PRESSURE: Astros Push Cam Smith’s Limits as New Hitting Coaches DRIVE Change for 2026

PRESSURE: Astros Push Cam Smith’s Limits as New Hitting Coaches DRIVE Change for 2026

The GM meetings are over and it appears like Dana Brown has laid out his game plan for the off season and kind of lit a fire underneath a certain outfielder. We’ll talk about this and more on tonight’s Locked on Astros podcast. Yel Diaz, this is Locked on Astros. Hello and welcome to Locked on Astros, your daily Astros podcast. Here are your hosts, Eric the Man Heisman and Brett Htown Wheelhouse Chansy. We are Lock on Houston Astros and we hope that you join us for a daily lock on Astros podcast. My name is Eric Heisman. Brett Chansy is off tonight, but thank you for making Lock on Astros podcast your first listen. Locked on Astros is part of the number one podcasting network out there. locked on and thank you for helping us get there and we want you continue becoming every day or whether it’s um throughout the whole off season, regular season, hopefully back in the postseason back in 2026. But guys, go ahead and make us your first listen Apple Odyssey, Spotify, wherever you listening podcast, go and check us out and go ahead and subscribe to us on YouTube and between Brett and I, we have over 18 years of podcasting experience. So go and make us your first listen and and become everydayer and which is a cool thing to be. So uh today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just $5 and if your bet wins you can get $300 in bonus bets you use across the app. Uh download the app today and uh we’re going to go ahead and talk a little bit about the GM meetings. We’re going to talk a little bit about what Dana Brown had to say. The Astros have some new hitting coaches. We’ll go and talk about a little bit about what they bring to the Astros organization, a new philosophy, a new um kind of way of thinking and also what are the Astros plans for the outfield. And I know Brett kind of touched on a couple of things yesterday in terms of the they’re not going to trade any infielders and also um Hunter Brown and contract status. But we’ll go ahead and talk about what Scott Boris had to say about this situation. So much happened at the GM meetings. We’ll go and talk about this on this episode, but let’s go and start off by talking about the hitting coaches. We already know that they added Victor Rodriguez the other day as the hitting coach, but they go ahead and added two more additional hitting coaches. Uh Victor Rodriguez was a co of course he’s going to be the number one guy. He’s going to be the head hitting coach. And this is something that the Astros have not had. And of course, according to Dana Brown, he said, “In the past, we didn’t have a our number one truly defined. They’re kind of like co-umber’s.” I think these guys will all bring their own specialties. So, uh, you have Anthonyos. Uh, he’s going to be one of the guys. He has a lot of experience. We’ll talk about him in a sec in a second. But they’re also going to be promoting Dan Heine. Now, he is not somebody that’s going to be in uniform. You’re not going to see him in the field, but what he’s going to be is a le liazm uh between the minor league hitters because he has a lot of experience in um in the minor league organization. So, uh you’re going to see him communicating uh hey, this is what these hitters do. This is kind of their strengths. These are some of their weaknesses and this is what they need to work on. So, um, there he’s going to be H Hean is going to be kind of uh communicating this to Rodriguez and Euposce. So, um, Rodriguez comes from the, um, Padres’s. And this is what Dana Brown had to say about, uh, that he calls him Vic, but getting a guy like Vic Rodriguez, a veteran guy and number one hitting guy who’s worked with a lot of really good major league hitters, he’s going to be leading a charge. in the past we didn’t have our guys like I already said. Um so he’s um he also said I think Vic has a unique skill set tapping into the player psyche a lot of times and uh he’s got some good players in the past and he’s also talked about Ian Pose saying that he’s got a lot of energy and he’s got a lot of experience and uh he’s really good at working with some of the young hitters. And uh I was reading a story earlier about um after you post kind of struggled in the minor leagues. He never made it to past triple AAA. I think he kind of had a career 210 batting average in AAA. But uh he was kind of going through the coaching cycle and trying to figure out who he wanted to be. But he went back to kind of I believe it was Bronx or New York or some suburb out there where he used to play stickball and uh he took a picture of a uh basically a manhole and he said, “I remember this is where it all started, my love for the game.” And so he took a um picture of that. He was like, “Uh this this cab would be first base. This cab will this car over here will be third base.” And this is where it all started. This is where I started generating the passion for this game. So whenever I would get frustrated and not not really enjoy what I was doing or get frustrated and just get get pissed off and everything, I would just remember, hey, why did I fall in love with this game? And so even uh play with Ian Hap and uh Kyle Schwarber, he’s done this technique. Hey, where did it all started? And so he’s a good people’s person. So he’s going to bring a different uh thing that maybe Victor Rodriguez will not bring. So I think what you’re going to see them do is they’re going to try to bring a different philosophy, a different thinking u style here because these are all veteran guys. These are guys that well not all of them are veteran, but these are all big league players. They have their own quirks. They have their they all have their own techniques and stuff. So, a big league hitting coach, they’re not going to go out there and say, “Okay, this is how you swing a bat.” You’ve got to be able to look at what the hitters are doing and identify their weaknesses and say, “Hey, uh, Cam Smith, this is what we think you can do to improve what you’re doing. We think you’re a great player, but uh, really this is what you can do to improve it.” But uh Heinegan also will uh be help them from an analytical frame of mind because uh he’s really good at that data and preparing for game planning and it’s um it’s kind of going to be a whole different way of thinking. So instead of just having two guys and them both being in the clubhouse, you’re going to have kind of that third guy being a guy. Hey, here’s what the numbers say. Now y’all figure it out. And so it’s going to be kind of a threehead headed dragon here to try to fix the Houston Astros offense because you’re talking about an offense that was not terrible in 2024. It had a fairly good batting average. Yes, the runners in scoring position has been an issue for a couple years, but uh it kind of dipped last year. They ranked 21st in runs, 686, 16th in homers, 182, 26th in walks with 40 471, 11th in batting average with 251, sorry, 250, and tied for 14th no PS with 714. So, but the biggest thing was this what we’ve been kind of harping on all year. They’re 23rd in batting average with 245. And also they were near last with pitches seen per played appearance. So this is something that Dana Brown has been touching on all season. And uh Dana Brown said a big part of it is getting our guys to lock in on their pitch. Stay in the middle of the field. Stay in the middle of the zone. Be patient unless you get that type of pitch. Don’t swing at the pitch early. That’s right on the edges. I think we were doing that and got ourselves out with the early contact and it took away from our slugging percentage. We weren’t getting good pitches to hit. We were hitting pitches that are sort of out of the strike zone on the edges of the strike zone, but not in the middle of the strike zone. Our goal is to be more patient all the way up to two strikes and then try to get more pitches that we could do more damage. We got away from that. guys were just swinging on the edges and it showed in terms of slugging percentage. I think we can get back to that with some veteran leadership. So that’s why they’re bringing in Victor Rodriguez as the head guy uh uh as another guy and um then they’re going to have that three third guy kind of be the data guy. So, in other news, the Astros are promoting Connor Huff to the role of assistant general manager, replacing Andrew Ball. Huff was the club’s VP of business and business relations before. Um, they also need to add another pitching coach and a catching coach. So, this is stuff that we can go and continue talk about later on. And guys, thank you for making Lockdown Astros podcast your first listen. Next, we’ll go and talk about the outfielders plans. Basketball season is in full swing and you’ve got to go ahead and get out there for FanDuel. FanDuel is the best app out there. You from prop bets to parlays to just um outcomes of the games, whatever it is, just download the FanDuel app and there’s no better place to get in action on FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. 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Apple Odyssey, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcast, go and check us out. Part of the number one podcast network out there. Locked on. go ahead and become an everyday. Uh thank you for everybody that listens to us every day. And uh hopefully uh we can talk about a playoff team next year, a team that is consistent, a team that has a good rotation, are they going to add a big name arm? Are they going to go ahead and have a consistent outfield? There’s so many question marks. And Dana Brown kind of talked about this uh this offse during the GM meetings and he did kind of talk about Cam Smith. I know the big topic last spring training was the fact that Cam Smith he was he made the opening day roster with only 114 played appearances in triple in the minor leagues. So was he ready? but he still spent the entire regular season down with the Astros. So, um, is he going to be guaranteed the the everyday job in 2026? And Dana Brown essentially said, “No, he’s not guaranteed the everyday job.” He said, “The t talent is off the charts. He could be a star one day. We all know that. We saw glimpses of it last year, but we’re going to need to see him be more consistent.” So, we saw him like knock the cover off the ball in spring training. So, what happened? What happened last year that kind of um went he was this big slugger in spring training and all a sudden he just kind of became a just a guy. And so he said, “I would think that he comes back and tries to play with some more consistency and tries to make the necessary adjustment, but we have to be open to sending him back to TripleA if he has not turn uh turned a corner.” Sorry. Uh the veteran guys have done it. They have a track record. They’ve penciled in. The other guys, I feel like uh we have to let it play out. See who comes in hot and who owns it. There’s a lot to be said for guys that work hard in offseason and then make the necessary adjustments. We’re hoping that Cam does it? If he does that, we’ll be excited. So, the question is, will Cam Smith make that adjustment? And then D Brown went on to say, when he made the club out of spring training, he did a lot of damage to the opposite field. There are times during the course of the season where he became a little pull happy. We need Cam to stay up the middle and the opposite field. That’s what we liked about him when he made the club. So, all it is right now is about Cam Smith to make that adjustment. He didn’t really have the time to develop full bullying when he was down in the minor leagues. So, he’s going to have to do it this off season. Um, and he’s going to have to figure it out. If he’s not ready, they’re going to send the 22-year-old down to AAA. It’s going to be kind of weird that he spent the whole regular season last year with the Astros even when he wasn’t playing every day. They still kept him up there. They still gave him that that faith because I don’t know if if it was the PPI incentive. They’re like, “Hey, what if this guy he’s probably not going to get the rookie of the year votes, but what if he maybe kind of figures it out the next couple years and then uh just he finishes in top three MVP votes.” So, I don’t know if that will really happen, but who knows what happened. I don’t know why the Astros just let him kind of struggle and didn’t send down Triple A, but he is a mature 22-year-old. I see a lot of people on X basically um calling out Brown for uh saying this about Cam Smith, but I think he’s also doing this intentionally. He’s doing it because he wants to really motivate Cam Smith. Hey kid, we love you, but you’ve got to earn this job. You’re not guaranteed right field. And I think that message was sent at the end of last season one. He was not the everyday guy. And so Cam Smith knows this. He’s a smart kid. He’s not going to just be like, “Oh, yeah. I’m going to be all I’m I’m just going to go there and right field is mine.” The expectation is that it’s his. But Zack Cole, he put on the showing last year, so he’s going to be fighting for a spot. You got um Jake Meyers that’s probably gonna be playing. And we’ll talk about Jesus Sanchez in a second. Uh he’s probably got a spot. And then you got to play Yordan Alvarez, Jose Alt somewhere. So you got to have a spot for these guys. So that’s the question mark. Where do you find a place for all these guys? Especially with uh Dana Brown saying that they’re not going to be trading one of their infielders. Uh they definitely want to try to keep Iso Freddy’s and um Christian Walker. And um I know that there’s been a lot of speculations what that the twins were the ones that wanted Christian Walker, but um the Astros said no. Uh so I think the Astros really do like what Christian Walker has to offer. So I don’t think that uh this is what I’ve kind of been saying for the past uh for the past couple weeks is I just don’t see the Astros trading uh Christian Walker. um they’ll find a way to play all these guys. And I know Dana Brown kind of addressed as well. He said that there’s a way to rotate these guys. Um because you had Christian Walker play um 150 something games. Jeremy Pena played close to 150 games. Then you had a whole bunch of other players that are a little bit short. But maybe to avoid these injuries, you can go ahead and have more off days. That’s something that Dana Brown kind of alluded to. So, I think you’re going to see somebody like maybe Parades who can play um third base, he can play second base, he can play first base, he could be DH, you can rotate players into the DH position. So, there’s ways to make this all work, but uh apparently um according to Channel Rome, there are some teams that are interested in Jake Meyers, and I’m not surprised. He’s not gonna be a big power guy, but he for a team, he is a lowcost um major league player that could really help their offense. And he’s not going to be the big answer to anybody’s team. But, um, if you can go ahead and trade him and get maybe a future prospect or something in return or maybe even a reliever or a maybe a a pitcher that the Astros probably see something that they could develop, that’s something they could do. But it sounds like um they’re not really looking to trade Jesus Sanchez. I know Dana Brown said that we’re listening um if anybody wants to ask us about Jesus Sanchez, but that means that they’re likely not going to non-tender him. But who knows what’s really going on. So, I wouldn’t really look too much into all of this because this could be all just GM talk. This could all be just, hey, this is what I’m saying just to kind of um throw a smoke screen up and everything like that. So, what’s gonna happen? We don’t really know what’s going to happen, but um we do know that the Astros have a whole bunch of outfielders. They don’t have enough places to play them. So, they’re going to have to find some consistency from Cam Smith. They’re going to have to find some way to play Zack Cole. And if he’s going to be this guy that he was at the end of last year, it could have been just a a flash to the pan. He could just come up and just been a really hot player at that moment or he could be just guy that never produces at big league level again. So, we’ll just have to see which type of player he’s going to be. But, I think that will all be addressed in spring training. But the question is, what will Dana Brown do between now and then? But guys, when we come back, we’ll go and talk more about um the the GM meetings and what exactly happened there. Guys, thank you for making Lockdown Astros podcast your first listen every day. Hey guys, thank you for making Locked on Astros podcast your first listen every day. Whether it’s on YouTube, go and subscribe to us. Go and make us first listen. Apple, Odyssey, Spotify, wherever, wherever you listen to your podcast, go and make us your first listen. We are part part of the number one podcast network out there, Locked On. So, uh, thank you to everybody that made us help us get there to become everydayers. And go and subscribe to us on YouTube as we’re trying to reach uh 16,000 subscribers, then from there try to get to 20,000 subscribers. and uh we appreciate you listening to us on your way uh to work, at work, and on your way home from work. So, I know that Dana, not Dan Brown, I know that Brett kind of mentioned this yesterday on the podcast, but he was talking about a possible extension for Hunter Brown and that if he was Jim Crane, he would go ahead and do it. But um I guess the answer is would Hunter Brown want to do it? And we all have this illusion of Scott Boris. Is he going to allow a player do to do this extension? And we all know that Jeremy Pena also joined the Scott Boris organization uh in last summer as well or last um offseason as well. So the question is is this going to happen? But we know that um he finished third in the Sion voting last uh night and he’s probably going to make a he’s his value is probably a lot more than what’s going to he’s going to get. I know that MLB trade rumor projects him to get 5.7 million in his first round of arbitration. And um if you’re looking at what he did, he was 12 and N with a 2.43 43 RA. He struck out 206 batters and held opposing hitters to a 2011 batting average. Uh he was he finished behind Scooble and Garrett Crochet. So um Crochet finished ahead of Brown. I’m not surprised, but I thought that Hunter Brown would get a little bit more love than he did, but um it’s okay. So, um, we’ve seen the Astros invest in Lansome Colors. I know that was a, um, 5-year, $85 million deal. Lance McCullers was the bury me in the age type of guy. And unfortunately, health has kept him off the field for most of that time. They’ve also negotiated uh last year when Dana Brown came in, they negotiated with um Christian Javier to for extension for him, but with P and then he goes on the injured list. So um it seems like when they’ve done the extensions with the pitchers, it hasn’t really really gone their way. So, you could see how there’ll be a little bit of gunshy in terms of doing that with Hunter Brown, but Hunter Brown is a pretty pretty durable pitcher. He hasn’t missed a lot of time so far, knock on wood, but he’s a pitcher that um a lot of player teams will go out there and try to get if he reaches free agency. The Astros will definitely, if you’re thinking the Astros going to lose Valdez, the Astros will 100% lose Farmer Valdez once he reach reaches free agency. There may be a slight chance. I know that there’s some um talking heads out there that still think that Farmer Valdez may be coming back to Houston because no team’s going to give him what he wants except for the Astros. I still don’t see him coming back, but this is what Scott Boris had to say about the situation. Well, certainly Hunter’s new achieve stat the stature sorry now achieved the stature of Sai Young voting. He’s in a very special category performance that is among the Sai type pitchers. Dana is fully aware of that and certainly I’m sure they have a strong desire to keep him. What I always tell them will certainly listen to what they have to say. The question is, what does Dana Brown have to say? Or I guess better yet, what does Jim Crane have to say? Because as Brett said yesterday, it’s like they don’t want to spend the money. It’s not that they don’t want to spend the money. It’s just they’re gunshy about going a that malam for a pitcher and they don’t like going over five years because they have the business analytics that says that’s a bad investment. And unlike the teams like Steve Cohen with the Mets that are like, “Oh, it’s just monopoly money. I don’t really care.” And I know Brett mentioned the that MLB baseball is losing money. Yeah, of course they’re losing money because they’re overpaying these players, but that’s what the market is being set at and these teams are paying these players. So, and then you have teams that are not very good and you’re losing money there. Then you have these huge um salary teams and then they fall short in the playoffs and then their their um attendance is not as high as they expected. So yeah, you’re you’re going to be losing some money. So as the salaries continue to rise, you’re going to see that. But getting back to Hunter Brown, will the Astros do this? I’m sure that’s always been the philosophy. Boris says, “Hey, Dana, anytime you want to chat about Hunter Brown, hit me up. Anytime you want to chat about Alex Bregman, hit me up. Anytime you want to talk about Jeremy Pena, hit me up.” But that doesn’t mean they’re going to make a legitimate offer. So, who knows what happens here. Hunter Brown is one of those pitchers that some of the other guys the Astros have lost, I’m like, “Oh, whatever.” But Hunter Brown is that guy you build a rotation around. Farmer Valdez is not that. Yes, he’s a left-hander that has been good at times, but he is not that ace with his inconsistencies. He is not that ace. He’s not the guy you build a rotation around. He’s a nice asset to that team. There’s a reason why the Astros went out there and reacquired Justin Verlander because they needed somebody to lead that rotation last time. Prom Valdez is not really a guy and I think Promer Valdez grew up a little bit after the acquisition of Blander. I could be wrong, but um last year he was not terrible, but there was just some moments where he just looked like he had no control. And then you had the moments where he called out the offense, not the offense, sorry, the defense alignments in the outfield. Then you had the Cesar Salazar moment, which is inexcusable. That’s your catcher, dude. I don’t care how pissed you are with the situation. You don’t throw at your catcher and show them up like that unless he just did something. No, there’s no unless like you don’t do that especially in front of everybody. And credit to Joe Spatada and the rest of the Astros Clubhouse, they have not brought big attention to this. I know the media has tried. I know the fans have tried, but they have swept this under the rug because that was a bad look for the whole organization. So, who knows what really happened there, but not sure. Uh, Brown, is he going to be a long-term guy for the Houston Astros? I hope so. He’s just got one of those um builds. I just think that he will. Um, anything else? Um, so they’re probably a week out from hiring the pitching coach. Uh, they’re probably looking at uh the Pirates or Angels pitching coach to hire. So, I know the Angels pitching coach um is very big on analytics. I know you might think the Angels, they suck. Well, the Angels have this bad habit of not picking the best pitchers to bring on. and the Angels just haven’t been a very good organization for a little bit too as well. So, um but who knows? Um the something else that Dana Brown said they’re looking at at the moment is the return to play policy. Thank you. This is something that Click said to that you need to look at and you’re just now looking at it now. Come on. This is something that needed to be addressed a long time ago. Too many players are coming back too fast. Speaking of injuries, uh let’s go ahead and talk about some injury updates. It’s weird that we got it’s the off seasonason, we’re getting injury updates, but when Dana Brown is on the mic, I guess he’s like, “Well, I guess we got to go and talk about the injury updates.” Josh her has thrown off the mound three times and is progressing well. Jordan Alvarez is jogging at about 65 to 70%. and some of y’all thought that he was going to be playing in the postseason if the Astros made it, but he’s expected to be ready for spring training. Jeremy Pena and Jose Altuve are okay. They’re fine, so you don’t have to worry about them. Esso Parades is about 65% recovered from his hamstring injury. He’s probably going to be behind in spring training, but he’ll be reg ready for the regular season. But he did come back and play in post get try to play in the postseason if the Astros made it. He played at the end of the regular season but to help the Astros get there but unfortunately it fell a little bit short. But Dana Brown also said that they’re not trading Isoak Parades. He’s too valuable into what he does. Take pitches uh get the pitchers the pitchers pitch count up and he doesn’t chase a lot. So, there’s a lot to like about Esark Bradies. They’re going to find a place for him to play. They’re not going to trade him. They brought in Chris Walker for a reason. I don’t think they’re going to trade him, but it’s the off season. We never know what’s going to happen. Dana Brown Cook, let’s see what you could do. And guys, thank you for making Lockdown Astros podcast your first listen every day. Go and make his first listen on Apple, Odyssey, Spotify, and go and check out the MLB podcast with Sully. He does a great job talking about all of MLB if you can’t get enough. So guys, we’ll see you tomorrow and goers.

Houston Astros shake up coaching staff and ignite competition in the outfield as GM Dana Brown sets an aggressive offseason tone. Can Cam Smith rise to the challenge and claim his everyday spot, or will rising stars like Zach Cole and Jake Myers disrupt the expected lineup? New hitting coaches Victor Rodriguez and Anthony Iapose bring fresh philosophies to address last season’s inconsistent offense, while data-driven approaches promise to improve patience at the plate.

Eric Huysman breaks down potential Hunter Brown contract talks, Scott Boras’s influence, and Houston’s strategy for handling key infield assets like Isak Paredes and Christian Walker. Injury updates for stars like Yordan Alvarez and Jose Altuve suggest the Astros are gearing up for a playoff push, but lingering questions remain about roster rotation and future trades. Will Dana Brown’s bold moves propel the Astros back into World Series contention?

00:00 Astros Updates and GM Meetings

05:25 “Passion for the Game’s Origin”

06:33 Astros’ Offensive Strategy Revamp

11:29 Astros Offseason Questions Loom

14:36 “Cam Smith’s Path to Success”

17:37 Astros Trade Rumors and Options

23:59 Pitcher Contracts: Long-Term Hesitation

29:39 “Injury Updates and Recovery Progress”

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