trade for lefty-swinging outfielder Jesus Sanchez should help. The problem is that we just named 100 percent of the left-handed hitters currently slated to be in the Opening Day lineup next spring. That's untenable lineup construction, and there isn't much Cintron or any other coach can do to mitigate its effects.
But it's not just that Houston is heavy on right-handed hitters. It's also the type of right-handed hitter they've made a habit of acquiring. The Astros were one of the most swing-happy teams in the league this past season, with the fourth-lowest walk rate in baseball and the second-highest chase rate on pitches outside the strike zone. (The highest? The Rockies, which is never good company to be keeping.) Yainer Diaz, Jeremy Pena, Mauricio Dubon, Cam Smith, even Jose Altuve — all of them brought hyper-aggressive approaches to the plate.
That aggression didn't manifest itself in strikeouts, but it did in terms of quality of contact. Only the Brewers had a higher soft-contact rate this season than the Astros, and at least Milwaukee made up for it with among the league's best walk rates and athleticism all over the diamond. If you want to fix what's broken with Houston's offense, you need to start by fixing the approach.
The problem is that the team has known this is a problem for over a year now; Brown said as much in his year-end interview last season, saying that it was a priority to chase less and command the strike zone more. The result? Somehow things got even worse in 2025, which sure seems to suggest that this is a player problem rather than a coaching one.
Maybe a new voice will finally foster a different approach at the plate. But it seems far more likely that this is just who players like Altuve, Pena and Diaz are, and while the return of more patient hitters like Alvarez and Isaac Paredes should help, the problem largely is what it is at this point. These are Houston's core hitters, guys that they've more or less married themselves to. Getting rid of Cintron was a lot easier, but don't expect a different result.