{"id":641833,"date":"2026-03-25T02:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/641833\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T02:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:00:30","slug":"astros-to-select-christian-vazquez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/641833\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros To Select Christian V\u00e1zquez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Astros are going to open the season with Christian V\u00e1zquez<\/a> as their backup to catcher Yainer Diaz<\/a>, manager Joe Espada tells Matt Kawahara of The Houston Chronicle<\/a>. He had been in camp on a minor league deal. C\u00e9sar Salazar<\/a> has been informed he won\u2019t make the team. Since Salazar is out of options, he\u2019ll need to be removed from the 40-man, which means he\u2019ll be traded or placed on waivers in the coming days.<\/p>\n

V\u00e1zquez, 35, has over a decade of big league experience under his belt. He\u2019s probably not going to provide much offensively at this point in his career. He has had some good performances with the bat before but has a combined .215\/.267\/.311 line dating back to the start of the 2023 season. That\u2019s why he had to settle for a minor league deal coming into 2026. He was playing for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic at the time of that pact. He put up a flat .250\/.250\/.250 line in that tournament and then slashed .222\/.364\/.222 in 11 spring plate appearances with the Astros.<\/p>\n

But he is considered one of the better defensive catchers in the game. He\u2019s been credited with 64 Defensive Runs Saved since the start of 2014, his debut season. Only three other catchers are ahead of him in that category. One of them is Buster Posey<\/a>, who retired long ago and is now running the Giants\u2019 front office. Another is Roberto P\u00e9rez<\/a>, who hasn\u2019t played in the majors since 2023. The other is Austin Hedges<\/a>. V\u00e1zquez generally ranks near the top of framing leaderboards as well.<\/p>\n

The Astros are known as an organization that values catcher defense, as they have often rostered glove-first guys like Jason Castro<\/a> and Mart\u00edn Maldonado<\/a>. They acquired V\u00e1zquez at the 2022 deadline and went on to win that year\u2019s World Series, after which V\u00e1zquez signed a three-year, $30MM deal with the Twins. That deal didn\u2019t really pan out the way the Twins hoped due to the aforementioned decline in his offense but V\u00e1zquez still has enough of a reputation to get back to the majors with Houston.<\/p>\n

Rostering V\u00e1zquez means the Astros may be ending their relationship with Salazar. He has appeared in 36 games for the Astros over the past three years, putting up a .232\/.318\/.268 line in 67 plate appearances. He was considered a strong defender as a prospect but has only been able to log 143 2\/3 innings behind the plate as a big leaguer.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, he is out of options, meaning he can\u2019t be sent to the minors unless he first clears waivers. It\u2019s possible some other club could be interested. He does have the aforementioned strong defensive reputation. He hasn\u2019t hit much in the majors yet but has a .238\/.369\/.389 line and 113 wRC+ at the Triple-A level dating back to the start of 2024. If any club were to pick him up, he could be controlled for another five seasons and is also two years away from qualifying for arbitration.<\/p>\n

If he were to clear waivers, the Astros could keep him as non-roster depth. He doesn\u2019t have three years of service time and doesn\u2019t have a previous career outright, so he wouldn\u2019t have the right to elect free agency. The Astros would probably be happy if that happened, as they don\u2019t have any other catchers on their roster. Carlos P\u00e9rez<\/a> is their only non-roster backstop with big league experience.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Troy Taormina, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Astros are going to open the season with Christian V\u00e1zquez as their backup to catcher Yainer Diaz,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,2263,1250,139,54,3211,4],"class_list":["post-641833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-cesar-salazar","tag-christian-vazquez","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116287349152440101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}