Astros split the series with the Brewers

Astros daily report presented by APG&E: 3 hits from the 6-3 loss

Chris Campise
Jun 12, 2019, 11:26 pm
Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images

After powering past the Brewers in the first of the two-game series, the Astros looked to get the mini-sweep on Wednesday night with Justin Verlander on the mound. Yordan Alvarez also sought to continue providing impact power in his third time in the lineup. Here is a quick rundown of the game:

Final Score: Brewers 6, Astros 3.

Record: 46-23, first in the AL West.

Winning pitcher: Adrian Houser (2-1, 2.49 ERA).

Losing pitcher: Cionel Perez (1-1, 5.40 ERA).


1) Verlander battles against the long ball while fanning career-high 15 

One of the few blemishes on an otherwise great start to Justin Verlander's season: home runs. Verlander allowed a solo home run in each of the first two innings, making it 13 of his 15 starts that he has allowed a home run this season. He'd sit on the hook with the Brewers up 2-0 until the bottom of the fourth when Houston's offense was able to give him a lead.

He worked well with that lead through the middle innings, dominating the Brewers and allowing just one hit in the third through sixth innings. He had struck out six in a row before getting tagged with the third solo home run of the game in the top of the seventh, allowing the Brewers to tie the game 3-3.

Still, if you exclude the three solo home runs, he had a dominant night including hitting a new career-high in strikeouts. However, the three home runs would keep him out of contention for the win as his night ended after seven innings. Verlander's final line: 7 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 15 K, 3 HR.

2) Astros get some two-out magic in the fourth

In a 2-0 hole and with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, the Astros were able to string together some baserunners and take advantage to get on the board and take their first lead of the night. Yuli Gurriel started the sequence with a two-out single, followed by Yordan Alvarez who worked a walk.

Robinson Chirinos scored one on an RBI-single to cut the lead in half at 2-1, then Tony Kemp hit a ball that snuck into the left-center field corner around the Crawford Boxes to score two more and make it a 3-2 Houston advantage.

3) Bullpen holds Brewers back until the fourteenth

Ryan Pressly took over for Verlander to pitch the eighth inning, a scoreless frame with two strikeouts to keep the game tied at 3-3. After coming away empty-handed in the bottom of the eighth, Roberto Osuna took the mound for the top of the ninth to try and keep the game tied to the bottom of the ninth. He did so, but not without baserunners after he allowed two singles to put runners on the corners with one out, but was able to get back-to-back strikeouts to keep the Brewers from scoring.

That put the power in Houston's hand for the bottom of the ninth, but Milwaukee's bullpen would hold, forcing extra innings. In the top of the tenth, Will Harris provided another scoreless inning, retiring the Brewers in order. Myles Straw came in as a pinch-hitter to lead off the bottom of the tenth and worked a walk to get his speed on base. Straw looked to steal second base, but instead, a review overturned the call on the field, then a double play sent the game to the eleventh.

Josh James was the next arm out of the bullpen for Houston in the top of the eleventh and struck out the side, but the game would go on. In the top of the twelfth, Hector Rondon worked around a leadoff walk to keep the game tied, then still going in the thirteenth Cionel Perez came in and made it another 1-2-3 inning.

Perez would try to keep going in the fourteenth inning, but the Brewers would finally break the tie with a two-run home run and RBI-single to go up 6-3 which would go down as the final score to make the series a split.

Up Next: Houston will get their second day off this week with Thursday being another chance for them to rest. Friday they'll start a three-game series with the Blue Jays for Father's Day weekend. The first game of the series will be at 7:10 PM Friday and is expected to feature Gerrit Cole (5-5, 3.72 ERA) for the Astros opposite of Aaron Sanchez (3-7, 4.25 ERA) for Toronto. Cole will look to stay locked in after his seven-inning, fourteen-strikeout start last week.

The Astros daily report is presented by APG&E.

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BREGMAN UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

A deep dive into Alex Bregman's mechanics reveals something interesting

Here's what the data tells us about Bregman. Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images

Alex Bregman had a rough season in 2020 by his standards. He slashed .242/.350/.451 in 42 regular season games. His regular season included a trip to the 10-day IL for a hamstring strain he suffered in mid-August. His surface-level struggles continued in the postseason, where he slashed .220/.316/.300 in 13 games. However, that postseason sample size does include a tough luck game against the Tampa Bay Rays where he went 0-for-5 with five hard hit balls.

All-in-all, 2020 felt like a lost season for Bregman. He never really got going. He got off to a slow start, but he's always been a slow starter. Once he started to pick it up, he strained his hamstring, and he played poorly after returning from the hamstring strain. Then, he started to turn his batted ball quality around in the playoffs, but he hit into a lot of tough luck outs.

Hard Hit % - 33.6%

Barrel % - 3.9%

K% - 14.4%

BB% - 13.3%

Chase % - 18.1%

Bregman comes from the Michael Brantley school of hitters. He has elite plate discipline and elite bat-to-ball skills. This makes Bregman a fairly consistent hitter. That may sound odd considering his 2020 "struggles" but even an extended period of poor performance for him resulted in a .801 OPS and a 122 wRC+. If his valleys are still 22% better than the league average hitter, then that's a pretty reliable producer.

There aren't any alarming trends in Bregman's statistics. Yes, his K% was slightly up, his BB% is slightly down, but it isn't a massive difference in either category. His Chase % was up, but again, 18.1% is elite discipline. The biggest drop was in his Hard Hit%, where he fell from 38% to 33.6%. Even so, his average exit velocity only dropped .4 MPH, so there's not really a catastrophic trend here.

His .254 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) was low, but he's never put up really high BABIP numbers. In fact, his BABIP has gotten worse every year of his career, from .317 to .311 to .289 to .281 to .254. While his BABIP will likely spike back up next year, it isn't enough to be the difference between the 2019 and 2020 versions of himself. His xBA and xSLG weren't out of whack either. His .256 xBA isn't much better than his .240 AVG, and his .400 xSLG is actually worse than his .451 SLG.

Bregman is as forthcoming with his hitting mechanics, approach, and mental cues as any big leaguer out there. Here is what he had to say about his swing this year. This was a Zoom press conference with the media following the Astros game on September 25th against the Rangers.

Bregman says he wants to hit balls in the air to the pull side and on a line to the opposite field, but in reality, he was hitting flares to the opposite field and hitting them on the ground to the pull side.

The data mostly backs up that claim. In 2019, on balls hit to the pull side, Bregman had an average exit velocity of 90.7 MPH at an average launch angle of 16°, a 40% Hard Hit %, and a 16% HR%. Since Bregman has elite bat-to-ball skills, most of those metrics didn't change. In 2020, his average exit velocity was 90.6, essentially the same as 2019. His Hard Hit % was 42%, a touch better than in 2019. However, his average launch angle dipped from 16° to 11°, which contributed to his HR% dropping all the way to 9%. Bregman hit 47% of his pull side swings on the ground. In 2019, that number was 40%. He absolutely had less production to the pull side in 2020.

The data gets a little hazier going the opposite way when comparing 2019 to 2020, as Bregman actually performed slightly better to the opposite field in 2020 than 2019, but he also only had 20 batted balls to the opposite field all season. Considering the small sample size, it isn't worth diving too deep into the data.

He's right that most of the balls he hit that way were flares. He had an average exit velocity of 83.4 MPH with an average launch angle of 32°, but that's about the same as what he did in 2019. A lot of the statistical drop off comes from balls that were backspun rockets to the pull side in 2019 becoming top spinners or roll overs in 2020.

Bregman also performed horribly against breaking balls in 2020. He batted .150 with a .250 SLG against them in 2020. He had an 84 MPH Average Exit Velocity against them and whiffed 26.5% of the time against them.

It was a far cry from 2019, when he hit .265 with a .588 SLG, 87 MPH average exit velo, and whiffed 18% of the time.

Those numbers lend credence to his statement on his mechanics. It's tough for a hitter to have adjustability against breaking balls if he's blowing out his front side and pulling off of the baseball.

Bregman will spend the offseason working on these mechanical fixes and getting back to the hitter he used to be. If he's consistently hitting the ball in the air to the pull side next year, and he's performing better against breaking balls, then he should be right back in the mix for AL MVP.

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