The Future: Brice Matthews
Flashes of power at the Big League level with too much swing and miss
Each Winter, I reach out to Kenny Van Doren of Astros Future (I highly recommend the podcast) for players who have the potential to help the Astros in the coming season.
No one knows more about Astros prospects than Kenny.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing the names Kenny shared with me, some of whom you’ve read about here previously, along with a few new names.
Dana’s First
This year’s list begins with a familiar face, not only because he debuted in 2025 for Houston, but Brice Matthews was Dana Brown’s first pick as the Astros GM.
We’ve profiled Matthews several times, and there’s not really a need to go over all that again, but here’s the synopsis:
A good athlete with speed, Matthews drives the ball in the air with raw plus power, but has too much swing and miss.
Swing and miss matters across a 162-game season, especially for a team looking to push across more runs like the Astros need to do to remain competitive.
We saw all of that in Matthews’ debut with the Astros last summer when he connected on 4 homers and slugged .452 in 42 at-bats, while playing a pretty sound second base.
The problem was that Matthews had only three other hits besides those four homers and finished with a .287 wOBA, 83 wRC+, 42.6% K rate, and 0.1 fWAR.
In his short MLB stint, Matthews struggled with the Fastball, in particular the four-seamer, hitting .071 on that pitch.
When he hit it, it was hard and far, but that didn’t happen often enough.
Still, I was encouraged as Matthews’ defense was solid and his sprint speed was in the 86th percentile.
I’ve seen Matthews in person with Corpus and Sugar Land multiple times and haven’t come away wowed by his tools, mostly because of the swing and miss discussed above, but he has made plays in the field.
2026 Outlook
Matthews is ranked as the top Astros prospect at MLB.com, but Fangraphs does not include him on the 26-man roster on their Roster Resource tool, opting to slot the recently acquired Nick Allen as the utility player.
That could be because Allen has 0 options remaining and we all know how the Astros have handled these situations in the past.
Or Allen can be viewed as more versatile at this point, not to mention a better fielder, after recording 17 OAA last season in Atlanta, albeit at shortstop.
That makes sense to me on some level, but Allen has just 230 more MLB innings at second base than Matthews and barring an injury to Jeremy Pena, that will be the position of most need.
With Mauricio Dubon traded to Atlanta (for Allen) and Jose Altuve in need of defensive relief, 2026 is a pivotal season for Matthews, whether he starts the season in Houston or Sugar Land.
It’s a situation where Matthews offers more upside offensively, with power and speed (41/52 SB at Sugar Land in 2025) that Allen just doesn’t have, but the Astros approach seems to be let Matthews play every day at AAA and work on his bat-to-ball skills (139 K in 498 PA in 2025).
Allen could be the day-to-day utility infielder, but if the need arises for a more lengthy stretch at second base, look for Matthews’ name to be called.
Thanks for reading!