HOUSTON — In search of a spark amid an awful start to their season, the Astros will promote power-hitting prospect Joey Loperfido to the major leagues on Tuesday, multiple sources told The Athletic on Sunday night.
Loperfido leads all of professional baseball with 13 home runs, including the solo shot he launched during Triple-A Sugar Land’s 10-5 win on Sunday. Loperfido finished the game 2-for-3, raising his OPS to 1.106 after 101 at-bats during a remarkable April.
Loperfido has played just 57 games and taken 220 at-bats above Double A, but forced his way onto a Houston roster in obvious need of a spark. He will join the team on Tuesday before its series opener against the Cleveland Guardians at Minute Maid Park The Astros have a scheduled day off Monday.
Loperfido’s arrival could cause a shakeup at first base, where the Astros’ barren production is becoming too brutal to ignore. Houston’s first basemen entered Sunday’s game with a .390 OPS and worth minus-1.3 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs.
Pitchers have nightmares about this man.
Joey Loperfido’s 13th home run of the season leads all of professional baseball 👏
📏 428 FT pic.twitter.com/XlxF821Azm
— Sugar Land Space Cowboys (@SLSpaceCowboys) April 28, 2024
Already 10 games below .500 and six games back in the American League West, the Astros could not afford to maintain the same setup of splitting time between José Abreu and Jon Singleton.
Loperfido should immediately factor in at first base — he started seven games there in Triple A this season — but can also play all three outfield spots. Team officials viewed him as a more natural outfielder in spring training, but began exposing him to first base at the beginning of the minor-league season.
“The athleticism plays well there,” said one opposing scout who watched Loperfido play first base. “The nuance will take some time but he’s got a chance to be plus at first base. His most general value will be in the outfield, but his most value to the Astros will be at first base.”
After finishing Sunday’s game 0-for-4, Abreu owns a .269 OPS across his first 71 at-bats. Singleton has a .605 clip, but may be in more danger of losing his roster spot. Loperfido, like Singleton, hits left-handed and would profile as an upgrade in both versatility and overall upside with some above-average speed.
Abreu is performing far worse but just began the second season of a three-year, $58.5 million deal that’s difficult to envision owner Jim Crane paying down this early in the season.
No precedent exists in Crane’s ownership tenure for this situation. At the time it was signed, Abreu’s deal was the largest free-agent contract Crane had ever given. None of the club’s other free-agent contracts in this golden era have aged this poorly, either.
Team officials have continued to echo hope that Abreu can engineer a turnaround like he did toward the end of last season, but there isn’t the luxury of much time for it to manifest.
Cutting ties with Singleton — who is out of minor-league options — or optioning seldom-used utilityman Grae Kessinger to Triple-A would provide a short-term roster fix, but questions around Abreu’s viability would still persist.
Houston selected Loperfido out of Duke in the seventh round of the 2021 draft. He won the organization’s Minor League Player of the Year award last season after slashing .278/.370/.510 with 55 extra-base hits across three levels of affiliated ball. The Athletic’s Keith Law ranked him as Houston’s No. 6 prospect before the season.
The performance last season earned Loperfido his first invitation to major-league spring training, where his professionalism, power and, yes, paella wowed the team’s coaching staff and clubhouse.
Loperfido hit .400 in 32 Grapefruit League at-bats while showing some improved strike-zone discipline and success against left-handed pitching.
Loperfido never had a realistic chance to break with the team, but remained in major-league camp until the team’s final day in Florida. In a meeting that morning, manager Joe Espada told Loperfido he would factor into the major-league team’s plans this season but, in Loperfido’s words, “it just wasn’t my time right now.”
Twenty-eight games in, it’s arrived.
(Photo: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
