CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS
How the 2022 Houston Astros stack up against previous World Series teams
Oct 4, 2022, 4:29 pm
This year's club is leaning on their pitching. Composite photo by Brandon Strange.
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The end of the regular season is here and the 2022 MLB playoffs are about to take off. For the Houston Astros, another strong 100+ win season has them sitting atop the American League, meaning the road to the World Series in the AL will have to go through Houston.
The Astros are no strangers to postseason success. They have made the AL Championship Series for the last five straight years and the World Series in three out of the five seasons. But as Houston embarks on its 2022 postseason run, how does this year’s team compare with the other three World Series teams?
Houston’s 2017 roster will forever be known in the city and across the country for different reasons. That is the only team in franchise history to culminate a year with the Commissioner's Trophy.
That year’s iteration of the Astros entered the postseason with second baseman Jose Altuve leading the team with a .346 batting average, center fielder George Springer leading the way with 34 home runs and utility man Marwin Gonzalez leading with 90 runs batted in.
All three players made critical plays during Houston’s World Series run. Altuve ended Houston’s postseason run leading the team with a .310 batting average, 14 RBI and seven home runs.
On the pitching side of things, Houston had acquired ace Justin Verlander at the last second, and his impact was already being felt on the team. In five appearances with Houston entering the postseason, he had secured five wins with a 1.06 ERA.
Dallas Keuchel was the team’s No. 2 pitcher, and the Astros also relied on Charlie Morton, Lance McCullers Jr., Collin McHugh, Brad Peacock and Chris Devenski. The Astros aimed for pitcher Ken Giles to be the closer, a role he struggled in during the playoffs.
The postseason run saw Verlander star in the role Houston acquired him for. He went 4-1 as the team’s starter in the postseason and even helped close out the Boston Red Sox in a rare relief appearance out of the bullpen.
Fast-forward to 2019 and the team looked a bit different heading into the playoffs. Verlander was still the team’s ace, but Houston also touted Gerrit Cole and had acquired Zack Greinke in an in-season deal. Verlander struggled in the 2019 run. The Astros won only one game in his six postseason starts, including losing both of his starts in the World Series, and Verlander had a 4.33 ERA.
Jose Urquidy saw himself gain a starting role as the postseason went along, and even started a crucial Game 4 in the World Series. Houston aimed for Roberto Osuna to be the team’s closer. Pitchers Will Harris, Ryan Pressly, Peacock and Devenski played significant roles during the run.
The highlight of Houston’s 2019 postseason was Altuve’s home run off Aroldis Chapman that sent the Astros to the World Series. Altuve once again led the team in the postseason with a .329 batting average and five home runs. Yuli Gurriel led the team in playoffs with 13 RBI.
In 2021, McCullers and Greinke were back playing key roles in Houston’s pitching staff, but McCullers’ run was cut short after just one series against the Chicago White Sox. The injury forced pitchers Luis Garcia and Framber Valdez to become two faces that rose for the Astros. Urquidy was still an important part of Houston’s rotation.
Ryne Stanek, Phil Maton, Yimi Garcia, Kendall Graveman, Pressly, Brooks Raley and Cristian Javier all played significant roles in Houston’s 2021 run. Brantley led the team with a .319 batting average, Altuve led the way with five home runs and it was Kyle Tucker with the most RBI, driving in 15.
The 2022 Astros have seen the resurgence of Verlander, who will get his first taste of postseason action since the 2019 run. He leads the Astros with 17 wins and a 1.80 ERA. Valdez has become Houston’s No. 2 starter, and Houston gained McCullers in late August after he had missed most of the season with the same forearm injury that plagued him in the 2021 run. He has a 2.27 ERA and four wins in eight starts.
Houston has a lot of depth in the pitching rotation. Garcia has put together a strong 2022 season, helping the Astros get 15 wins in his 18 starts with a 3.72 ERA. Urquidy has 13 wins in 28 starts with a 3.94 ERA. Javier has shown he is more than capable of being a starter in the postseason, accumulating 11 wins with a 2.54 ERA.
On offense, Yordan Alvarez leads the way with a .301 batting average and 37 home runs. Altuve is second with a .296 batting average and 18 home runs. Tucker leads the team with 104 RBI. Alvarez is second with 96.
When comparing the teams, it is clear the 2022 Houston Astros have a distinct pitching advantage over its previous counterparts. Houston has six starting caliber pitchers, five of which have won double-digit games and all six have an ERA below 4.0 ahead of the 2022 postseason run. That is something not even the 2019 roster could boast.
Houston’s offense in 2022 is where the team takes a back seat. The 2022 roster will likely be the only team that does not have multiple players with a batting average above .300. Only Alvarez passes that threshold in 2022. The 2021, 2019 and 2017 rosters each had multiple batters pass that watermark.
It is worth noting, however, that the 2017 Astros had zero players that accumulated more than 100 RBI during the regular season. Each roster in 2019, 2021 and 2022 has multiple hitters with 90 or more RBI and at least one hitter with over 100.
The 2022 Astros will also be looking to break a pattern of the team being unable to advance to the World Series in an even year, and during the recent run, when the ALCS is televised by TBS. While this has nothing to do with the actual product, it is an interesting trend.
At the end of the day, if Houston’s 2022 pitching staff can continue its stellar work into the postseason, the offense should be able to produce enough runs to make a deep postseason run. For general manager James Click and manager Dusty Baker, it may just be championship or bust for both to stay with the organization past 2022.
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Through 20 games, the Houston Astros have managed just six wins and are in last place in the AL West.
Their pitching staff trails only Colorado with a 5.24 ERA and big-money new closer Josh Hader has given up the same number of earned runs in 10 games as he did in 61 last year.
Despite this, these veteran Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series seven consecutive times, have no doubt they’ll turn things around.
“If there’s a team that can do it, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said.
First-year manager Joe Espada, who was hired in January to replace the retired Dusty Baker, discussed his team’s early struggles.
“It’s not ideal,” he said. “It’s not what we expected, to come out of the shoot playing this type of baseball. But you know what, this is where we’re at and we’ve got to pick it up and play better. That’s just the bottom line.”
Many of Houston’s problems have stemmed from a poor performance by a rotation that has been decimated by injuries. Ace Justin Verlander and fellow starter José Urquidy haven’t pitched this season because of injuries and lefty Framber Valdez made just two starts before landing on the injured list with a sore elbow.
Ronel Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut April 1, has pitched well and is 2-0 with a 0.86 ERA in three starts this season. Cristian Javier is also off to a good start, going 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA in four starts, but the team has won just two games not started by those two pitchers.
However, Espada wouldn’t blame the rotation for Houston’s current position.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster how we've played overall,” he said. “One day we get good starting pitching, some days we don’t. The middle relief has been better and sometimes it hasn’t been. So, we’ve just got to put it all together and then play more as a team. And once we start doing that, we’ll be in good shape.”
The good news for the Astros is that Verlander will make his season debut Friday night when they open a series at Washington and Valdez should return soon after him.
“Framber and Justin have been a great part of our success in the last few years,” second baseman Jose Altuve said. “So, it’s always good to have those two guys back helping the team. We trust them and I think it’s going to be good.”
Hader signed a five-year, $95 million contract this offseason to give the Astros a shutdown 7-8-9 combination at the back end of their bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. But the five-time All-Star is off to a bumpy start.
He allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Braves on Monday night and has yielded eight earned runs this season after giving up the same number in 56 1/3 innings for San Diego last year.
He was much better Wednesday when he struck out the side in the ninth before the Astros fell to Atlanta in 10 innings for their third straight loss.
Houston’s offense, led by Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, ranks third in the majors with a .268 batting average and is tied for third with 24 homers this season. But the Astros have struggled with runners in scoring position and often failed to get a big hit in close games.
While many of Houston’s hitters have thrived this season, one notable exception is first baseman José Abreu. The 37-year-old, who is in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract, is hitting 0.78 with just one extra-base hit in 16 games, raising questions about why he remains in the lineup every day.
To make matters worse, his error on a routine ground ball in the eighth inning Wednesday helped the Braves tie the game before they won in extra innings.
Espada brushed off criticism of Abreu and said he knows the 2020 AL MVP can break out of his early slump.
“Because (of) history,” Espada said. “The back of his baseball card. He can do it.”
Though things haven’t gone well for the Astros so far, everyone insists there’s no panic in this team which won its second World Series in 2022.
Altuve added that he doesn’t have to say anything to his teammates during this tough time.
“I think they’ve played enough baseball to know how to control themselves and how to come back to the plan we have, which is winning games,” he said.
The clubhouse was quiet and somber Wednesday after the Astros suffered their third series sweep of the season and second at home. While not panicking about the slow start, this team, which has won at least 90 games in each of the last three seasons, is certainly not happy with its record.
“We need to do everything better,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I feel like we’re in a lot of games, but we just haven’t found a way to win them. And good teams find a way to win games. So we need to find a way to win games.”