This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

HOUSTON -- Hayden Wesneski was playing golf in The Woodlands -- a suburb north of Houston -- on Friday when his phone began to vibrate. He was rumored to be headed to the Astros as part of the team’s deal to send slugger Kyle Tucker to the Cubs, but Wesneski hadn’t heard anything official from either team.

Wesneski had been traded once already in his career -- from the Yankees to the Cubs on Aug. 1, 2022 -- so he understood that speculation often led to reality. He began to get butterflies at the thought of being traded to the Astros, the team he grew up cheering for as a kid in the Houston suburb of Cypress.

“I was getting text messages from friends, and I was like, ‘I haven’t heard a call yet, so I’m not assuming anything,’” he said. “I’m out here golfing, and I get a call from the GM of the Cubs. It was a really cool feeling. I’m so glad to be back in Houston. I have a house here. I’m so excited to be here. …

“When you’re an Astros fan, you grow up [wanting] to be an Astros baseball player. You don’t grow up to be a Braves baseball player or something. It’s just a dream come true kind of thing. I am excited to be an Astro.”

Wesneski was sent to the Astros, along with infielder Isaac Paredes and prospect Cam Smith (ranked No. 73 overall by MLB Pipeline), on Sunday for Tucker, the star outfielder who had made the American League All-Star team the previous three seasons. The Astros didn’t want to risk getting nothing for Tucker in free agency after next season and traded away an All-Star for the first time since they traded away Michael Bourn and Hunter Pence on consecutive days in July 2011.

Wesneski, 27, bounced between the Cubs’ rotation and bullpen the past three years, but the Astros told him he would be a starter. He’ll join a rotation that includes Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, Ronel Blanco and Spencer Arrighetti, another Houston-area product.

“We’re going to give him every opportunity to start,” Astros general manager Dana Brown said. “We also know he can go to the bullpen and be really good. We made this trade projecting he would be a starter. So we have him as a starter.”

Brown said the club has identified things Wesneski can adjust to help take his performance to another level. The Astros have been adept at changing arm slots, pitch usage or pitch angles to get the most out of their arms. The list of pitchers who have taken off in Houston includes Collin McHugh, Charlie Morton, Gerrit Cole and Yusei Kikuchi. Even Justin Verlander found another gear after coming to Houston in 2017, adding two Cy Young Awards to the one he earned with Detroit.

“As an Astros fan,” Wesneski said, “I’ve seen the Verlander comeback and him remaking his career. I saw the Gerrit Cole years. You’ve seen one guy after another come in and they figure it out, and that’s why they’ve won so much.

“I’m really excited to work on it. Don’t kid yourself. The Cubs were really good and are still good at what they do. Not to take anything away from them, but I am excited to work with the Astros because I have seen their work, as a fan, really close.”

Wesneski relies primarily on a sweeper (41% usage in 2024) and a four-seam fastball (37%), which averaged 94.6 mph. He also has a sinker, cutter and changeup. Wesneski missed two months last season with a cartilage issue but came back and threw games in relief September for the Cubs with no issues. He hit 96.9 mph in his final outing.

“We’re excited about it,” Brown said. “He throws 96; he’s from Houston. So I felt this was a good piece to add. There’s some upside here, as well. We have really good pitching people. We have identified some things we could adjust and tweak that could make him even better. And so we feel really good about Wesneski.”