Houston Astros Star Hunter Brown Best Pitcher in Majors After These Changes

Houston Astros pitcher Hunter Brown picked the right year to break out as one of the very best pitchers in MLB.

Co-ace Framber Valdez is set to test the free agent market this winter, and if history is any guide, he'll find a better offer somewhere other than Houston.

Should that happen, the Astros would still have a top-of-the-rotation arm on the roster to build their pitching staff around in Brown.

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This result was the hope as Brown moved up the ranks as one of the top prospects in the sport, but an up-and-down start to his MLB career called his ceiling into question a bit.

Instead, Brown went from a 5.09 ERA in 2023 to a 3.49 mark in 2024 to an MLB-best 1.74 this season. He's a legitimate frontrunner for the American League Cy Young award.

The obvious explanations for Brown's explosion are a better understanding of how to sequence and tunnel pitches and gaining experience in approaching MLB hitters the more he sees them.

Those all certainly play in, but in terms of how he's mixing up the pitches in his arsenal and how they're faring differently from the past offer numerous fascinating takeaways of what he's learned.

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All of the following insights come courtesy of Baseball Savant's Statcast data.

Increased Sinker Usage Against Left-Handed Hitters

Conventional wisdom is that pitchers should primarily throw two-seam fastballs and sinkers to batters whose hand dominance matches their own, as these pitches will run inside on those hitters, allowing them to miss barrels.

That was Brown's approach last year. In 2024, he only threw his sinker to left-handed hitters 61 times. It's not even July yet, and he's already sent it at them 96 times.

That's driven his overall usage of the offering up to 24.6% from 18.1%, and despite throwing it more often in what should be riskier situations, the pitch is faring better. Batters posted a .275 batting average against it last year, and that's taken a nosedive down to .238 in 2025

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Emergence of a Dominant, Putaway Curveball

One of Brown's biggest improvements has come in his strikeout rate, up from 9.5 to 10.8 year-over-year on a per-nine-inning basis.

That increase has largely been driven by a newfound effectiveness of his knuckle curveball.

In 2024, he threw it 12.5% of the time, earning whiffs 30.5% of the time and putting hitters away on two-strike counts 19.3% of the time.

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Both of those metrics have skyrocketed this season, as hitters are missing it on 40% of their swings and striking out when they see it in two-strike situations 27.8% of the time, and Brown is throwing it more often at a 17.6% clip.

The batting average against on the pitch has plummeted from .237 to .140. The change in slugging percentage on it is even starker— from .421 to .158.

It was his most gettable pitch in terms of being driven for extra base hits last year, and it's borderline untouchable in 2025.

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