SWINGS AND MISSES
John Granato: Analyzing the Astros positives and negatives after the first 10 games
Apr 12, 2018, 7:22 am
A.J. Hinch and the Astros are off to an 8-2 start. Jason Behnken / Getty Images
An NFL season is 16 games. An MLB season is 162. So basically ten baseball games equals one football game. I know you can’t possibly discern anything in just 10 baseball games. If you try, baseball guy will tell you “Relax. It’s a long season.” Ok baseball guy. We’re not judging. We’re making observations.
We do know the Astros were 8-2 which translates to a football win in week one. But even in one football game there are positives and negatives, same as in a 10-game span in baseball.
The positives: starting pitching. It’s lived up to the preseason billing. Most experts think this is the best rotation in baseball. They’re right. Verlander, Cole and Morton have been other worldly. Keuchel and McCullers not as good but good enough. (Don’t count the Keuchel and McCullers starts in Minnesota. They were awful but we’ll focus on those later.) As much as we want it to be, the bullpen really hasn’t been a problem. I think we’re all still shell shocked from the postseason and looking for any chink in the armor. It’ll be fine. Giles? That’s another story we’ll get to in a bit.
Offensively, Altuve and Correa picked up right where they left off last year. Reddick started slow then exploded. Max Stassi’s been a pleasant surprise. McCann has been good too.
Otherwise the offense has been mediocre to bad. We’re spoiled after watching the best lineup in baseball last year. We know what they can do and they’re not doing it. It’s early. Relax. There are some trends to watch here though.
Let’s start with the strikeouts. I thought the boom or bust days were behind us. No team struck out more than the Astros in ‘15 and ‘16 combined. Last year no one struck out less. That alone may have been the biggest factor in their offensive success. They were making contact and it paid off in run production.
It’s not like the Astros are bottom feeders this season. They’re middle of the pack offensively. Thanks to Texas and Baltimore they put some runs up but they made Padre pitching look like the ‘71 Orioles. (They were good. Look it up).
Through 10 games the Astros averaged about three more strikeouts per game this year. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but over the course of 162 games they would go from fewest strikeouts to the most. That’s not good. Over the course of a season that means fewer runs. Period.
While strikeouts are up, on base, slugging and hence OPS are down. The team still walks plenty, which helps the on-base percentage, but slugging is way off. Not only are they missing more, when they are hitting they are not hitting it as crisply. OPS is off 100 points from last year’s pace.
The oddity to these stats is that while they struck out less in the first ten games last year, they also scored fewer runs. They struck out 25 fewer times but scored 9 fewer runs. They also only won only 6 of their first 10 while they won 8 of their first 10 this year.
While the pitching has been so much better, it makes sense that they’ve won more this year because they’re scoring more. But I know it’s not just me. They don’t look the same. AJ Hinch addressed the strikeouts with the media this week in Minnesota. Geoff Blum and Todd Kalas talked about it on the broadcast as well. This strikeout thing is not a figment of our imagination.
One of the great things about last year’s team was that they didn’t show any aversion to pressure or at least they didn’t appear to. This year’s team seems to be pressing. During Tuesday’s game in Minnesota the broadcast team put up a graphic of where the guys were swinging and missing on strike three. There were a bunch that were out of the strike zone. That means that they’re either pressing too much or they have lost their plate discipline or both.
There is very little to complain about with the pitchers. They also led the league in strikeouts in the first 10 games but that’s a good thing not a bad thing. Dallas Keuchel and the back end of the bullpen are concerns but nothing this team can’t overcome.
Keuchel is interesting because he’s in a contract year. One of the big topics this offseason was what they’d do with him; sign him or let him walk. This is not hindsight and overreaction from watching his first two starts because I’ve said it multiple times on the show: They traded for Gerrit Cole to replace Keuchel in the rotation. He is more their kind of guy: big arm, can blow people away, can spin it, too, which translates into a lot of swings and misses, which is something they covet. Keuchel is going to want top-end money but is he a top-end starter? He certainly has been but we haven’t seen that guy in a while.
One guy we don’t want to see is Ken Giles. I think that’s a near unanimous feeling among the fanbase. I’m here to tell you that Giles is not only here but will be your closer for the foreseeable future. A.J. Hinch is not like us. He has patience and he’s working this thing perfectly. In the first 10 games he used Giles in non-save situations to get his confidence up and not hurt the team. There was only one save in the first ten and that belonged to Brad Peacock and the reason he got that was because A.J. used Giles the two previous games and had that as an excuse not to bring him in in a one run game. Well played sir.
Giles is a notoriously slow starter. He will be better as the season goes along. Yes I said it. He will be better. Will he ever be an elite closer? I’m going out on a limb and saying I don’t think so. But while he never really looks good doing it he did actually save 34 games and blew only 4 last year. That’s not elite but not bad either. I will say this: he makes it exciting. Win after win after win can get boring. We need some excitement in our lives and Giles provides that.
Giles is the not only the closer we want, he’s the closer we need. And by “we” I mean the one A.J. wants and needs. If it’s too early to crush the offense it’s too early to yank Giles. It is what it is. Deal with it Houston.
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The Astros have already been swept in four series this season. They were swept in four series all of last season. As Mexico City says bienvenidos to the Astros this weekend, there are certainly more than a few folks fretting that the Astros are already close to saying adios to playoff hopes. The Astros are not at the point of no return, though one can see it out there on the horizon. It wouldn’t take another month of their garbage level 7-19 performance for the season to be essentially down the drain.
If the Astros were in the American League East, they’d already be ten games out of second place. But they’re not! If in the AL Central they’d be eleven and a half games back of Cleveland. But they’re not! Dozens of teams have rebounded to win divisions from larger deficits much later in the season than the Astros face presently. The Seattle Mariners lead the thus far weak AL West at 13-12. The Astros being six and a half games in arrears of the M’s and six back of the Texas Rangers in late April is far from optimal but nowhere near devastating.
Multiple media outlets have noted how few teams historically have started a season in as stumblebum a fashion as the 2024 Astros and wound up making the playoffs. What every outlet I have seen noting that failed to include: this is just the third season since Major League Baseball added a third Wild Card to each league’s postseason field. So, while 7-19 out of the gate is indisputably awful, it is not the death knell to the extent it has been over generations of MLB.
The issue isn’t where the Astros sit in the standings, it’s that they have played atrocious baseball and aren’t providing reason for optimism that a stark turnaround is imminent. The starting rotation is the best hope. Justin Verlander has made two starts. Framber Valdez rejoins the rotation Sunday. Cristian Javier should be a week or so away. Obviously, Ronel Blanco isn’t going to continue pitching as well as he has through his first four starts. But if he is a good number four starter, that’s fine if the top three coming into the season pitch to reasonably hoped for form.
Hunter Brown simply is not a good big league pitcher. Maybe he someday fulfills his potential, but the data at this point are clear. What can Brown do for you? Not much. Spencer Arrighetti needs better command to be a good big league starter. J.P. France was a revelation over his first 17 starts last season, but since has looked like the guy who posted underwhelming numbers when in the minor leagues. If the Astros wind up with 50-plus starts from Brown/Arrighetti/France their goose will probably be cooked.
The only MLB teams with worse staff earned run averages than the Astros’ horrific 5.07 are the Chicago White Sox (Wait! They have Martin Maldonado!) and Colorado Rockies. At 3-22 the White Sox are on an early pace to post the worst record in the history of Major League Baseball. The Rockies never have a chance to post good pitching stats because of the mile high offensive freak show environment in Denver.
Way to go, Joe
Props to Joe Espada for his conviction in making what he believed to be the right call in pulling Verlander after four and a third innings Thursday at Wrigley Field. Verlander allowed no runs but had reached 95 pitches in just the second outing of the injury-delayed start to his season. Not easy for a rookie manager skippering what has been a Titanic journey thus far to pull a surefire Hall of Famer who was two outs away from qualifying for a win. Many were no doubt poised to destroy Espada had Rafael Montero given up the lead in the fifth. Verlander was angry at being pulled from any chance at his 259th career win. Understood, but the manager’s job is to make the decisions he thinks are in the ballclub’s overall best interest. That Montero and Bryan Abreu combined to blow the lead in the sixth is immaterial.
Then there's the offense…
Six runs total the last four games. Scored more than four runs in just one of the last nine games. Timely hitting largely non-existent.
At last check Alex Bregman still hawks that “Breggy Bomb” salsa. At the plate, he’s been mostly stuck in “Breggy Bum” mode, including zero bombs (home runs). 23 games played without a homer is Bregman’s longest drought since 2017 when he had separate 35 and 27 game stretches between dingers. Bregman has a history of slow first months of the season, but never anything as inept as he’s posted thus far. A litany of lazy fly balls, infield pops, and routine grounders add up to a .216 batting average and feeble .566 OPS. Reference point: Martin Maldonado’s worst OPS season with the Astros was .573. If Bregman was a young guy handed a starting job coming out of spring training, if a viable alternative were available, there’s a chance he’d be a Sugar Land Space Cowboy right now. Bregman’s track record makes it a decent bet that he winds up with decent numbers, but nothing special. Certainly nothing remotely worth the 10 years 300 million dollars or whatever Bregman and agent Scott Boras intend(ed) to seek on the free agent market this coming offseason. Two hits Thursday did get Bregman to the 1000 hit plateau for his career.
Despite arriving south of the border with his batting average at .346, even Jose Altuve has his warts. With runners in scoring position, Altuve has one hit this season. One. In 16 at bats. Small sample size, but it counts. That’s .063. Yordan Alvarez has been no great shakes either, five for 24 (.208) with RISP.
One wonders what would happen if the Astros got a hold of and “lost” Jose Abreu’s passport/visa this weekend in Mexico City and Abreu couldn’t get back into the U.S. after the two-game set with the Rockies.
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.