THE PALLILOG
Yordan is having a historic month. You’ll never guess which Astro had a better one.
Jun 17, 2022, 9:42 am
Yordan still has work to do. Composite photo by Brandon Strange.
With the Astros coming off of an off day to start the back half of June with a 32nd consecutive game against a team with a losing record, it’s a nice pause point to consider Yordan Alvarez and his shot at putting together the most awesome individual offensive month in franchise history. To do so, as Chef Emeril would say, he’ll have to kick it up a notch. Pretty amazing considering the spectacular run Yordan is on, thus far in June batting a cool .468 with an on base percentage of .552 and a slugging percentage of .787 for an eye-exploding OPS of 1.339.
Alvarez set an extremely high bar with the production he put forth in unanimously winning American League Rookie of the Year in 2019. A .327 batting average, .412 OBP, and .655 slugging percentage, OPS 1.067 over 87 games was historic stuff. Those numbers are better than Yordan’s totals so far this season, but three years ago the balls were juiced so relative to the rest of Major League Baseball 2022 Alvarez is superior. After missing all but two games of the shortened 2020 season due to knee problems, Yordan was excellent last year, but nothing like his rookie season or this. His plate discipline has improved dramatically. Alvarez’s strikeout rate is down by a third and his walk rate is up by half, a phenomenal combo. The six year 115 million dollar contract extension he signed last week sounds like a great bargain for the Astros, and of course generations of financial security for Alvarez. He turns only 25 years old June 27.
Add this log on the Alvarez inferno: if indeed MLB bans shifts next season perhaps not only mandating two infielders on either side of second base but requiring all to have at least one foot on the infield dirt, Alvarez’s batting average should get an easy 20 or so point boost. His screamers to a second baseman thirty or forty feet out in right field that become an out now? Hits in 2023. Kyle Tucker stands to benefit as well. All left-handed hitters will, the Astros happen to have the best tandem of young lefty mashers in the game.
The Astros have a fine lineage of individual offensive powerhouses. In five guesses, can you name the Astro who put up the greatest raw month-long stats? We’ll get to that answer shortly.
Killer B's
Jeff Bagwell and Lance Berkman have the two greatest career offensive resumes posted by Astros. Bagwell did it here longer, but Lance was basically his equal. Bagwell’s career batting average finished at .297 with an OPS of .948. Berkman hit .293 for his career with a .943 OPS, but as an Astro the numbers are .296 and .959. That’s one way of explaining how ridiculous it was that Berkman didn’t even draw five percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame, which resulted in his name being dropped from future ballots. Anyway…
Yordan’s OPS for June to date is the ridiculous 1.339. In 1994 Bagwell was better than what Yordan is doing this month, for two months in a row. Baggy racked up a 1.354 OPS in June ’94 and topped that with 1.374 in July. Alvarez has hit “only” three home runs so far this month. 28 (!) years ago Bagwell hit 13 in June and another 11 in July. With the Astrodome as his home park no less, as opposed to the vastly more home run friendly Minute Maid Park.
Still, it’s not Bagwell with the greatest raw data month in Astro archives. Or Berkman. Or Moises Alou. Or Cesar Cedeno. Or Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, George Springer, or Carlos Correa. Cry uncle?
Turn back the clock
Enron Field opened in 2000 as a hitter’s haven better than any other not in Denver. Add in it was peak steroid era baseball and it was a joke how easily homers were hit, 266 of them in 81 games. It led to playing field modifications. Outfielder Richard Hidalgo took advantage, though oddly enough Hidalgo hit 28 of his career high 44 homers on the road (Hidalgo never again topped 28 homers for a season). Hidalgo entered September having a strong year batting .275 with 33 homers. He began September going just four for 16 but then…
Over the final 25 games (including the season finale October 1) Hidalgo smashed to a .517 average (47 for 91!), his OBP was .574, and 25 extra base hits in those 25 games (12 doubles, two triples, and 11 homers) made for a 1.055 slugging percentage. Nutso numbers. For the full month (plus October 1) Hidalgo hit .477, OBP .532, slugging .953. OPS 1.486, the greatest monthly tally any Astro has ever posted. That’s a whopping 147 points higher OPS than Alvarez is so far this month. Crank it up Yordan!
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After a well-timed All-Star break for them, the Astros get back to work with what is merely their biggest series of the season to date, three games at the Seattle Mariners. The Astros staggered into the break with a 1-5 homestand, while the Mariners pasted the best team in the American League (Detroit Tigers) scoring 35 runs in a three-game sweep. Net result, the Astros AL West lead stands at five games entering play Friday night. That is down from the season best seven-game cushion they enjoyed going into last weekend, but still a fine spot in which to be. Last season the Astros came out of the break one game out of first place, also resuming play in Seattle. They beat the Mariners in the first two games to leapfrog into the division lead. The Astros didn’t stay in first the rest of the way, last waking up in second place on August 7 one game into an eight-game August winning streak that gave them control of the race which they would not relinquish. The Mariners shoot for role reversal this year. Their starting pitching has rounded into near-full health and makes them a potential danger. The Astros’ starting rotation presently is Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, and a bunch of question marks. Even Brown showed some vulnerability by getting hit hard in his last two starts, a minor taint to his brilliant pre-All Star Game season.
It’s not a must for the Mariners that they take at least two out of these three at T-Mobile Park, but it would be a huge body blow to them if the Astros take the series, especially given the Astros are still without Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Pena, and Jake Meyers. The trade deadline is two weeks away. Astros general manager Dana Brown is on the hunt for a left-handed hitter. They certainly can’t believe their best option is to promote Jon Singleton from the minors, though taking some playing time away from Christian Walker at first base is warranted if he doesn’t step it up. Still, it’s an outfield or second base bat that is a more pressing need. Counting on production from Jacob Melton once healthy would also be a dubious plan, but it would be the cheapest way to go. The Astros are presently just a couple of million dollars below the first Collective Bargaining Agreement tax threshold, which Jim Crane definitely prefers to stay under since the Astros would pay a repeater-tax penalty tax rate of 30 percent. Adding five million in salary would incur about a million and a half in tax. That is chump change, though going over the first tax threshold again this year would mean doing so again next season would result in a 50 percent tax rate. Still, unless going well over the threshold, that is pennies and nickels for a franchise Jim Crane and his partners bought for 610 million dollars and could now likely sell for between two and a half and three billion. However, willingness to pay tax doesn’t mean the Astros can just snap their fingers and make any preferred acquisitions.
What the Mariners try to accomplish before the deadline is a big question. Their payroll sits about 60 million dollars below the Astros’. In the offseason the Mariners “big” additions were laughable. Rowdy Tellez was big only as in overweight. He was last good in 2022, was lousy for the Mariners, and was released late last month. Seattle enthused exactly none of its fans by adding 37-year-old Donovan Solano. He has an OPS worse than Christian Walker’s. The Mariners have one of the best farm systems among the 30 big league franchises, the Astros have one of the worst. Any player the Astros seek, the Mariners could make a better offer. That is true of most teams relative to the Astros, but it’s the Mariners the Astros have tormented in recent years. Seattle has finished second to Houston in the AL West in three of the last four seasons, and the one season in which the Mariners made the playoffs as a Wild Card, the Astros began their run to 2022 World Series glory by sweeping the M’s in three games. Mariners’ fans should be steaming if the franchise doesn’t take a good-sized swing at an upgrade or two to at minimum strengthen their pursuit of a Wild Card.
The Astros won four of the first seven meeting with the Mariners this year, so splitting the remaining six would give the Astros the tiebreaker should it come into play at season’s end. After this weekend, the remaining series between the two arises at Daikin Park, September 19-21.
Through a different lens
Nobody knows when the Astros get back Alvarez, and at what level of performance. Yordan’s career-high for home runs in a season is the 37 he smashed in 2022. That is one way of placing in perspective the ridiculous season Mariners’ catcher Cal Raleigh has going. Raleigh has 38 homers as play resumes. That’s on pace for 64 which would break Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62. The single season mark by a player who caught the majority of his games played is the 48 posted by Salvador Perez in 2021.
For Astro-centric conversation, 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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