Monday, March 17

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Every spring, vendors travel throughout the Cactus League and Grapefruit League and set up tables at each team’s facility to try to sell various goods to players like expensive jewelry and high-end suits, and, of course, to provide baseball equipment like gloves, bats and protective gear.

The biggest commotion in Astros camp came earlier this week when the players congregated around a table that featured customizable belts -- a rather new trend in uniform flair. Having colorful cleats and batting gloves and initials and flags on gloves is nothing new, but baseball belts have typically been pretty -- pardon the pun -- uniform.

Enter Matt Hadden, whose Texas-based company, Pioneer Belts, only recently started dabbling in baseball after decades of making weightlifting belts. Hadden’s company can put almost anything players want on belts, within reason. Among the most popular items are initials of family members, their own names or uniform numbers, flags, outdoors scenes and religious symbols. They come in all colors and several materials, including leather and alligator.

“They’re only really limited to their [players’] imagination,” Hadden said. “Obviously, we’ve got to stay in bounds with trademarks and that kind of stuff.”

Astros pitcher J.P. France jumped on the belt craze early, ordering a pair of custom belts last year. One of them is Astros orange with France’s glasses and mustache logo on the outside and Jeremiah 29:11 on the inside. France, an avid bowhunter, ordered more belts this spring.

“The ones that just got made, one’s going to have all of the antlered animals of North America -- moose, caribou, while tail [deer], mule deer and an elk,” he said. “I wanted to try to tie in my kids somehow. Liam is big into trains and dinosaurs so he’s going to have trains and dinosaurs on the inside and their initials are going to be on the inside.”

Mauricio Dubón also caught onto the belts last year and earlier this week delivered personalized belts to each member of the coaching staff. Dubón has several of his own, including an alligator skin belt and a gold belt he says matches the gold patch on his glove he got for winning the 2023 AL Gold Glove at the utility position.

“He sent a belt to [Kyle] Tucker and Tucker just had it in his locker and I said, ‘Whose belt is this?’ He said, ‘Some guy sent it to me,’ and I said, ‘What’s his Instagram?’” Dubón said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I want to order a belt. I’ll pay for it.’ … The belts caught on and the next thing I know I’m hooking everybody up with belts.”

Hadden’s grandfather started the company in 1979, selling weightlifting belts to high school football teams in Western Nebraska and Northern Colorado. Pioneer Belts expanded into baseball in 2023 through a relationship with the University of California baseball team. Last year, a cousin of Hadden who played at Texas A&M helped connect him with former Aggies pitchers Stephen Kolek of the Padres and then Bryce Miller of the Mariners.

“After speaking with them and getting a nod of approval there, we started sending lots of Instagram messages to players to get in touch with them to make belts,” said Hadden, who’s headed the company the past 13 years. “By the end of the 2024 season, we had like 65 big leaguers wearing them and into 2025 we will at least double that to start the season.”

Hadden said his belt company is the third-largest employer in the tiny town of Coleman behind the hospital and the school district. All the belts are made in Coleman. Hadden estimates he sells 70,000 belts a year and 69,000 are powerlifting belts.

“Baseball was never the plan, but it was such an easy transition from weightlifting,” he said. “All the stuff we do on these, we do on the weightlifting side. That’s kind of where we got our popularity from.”

The team provides players with elastic belts that have been standard on uniforms for years, but expressing yourself on your waistband is taking at least one clubhouse by storm.

“That’s the thing I like about,” Dubón said. “That’s the one thing we couldn’t customize and now we can do whatever we want.”

The Astros re-assigned No. 2 prospect Brice Matthews to Minor League camp on Thursday morning, but not without manager Joe Espada expressing how much progress he’s made in the last year. Espada said Matthews, a middle infielder, has grown up, has more confidence and is more aware of what it takes to be a big leaguer.

“I think he’s in a different place than he was last year,” Espada said. “I gave him my perspective, my view, my opinion about things he needs to work on. I like having the farm director [Gavin Dickey] in [his office] to be transparent about where he’s going to go play and the whole thing. I want to make sure he understands where he stands and how I feel about his future. I think Brice Matthews is a good player and is going to be a great fit for our team one day.”

Espada said second base is Matthews’ best position, though he’s likely to play some shortstop at Triple-A Sugar Land. The Astros, of course, will have somewhat of an opening at second base if they stick with their plan to keep Jose Altuve in left field most of the time. Matthews was 3-for-16 with a double and a triple in 10 Grapefruit League games. He struck out eight times and walked twice.

“He’s one of our best swing-decision makers in the organization,” Espada said. “He always finds himself in good hitter’s counts, but he needs to do some damage once he gets those pitches to hit. Especially at the Major League level, you don’t get that many opportunities to get pitches to hit. Once you get them, you better take care of business.”

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