2025 Projection: Hunter Brown
Hunter Brown was electric for three-quarters of 2024, but is that repeatable for 2025?
The numbers below seem low for a pitcher with back-to-back 11-win seasons and one that seemed to find himself last May.
A short refresher: After 6 starts last season, Brown was 0-4 with a 11.84 ERA.
From that point forward he was 11-5 in 24 starts, with a 2.51 ERA, 3.25 FIP, 3.33 xFIP, 3.3 fWAR, .218 opponents batting average, 49.1% groundball rate and 18 quality starts.
Simply put, for 75% of the season Brown was excellent.
While my projections are more conservative, the Steamer projections are at 11 wins with a 3.70 ERA in 29 starts.
Brown’s peripherals are generally good to excellent with a few exceptions.
Like most Astros pitchers he walks too many batters and Brown doesn’t induce enough chase.
On the other hand, his exit velocity decreased by 4.6 MPH year over year, and his HardHit% decreased by 14.1% and was in the top 3% of MLB.
Very few pitchers can dominate for 24 games the way Brown did from May 5th forward, much less for a full 30-32 start season.
Can Brown repeat the May to October renaissance of 2024 or will he regress back towards the more mediocre 2023?
How about somewhere in the middle? My bet is on a slight regression, but better overall numbers than 2023 and Fangraphs is right there with me, at least in fWAR, predicting a decrease from 3.1 in 2024 to 3.0 in 2025.
Projected fWAR: 3.0
Projected Win Shares: 6.5
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