It's playoff time
Astros manager Hinch should not forget his bench in the postseason
Oct 2, 2017, 12:37 pm
Astros manager A.J. Hinch Jason Behnken / Getty Images
A.J. Hinch has forgotten more baseball than I’ll ever know but
Hinch forgot something back in the 2015 playoffs that I hope he remembers this time around: his bench.
I know in basketball, coaches shorten their rotation in the playoffs. Montrezl Harrell must have hit on Mike D’Antoni’s wife this past postseason. He did something to piss him off because he was not getting on the court no matter how many big men they were short.
I guess baseball is somewhat the same; at least it was for Hinch in 2015. Jose Altuve was bad that postseason. He hit a measly .154 (4-for-26 with just one walk and no extra base hits.) It was very un-Altuve, but he’s your cornerstone you ride or die with. You’re not taking that dude out of the lineup. Ever. So Hinch stuck with him hoping that at some point he’d pull out of his nosedive but that never happened.
With Evan Gattis, though, I don’t think you take that same approach. You will remember that Gattis came up with some huge hits for the club that year (the tomahawk chop homer to beat the A’s comes to mind). But unlike Altuve he is not a ride or die guy and he may have been worn out by season’s end. He had 566 at-bats -- second most on the team that year -- but he only hit .246 with a .285 on-base percentage. Those are not ride or die numbers and come playoff time he looked lost at the plate. He was 4-for-23, all singles and six strikeouts, some in critical situations. By Game 5 of the Royals series he was just plain overmatched.
Same thing for Luis Valbuena. He was a mere 3-for-17 and eight of those 14 outs were strikeouts. He did homer though in the postseason and that Astros team lived and died by the long ball that year. In the end though, it ended up killing them.
I remember wondering why Hinch wasn’t shaking it up to find someone who’d give them a spark. The history books are filled with the unlikely postseason heroes. For those of you that are a bit older, Mark Lemke and Aaron Boone come to mind.
You never know who will step up and do something that will live forever in playoff lore. Brad Ausmus’ homer in the bottom of the ninth to tie the Braves in game 4 of the 2005 NLDS was as astonishing as it was dramatic. Ausmus averaged a home run about once every 90 plate appearances. The likelihood that he would homer was about 1.1 %. Those are pretty long odds. Chris Burke winning that game in the bottom of the 18th was almost as surprising. He averaged a homer every 63 plate appearances which gave him a 1.6% chance of doing it. Add to that the pressure of the situation and the odds are even greater. But that’s the beauty of it. It’s not always the Bagwells and Biggios or Altuves and Correas that save the day. Sometimes it’s a Lemke or a Burke or an Ausmus. You just never know.
The point being that I hope Hinch shakes things up if he has to this postseason. He had Marwin Gonzalez, Preston Tucker and Hank Conger on the bench that series. Marwin only had three playoff AB’s and Tucker had two. Conger, a guy who was a big locker room presence, didn’t see the plate. I don’t know if they would have done anything special in large part because they never got the chance. We do know now that the stage isn’t too big for Marwin. He’s arguably their second most valuable player this year. He’s going to get his at-bats this postseason and deservedly so, but we will never know if this Marwin wouldn’t have begun his run back then with a big hit in a huge situation. Tucker was another guy who contributed but was relegated to the pine that postseason. In the regular season he hit 13 homers in 300 at-bats. Over the course of an entire season that would be 25 or more homers. And Conger hit 11 in 201 at-bats, some of them huge. He was one of the guys that everyone was rooting for because he looked like he was genuinely having a great time. That spark they needed to get past the Royals with one big hit may have been sitting right there but it never got the chance to ignite.
My hope is that if someone is worn out, struggling or lost at the plate that Hinch isn’t afraid to hit eject and find a Chris Burke who will step up and give the team a lift. Almost everyone on that team popped their playoff cherry in 2015 including Hinch. Hopefully he learned to use the whole bench if he needs to.
Now I’m not so sure that applies to Gregerson coming out of the bullpen…
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After finishing up with the Guardians the Astros have a rather important series for early May with the Seattle Mariners heading to town for the weekend. While it’s still too early to be an absolute must-win series for the Astros, losing the series to drop seven or eight games off the division lead would make successfully defending their American League West title that much more unlikely.
Since their own stumble out of the gate to a 6-10 record the Mariners have been racking up series wins, including one this week over the Atlanta Braves. The M’s offense is largely Mmm Mmm Bad, but their pitching is sensational. In 18 games after the 6-10 start, the Mariners gave up five runs in a game once. In the other 17 games they only gave up four runs once. Over the 18 games their starting pitchers gave up 18 earned runs total with a 1.44 earned run average. That’s absurd. Coming into the season Seattle’s starting rotation was clearly better on paper than those of the Astros and Texas Rangers, and it has crystal clearly played out as such into the second month of the schedule.
While it’s natural to focus on and fret over one’s own team's woes when they are plentiful as they have been for the Astros, a reminder that not all grass is greener elsewhere. Alex Bregman has been awful so far. So has young Mariners’ superstar Julio Rodriguez. A meager four extra base hits over his first 30 games were all Julio produced down at the ballyard. That the Mariners are well ahead of the Astros with J-Rod significantly underperforming is good news for Seattle.
Caratini comes through!
So it turns out the Astros are allowed to have a Puerto Rican-born catcher who can hit a little bit. Victor Caratini’s pedigree is not that of a quality offensive player, but he has swung the bat well thus far in his limited playing time and provided the most exciting moment of the Astros’ season with his two-out two-run 10th inning game winning home run Tuesday night. I grant that one could certainly say “Hey! Ronel Blanco finishing off his no-hitter has been the most exciting moment.” I opt for the suddenness of Caratini’s blow turning near defeat into instant victory for a team that has been lousy overall to this point. Frittering away a game the Astros had led 8-3 would have been another blow. Instead, to the Victor belong the spoils.
Pudge Rodriguez is the greatest native Puerto Rican catcher, but he was no longer a good hitter when with the Astros for the majority of the 2009 season. Then there’s Martin Maldonado.
Maldonado’s hitting stats with the Astros look Mike Piazza-ian compared to what Jose Abreu was doing this season. Finally, mercifully for all, Abreu is off the roster as he accepts a stint at rookie-level ball in Florida to see if he can perform baseball-CPR on his swing and career. Until or unless he proves otherwise, Abreu is washed up and at some point the Astros will have to accept it and swallow whatever is left on his contract that runs through next season. For now Abreu makes over $120,000 per game to not be on the roster. At his level of performance, that’s a better deal than paying him that money to be on the roster.
Abreu’s seven hits in 71 at bats for an .099 batting average with a .269 OPS is a humiliating stat line. In 2018 George Springer went to sleep the night of June 13 batting .293 after going hitless in his last four at bats in a 13-5 Astros’ win over Oakland. At the time no one could have ever envisioned that Springer had started a deep, deep funk which would have him endure a nightmarish six for 78 stretch at the plate (.077 batting average). Springer then hit .293 the rest of the season.
Abreu’s exile opened the door for Joey Loperfido to begin his Major League career. Very cool for Loperfido to smack a two-run single in his first game. He also struck out twice. Loperfido will amass whiffs by the bushel, he had 37 strikeouts in 101 at bats at AAA Sugar Land. Still, if he can hit .225 with some walks mixed in (he drew 16 with the Space Cowboys) and deliver some of his obvious power (13 homers in 25 games for the ex-Skeeters) that’s an upgrade over Abreu/Jon Singleton, as well as over Jake Meyers and the awful showing Chas McCormick has posted so far. Frankly, it seems unwise that the Astros only had Loperfido play seven games at first base in the minors this year. If McCormick doesn’t pick it up soon and with Meyers displaying limited offensive upside, the next guy worth a call-up is outfielder Pedro Leon. In January 2021 the Astros gave Leon four million dollars to sign out of Cuba and called him a “rapid mover to the Major Leagues.” Well…
Over his first three minor league seasons Leon flashed tools but definitely underwhelmed. He has been substantially better so far this year. He turns 26 May 28. Just maybe the Astros offense could be the cause of fewer Ls with Loperfido at first and Leon in center field.
Catch our weekly Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast. Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and I discuss varied Astros topics. The first post for the week generally goes up Monday afternoon (second part released Tuesday) via YouTube: stone cold stros - YouTube with the complete audio available via Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.