How Can Chas McCormick Bounce Back for the Astros in 2025?

Chas McCormick was livin’ large in the summer of 2023. A 145 wRC+ in June. A 206 wRC+ in July. A 127 wRC+ in August. 

For a former 21st-rounder who signed for $1,000 in 2017, he was looking like one of baseball’s best stories and another notch on the belt of the Houston Astros’ development system. Over 115 games in 2023, he put together a slash of .273/.353/.489, recording 3.6 bWAR with 22 homers and a 130 OPS+. That’s a five-win pace with roughly 31 homers over a full 162.

For context, Julio Rodríguez finished fourth in the AL MVP voting in 2023. He hit 32 home runs, put up 5.2 bWAR, and had the exact same OPS+ as McCormick: 130. 

McCormick’s out-of-nowhere breakout led some to speculate about possible regression in the future. But a 2024 season that brought on a demotion to Triple-A in August wasn’t the type of regression most people, including the Astros front office, expected. 

Can Chas McCormick return to form for the Astros in 2025?

Why Did McCormick Struggle Last Year?

With a funky, inside-out style swing that lends itself to lots of hits up the middle and the opposite field, McCormick made a dramatic adjustment in 2023 that led to the biggest power output of his career: He started pulling the ball.

McCormick only pulled 3.4% of his fly balls in 2022. That’s almost hard to believe and honestly seems harder to do than pulling the ball regularly. Out of the 87 fly balls he hit that season, only three went to left field?

It makes sense the Astros wanted him to make adjustments to start pulling the ball more often, not only to take advantage of the Crawford Boxes but to increase his power potential in general. He pulled 20.4% of fly balls in 2023, a major increase that most likely warranted a complete overhaul in his approach, swing and hitting philosophy.

Along with his newfound penchant for the pulled fly ball, McCormick also crushed pitches on the inside half of the plate in his 2023 breakout year, slugging .732 and .750 in the inside-middle and inside-low sections of the zone, respectively. 

Yet, 2024 was a weird year for McCormick approach-wise. It was almost like his bad start to the season caused him to revert to aspects of his old approach while developing bad habits in the box. 

While he lowered his percentage of hits to the opposite field for the second consecutive year in 2024, and his percentage of pulled hits remained relatively high at 24.1%, he only hit fly balls to the pull side 12.7% of the time.

Meanwhile, the inside part of the plate, a source of his strength in 2023, was his biggest weakness in 2024. He slugged just .346 and .333 in the same locations where he slugged above .700 the year prior. 

McCormick also managed to put up a few career highs and lows in 2024 in categories you don’t want career highs or lows in, which could’ve contributed to his failure to cover the inside part of the plate. He swung at 74.4% of pitches in the zone and 33.6% of pitches outside of the zone. He also swung at the first pitch 43.5% of the time and walked in only 6.4% of his plate appearances.

McCormick just swung all year long.

He was never known for his excellent approach in the box, but 2024 clearly saw him adopt a bad one.

Can McCormick Bounce Back?

McCormick came into 2024 with bigger expectations and major adjustments to maintain. He then missed three weeks in May because of an injury and received sporadic playing time throughout the summer in favor of Mauricio Dubón, who was at one point hitting close to .300 in July.

When a player completely changes the way they’ve been playing baseball like McCormick, it’s expected that there will be bumps along the way. McCormick didn’t have many bumps in 2023. As Matthew McConaughey would say, he was catching green lights – and a lot of them. 

It’s possible that those adjustments caught up to McCormick in 2024, because in some of his at-bats, he just looked flat-out confused. 

Despite the bad season from McCormick, Astros GM Dana Brown said earlier this offseason that McCormick has the runway to rebound, so the outfielder isn’t going anywhere; he’ll get his opportunity to prove 2023 right and prove 2024 wrong. 

McCormick’s approach and swing looked lost last season, but a guaranteed spot in the starting lineup might be the gesture of confidence he needs to calm it down at the plate and start seeing the ball a little bit slower again. 

Is This Just Who Chas McCormick Is Now?

Some of McCormick’s expected numbers in 2023 suggested regression was coming, so maybe he just caught a little magic in 2023.

Even if he puts together the best season he can in 2025, he likely won’t be mentioned in the same sentence as the aforementioned Julio Rodríguez. The only way he’ll probably make an All-Star team is if hell freezes over and fans vote him in. He probably won’t even sniff the top five spots in the Astros lineup if everyone is rested and healthy.

But he’s not ‘66 OPS+’ bad. He’s not ‘get sent down to Triple-A in August’ bad. He can be an above-average regular on a team that will contend for a division title. With the top half of Houston’s lineup looking like a force even without Kyle Tucker, maybe McCormick can exercise more of the patience and swing decisions that led to his breakout in 2023 and start to cover the inside half of the plate more effectively. 

You don’t finish a year with a higher OPS+ than Adley Rutschman, José Ramírez, Ketel Marte and Rafael Devers if there’s not a part of you that has immense talent – it’s just a matter of McCormick refining down his approach and getting it back to basics. 

Don’t expect Chas McCormick to shock the world this season, but expect him to be Houston’s everyday right fielder – someone manager Joe Espada can pencil into the lineup 140 times throughout the season and not think about it too hard.