Houston is off to a good start
Analyzing the 4-2 start to 2022 for the Houston Astros
Apr 15, 2022, 5:23 pm
Houston is off to a good start
After the extended offseason due to the lockout between owners and players, we have finally returned to regular-season baseball. Houston's year has kicked off with a nine-game road trip, with six of those in the book and the Astros sporting a 4-2 record.
Over that span, we've had our first look at the current rotation and different permeations of the batting order. Here are a few things we've learned in the very early goings of 2022:
There's no question that there were a lot of expectations on the shoulders of 24-year-old Jeremy Peña before opening day. He's been a bright spot so far for the Astros; despite going 0-for-4 on opening day, he has since had seven hits over twenty at-bats, including his first career homer in the second game of the season, where he had a three-hit performance.
Baseball is the best.
Jeremy Peña hits his first career home run during a live interview with his parents during the at-bat. pic.twitter.com/GWE6IfiIRT
— Houston Astros (@astros) April 9, 2022
He's also one of the few players that have been in the lineup all six games so far, as Dusty Baker has used the early part of the season to continue to ramp players back to normal, saying, "Whether you like it or not, I've said it repeatedly, we're still in spring training." Although Peña has one error so far at shortstop, he has otherwise been fine defensively, showing he's worthy of being the everyday shortstop in place of Carlos Correa.
.@JustinVerlander is back!
He starts his first game since 2020 with a strikeout of the AL MVP. pic.twitter.com/luYd1C72PF
— MLB (@MLB) April 10, 2022
Although a slow night at the plate behind him resulted in him starting the season with a 0-1 record, Justin Verlander's first start since 2020 was good against the Angels in Anaheim. He showed normal velocity and held Los Angeles to one run on three hits while striking out seven over five innings of work.
Like most pitchers in the MLB in their first start of the year, he was held to a pitch count of around 80, which got him through the five frames. His next start will be Saturday in Seattle against the Mariners, where he'll hope to get more run support to get his first win of the year.
Houston's pitching staff has done very well to start 2022, as they currently sit as the best team in the league with a combined 1.69 ERA. Framber Valdez was given the ball on Opening Day and provided the Astros a shutout performance over 6.2 innings but struggled in his second start. It took him 75 pitches to get through just three innings while allowing a run to the Diamondbacks.
Jake Odorizzi went four frames in his first start, giving up two runs but not factoring into the decision, Jose Urquidy had an efficient five-inning, one-run start on 72 pitches, while Luis Garcia rounded out the first trip through the rotation with four innings of scoreless pitching in Arizona in the fifth game of the season. The bullpen has also been impressive, with returning arms partnering with newcomers like Hector Neris and Rafael Montero, who have been solid additions thus far.
Lance McCullers Jr. was also able to play catch this week, showing a promising step towards returning to the rotation at some point in the future to bolster Houston's pitching staff further.
While a slow night at the plate resulted in the shutout that earned them the first loss of the year, the Astros have put up 4.8 runs per game in the other five, fueled in part by a strong 13-6 win against the Angels on a night when they had six homers. The other games haven't been to that same level, but they've also been essentially running a different lineup every day as players get days off.
Though starting the year off slow at the plate is not foreign to Houston, it's hard to tell if that's the case so far with such a small sample size of six games. Alex Bregman received AL Player of the Week honors after his hot start in Anaheim, looking like he is truly healthy and ready to get back into potential MVP conversations this year. Jose Altuve has had a rough go of things, currently sitting at a .150 average, while Kyle Tucker sits at .130 and Yordan Alvarez at .143, not the averages they'd hope for six games in. Let's not forget, though, that the Astros won't have their first home game of the season until Monday, which will be their first chance to take advantage of the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid Park. It's not time to panic just yet.
They may not have all been lopsided seven-run wins, yet all in all, the Astros would be more than happy to continue winning games at the 4-2 clip they have started the year with, as that would put them on track to have a 100-plus win season.
It’s go time! While the Astros are not the juggernaut they were over the more than half-decade stretch from 2017 through 2022 that yielded regular seasons with 101, 103, 106, and 107 wins, four American League pennants, and two World Series Champions, as the saying goes, they ain’t dead yet. There is no superpower in the American League West the Astros need to overcome. In fact, the American League as a whole is grossly inferior to the National League. As a result, a fifth Astros’ AL title in this era is not some absurd fantasy, though it is certainly unlikely. But winning the pennant is unlikely for every AL team, so if you’re a fan of the Astros there is nothing wrong with a “Why not us?” mentality. On the other hand, the floor for the 2025 Astros is lower going into a season than it has been in almost a decade. The lineup has numerous question marks, and if the terrific trio atop the Astros’ starting rotation (Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, and Ronel Bronco) runs into injury or performance issues the Astros would have serious problems. That the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners both finish ahead of the Astros is clearly plausible. Play ball!
Astros history lives in these moments
It is simple fact that time marches on, but it is still amazing that the Astros are beginning their second quarter-century of play at what for its first two seasons was called Enron Field, then for the past 23 seasons Minute Maid Park, and now Daikin Park. That’s 25 seasons in the books, at least 26 more to come, with the Astros a few years ago having extended their lease through 2050. In non-specific order, I have twenty easily come-to-mind most spine-tingling moments at the ballpark. If you want 25 for 25 years, I leave five more to you.
Not all spine-tinglers on the home field are generated by the home team. Here are three produced by visiting players. In 2001, Barry Bonds smashed his 70th home run of the season to tie Mark McGwire’s single season Major League record. We know what went into the home run numbers of that era, but it was still jaw-dropping stuff. Bonds would finish the season with 73 homers. Game five of the 2005 National League Championship Series, with the Astros one out from winning their first ever pennant, Albert Pujols launched a Brad Lidge hanging slider that might still be airborne if not for the glass wall above the train tracks. It may be the most instantaneous crowd delirium to utter silence moment ever. It turned a 4-2 Astros’ lead into a crushing 5-4 loss. But, the next game Roy Oswalt pitched the Astros to that pennant in St. Louis. Lastly, the second game of the 2013 season, Rangers’ pitcher Yu Darvish retired the first 26 Astro batters before Marwin Gonzalez smacked a ball through Darvish’s legs up the middle for a base hit. Soooooo close to a perfect game. Only 22 perfect games have been thrown in MLB’s modern era (1900-today).
Now to Astro achievements. Fudging a bit by including Roger Clemens since it’s not for one specific moment. But the Rocket’s starts with the Astros were events. Speaking of Hall of Famers, Craig Biggio’s 3000th hit is an obvious list-maker. Jeff Kent is not a Hall of Famer but he was better in the batter’s box than any second baseman elected after Joe Morgan. Kent won game five of the 2004 NLCS with a bottom of the ninth three-run bomb to end what had been a scoreless game. Alas, the Astros would lose the next two games and the series in St. Louis. The crowd went much wilder over Kent’s homer than over Chris Burke’s series-winning homer over the Atlanta Braves in a 2005 NL Division Series. Burke’s homer came in the 18th inning, so sheer exhaustion held down the decibel level a little. A sleeper for the list occurred earlier in that same game, when Brad Ausmus of all people hit a two-out game-tying homer to get the game into extra innings.
Four no-hitters have been thrown by Union Station. Working backwards: Ronel Blanco last season, Framber Valdez in 2023, a combined job started by Aaron Sanchez in 2019, and the first in 2015 by Mike....yes, Fiers.
And now to the grandest home park moments of this Platinum Era in Astros’ history. Carlos Correa authored two of them, each in a game two of the American League Championship Series. In 2017 he doubled home Jose Altuve with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. That came off of Aroldis Chapman who shall appear once more in this column. In 2019 Correa tied the series at one win apiece with a walk-off homer. Yordan Alvarez also gets a pair of entries. You know, Yordan hit just .192 in the 2022 postseason. But talk about making your hits count. In game one of those playoffs, ALDS vs. Seattle, it was a two-out three-run walk-off blast off of Robbie Ray to give the Astros an 8-7 win. Then in the final game of those playoffs, it was a sixth inning gargantuan three-run launch to dead center turning a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead.
That leaves four moments that are 100 percent non-negotiable entries. While not dramatic (4-0 final score), the payoff warrants inclusion of the Astros winning Game seven of the 2017 ALCS over the Yankees. Similarly, while the moment of victory lacked drama (4-1 final), how could one exclude the Astros winning the World Series on home turf in 2022. Finally, for my money the two most pulsating, goosebump-inducing, viscerally exciting moments at 501 Crawford Street. In one of the most scintillating games ever played in any sport, Alex Bregman’s bottom of the 10th inning single gave the Astros’ their epic 13-12 win over the Dodgers in game five of the 2017 World Series. Then in 2019, Jose Altuve’s game six homer ended the ALCS (I warned you Aroldis).
Here’s to the new season! Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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