THE PALLILOG
Here’s how roster pressures, pace of play will uniquely impact Astros outfield
Mar 2, 2023, 6:42 pm
Kyle Tucker is poised to have a big year. Composite image by Jack Brame.
It’s just one week of spring training games but so far, so GREAT for Major League Baseball’s pace of play rules changes. Of course there has been grousing from some over the pitch clock. 100% customer or player satisfaction is impossible. Most people are creatures of habit and for some change is more difficult than for others. Well, suck it up buttercups! In AAA last year the average game length dropped 25 minutes. So far in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues average game length has dropped by more than 20 minutes.
Time cops
For the Astros the apparent most significant adjustment to be made was for Luis Garcia with his elaborate windup banished to the archives. Garcia had zero problem adapting in his first outing. Kyle Tucker didn’t go on a rant but he’s the Astro who has expressed the most dissatisfaction about the timer to this point. One suspects he’ll be just fine. Maybe Tucker is a tad grumpy after losing his salary arbitration case. Think positively Tuck. 20-minute shorter average game lengths get you home sooner to your new fiance! Batters are allowed one timeout per plate appearance. That’s plenty. Stepping out of the box, adjusting batting gloves, rubbing more dirt on one’s hands, or contemplating the meaning of life after every or every other pitch is a tedious waste of time.
Perhaps a cranky Kyle will be extra locked in to start the season as he tries to strengthen his case for a contract extension worth a couple hundred million dollars. The last two years Tucker has been awful out of the gate. In 2021 he finished April with a woeful .181 batting average and a feeble .610 OPS. After going 0 for four on May 1, Tucker then played at an MVP level the rest of the season, batting .324 with a .996 OPS. Last year’s start wasn’t as miserable but was not better by leaps and bounds, with Tucker waking up May 1 with the average at .224 and OPS at .685. While his 2022 start wasn’t as bad as 2021, the rest of Tucker’s 2022 wasn’t nearly as good as the rest of his 2021 was. From May 1 of last season Tucker hit .263 with an .828 OPS which is plenty good but not 30 million dollars per season worth of production. Tucker is 26 and should be at about the peak of his physical talents. With merely a solid first month of the season at the plate, Tucker could have a monster 2023. He’ll be boosted by the maybe 10 hits he’ll pick up on balls he smashes that aren’t turned into outs by now banned defensive shifts.
Potential hidden bonus of snappier pace of play rules: maybe the wave gets washed away. Though somehow I doubt it.
Who's standing out so far this spring?
With time to kill and space to fill, the media inevitably overplays some spring training stories. Justin Dirden has six at bats so far this spring. Two of them resulted in home runs. He’s not the second coming of Kyle Tucker but see if this sounds familiar: Bats left, throws right. Plays right field but can slide over to center. Notable power. Turns 26 years old in 2023. Here’s a bit of a difference: Tucker’s signing bonus as the fifth overall pick in the 2015 draft, four million dollars. Dirden’s bonus as an undrafted free agent in 2020, 20 thousand. Injuries, a transfer year, and COVID ending the 2020 college baseball season early held Dirden to a paltry total of 79 games played over five years. But in the time he did play at Southeast Missouri State, Dirden mashed. The Astros signed him and then Dirden mashed in the low minors. Last year he scuffled at AAA Sugar Land, but that was after earning a promotion for his mashing at AA Corpus Christi. If Dirden becomes a legit sleeper to make the Astros, one factor in his favor is the left-handed hitting. Chas McCormick bats right and last year was spectacular against left-handed pitching, awful vs. righties. Dirden offers a platoon possibility that Jake Meyers and Mauricio Dubon do not.
College baseball in H-town
Minute Maid Park this weekend sees its last game action before the Astros get home from spring training. It’s a typically strong field for the annual Shriners Children’s Classic. TCU, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech are all in the Top 25 and here this weekend. Rice is the lone unranked Texas school in the field. Louisville is in the top 25. The Cardinals and Michigan fill out the six team field.
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With overnight temperatures dipping into the 20s this week in Houston, it seems good timing to have the warm thoughts of baseball being back, at least spring training games. The Astros have more shakiness about their squad than they have had in nearly a decade, but the Astros still have a nucleus of an American League West contender. With the exits of Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, it’s just a notably different nucleus than in recent years.
Jose Altuve is the last remaining mainstay of the greatest era in Astros’ history, and he is one of the biggest stories of their preseason as he for the time being at least is left fielder Jose Altuve. By every indication he is embracing the challenge with class and energy. The obvious impetus for test driving the move is the soon-to-be 35 years old Altuve’s defensive deterioration. It can be tough for the player himself to notice that his range has declined. The voiding of defensive shifts after the 2022 season shined a brighter light on Altuve’s D decline. Still, last season Altuve made his ninth All-Star team and despite also displaying some offensive decline remained the clearly best offensive second baseman in the American League. It’s part of the tradeoff of reducing the defensive workload on Yordan Alvarez, and hoping to upgrade defensively at second with some combo of Mauricio Dubon, Brendan Rodgers, or other.
The natural comparison in Astros’ history of a franchise icon losing his defensive spot and making a late-career position change is to Craig Biggio. Biggio’s All-Star days were behind him when the Astros moved him from second base to center field for the 2003 season because of the signing of free agent Jeff Kent. It spoke to the athlete Biggio was that at 37 years old he could make the move at all. After not quite a season and a half in center, Biggio moved to left when the Astros traded for young stud center fielder Carlos Beltran. Both Kent and Beltran left in free agency after the 2004 season, and Biggio moved back to second for the final three seasons of his career.
Second basemen are often second basemen and not shortstops in part because of their throwing arms. Altuve’s throwing arm will be an issue in left field. Even though Daikin Park has the smallest square footage of fair territory in Major League Baseball because of its left to left-center field dimensions, Altuve’s arm will be a liability. In understandably wanting to put an optimistic spin on things, manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown have talked of how Altuve will be able to get momentum behind throws more so than when playing second. That’s true when camping under a fly ball in the outfield. That is not true when Altuve will have to cut off balls hit toward the left field line, or cutting across into the left-center field gap. There will be balls that would be singles when hit to other left fielders that will become doubles when Altuve has to play them, and baserunners will go from first to third and second to home much more readily. As an infielder Altuve has always been outstanding at running down pop-ups, so there is reason to believe he’ll be solid tracking fly balls in the outfield. However, the reality of a guy who is five feet six inches tall (in spikes) is that there will be the occasional fly ball or line drive that is beyond his grasp that more “normal” sized outfielders would grab. Try to name a good outfielder who stood shorter than five-foot-nine...
Here’s one: Hall of Famer Tim Raines (also originally a second baseman) was (and presumably still is!) five-foot-eight.
Here's another: Hall of Famer Hack Wilson was five-six. Four times he led the National League in home runs topped by a whopping 56 in 1930 when he set the still standing record of 191 runs batted in for a single season.
And another: Hall of Famer five-foot-four “Wee” Willie Keeler. Who last played in 1910.
Just a bit outside
Another element new to the Grapefruit League in Florida (and Cactus League in Arizona) this year is the limited use of what Major League Baseball is calling the Automated Ball Strike System. The ABS is likely coming to regular season games next year. This spring will be our first look at its use in big league games. Home plate umpires making ball and strike calls will not be going the way of the dinosaur. Challenges can be made until a team is wrong twice. Significantly, only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge and must do so within two seconds of the pitch being caught. No dugout input allowed. No time to watch a replay.
The Astros’ spring park in West Palm Beach is not among the 13 facilities set up with ABS cameras. That seems silly given that the Astros share the place with the Washington Nationals. More use would be gotten from, and more data collected there than will be from a park with half the spring games played in it.
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