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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread


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Now hitting .233/.317/.362 as a team, with 25% K rate. Here are the cumulative team numbers by position:

1B: .191/.291/.298

3B: .212/.316/.303

LF: .203/.310/.366

CF: .194/.261/.389

DH: .188/.264/.313

It's not just subpar - it is flat out awful. These are positions from which you should expect above-average offensive production. Yuli is probably the solution at first; Bregman should be better at 3rd; Springer will be fine. 

But LF and DH don't have clear answers. I suspect we see Tucker sooner than expected - he's at .273/.373/.409 to this point in AAA. If the Fisher/Marisnick shit show doesn't turn around, Tucker may arrive in about a month. 

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I wouldn't be surprised if they send down Fisher and bring up White to get Fisher, Marisnick, and Gattis out of the lineup.  Tucker is hitting about league average in the PCL so he may not be ready yet to contribute.

Interesting that the league's HR/FB rate is down to 2015's rate even though the hard contact rate has held steady.  The ball may not be carrying this season like it did last year.

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If you look at the difference between expected wOBA and wOBA in our hitters, it's been a combination of bad luck with our better hitters (expected wOBA trailing actual wOBA) and rank awfulness from Marisnick, Gattis, Fisher, and Marwin.  You can get Marisnick, Gattis, and Fisher out of the lineup, but we are kinda stuck with Marwin for the time being.

aJFP7SX.png

 

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9 minutes ago, huge said:

Am I supposed to feel better that averages are historically low so far this year?  Didn't I read that somewhere over the weekend?

Averages are low and strikeouts are high. What is the MLB conspiracy this year?

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Altuve and Correa combined have hit 1 ball out of a ballpark.  1.  In 120 combined at bats.  And only 9 extra base hits (of which 7 belong to CC)

Fisher/Marisnick/Gattis/Stassi are just as effective this season as Altuve has been when it comes to RBI and extra base hits.  Altuve just has slapped a bunch more singles that have thus far been useless.  Not a good show from the MVP.

Correa and Springer are playing OK at the plate.  Pretty much everyone else is sucking ass. (Yuli excluded)

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1 hour ago, Ldogg53 said:

Altuve and Correa combined have hit 1 ball out of a ballpark.  1.  In 120 combined at bats.  And only 9 extra base hits (of which 7 belong to CC)

Fisher/Marisnick/Gattis/Stassi are just as effective this season as Altuve has been when it comes to RBI and extra base hits.  Altuve just has slapped a bunch more singles that have thus far been useless.  Not a good show from the MVP.

Correa and Springer are playing OK at the plate.  Pretty much everyone else is sucking ass. (Yuli excluded)

Let's revisit this after, oh let's say, 50 games.

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Formatting is a little messed up. Here is a link to the article if you want to see the videos that didn't embed properly: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/39258/circle-change-lance-mccullers-points-unknown/

Circle Change: Lance McCullers and Points Unknown

 
lance-mccullers-2018-1000x714.jpg
Image credit: USA Today Sports

If you know only one thing about Astros right-hander Lance McCullers, it may well be that he set the baseball world ablaze by throwing 24 consecutive curveballs to stifle the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS. Or, more simply, that he’s one of them newfangled starting pitchers who throws his breaking stuff as much as his fastball.

Newfangled isn’t the same as young, though. The touchstones of this phenomenon have been middle-aged, at best: Established splitter wizards (Masahiro Tanaka, et al), old dogs trying new tricks (CC Sabathia, et al), and, uh, Rich Hill. All fascinating and important, they are nonetheless limiting as precedents for those they might inspire. This frontier is still relatively untrodden by starters in the formative years of their careers.

That’s where McCullers piqued my interest. He and Rays right-hander Chris Archer are the most prominent early-career hurlers to adopt this “upside-down” approach, but the young Astros starter has acknowledged the need for something more. He’s looking beyond the best-pitch-first insight at the heart of McCullersing or Archering or Corbining–intriguing paths that have not blasted true believers into the stratosphere on their own. And, if you’ll permit me to prognosticate wildly for a moment, I’d say his attempt to evolve from a breaking-ball-centric starting point could be widely relevant and hugely important in a matter of a few short years.

What, I wondered, is that next insight?

To get my bearings, I rephrased that broad question into this smaller one: Knowing the curveball is square one, how would McCullers and the Astros design the rest of his repertoire? I came up with an answer–a damned good one, I thought–before realizing it was all too easy.

***

My original course of action was to study how his signature pitch sequences with other offerings. Lacking the rising fastball that many curveball specialists employ, McCullers has always fashioned himself as a worm-burner. His methods–namely, throwing everything low–can lead to some difficulties in the deception department.

Now, plenty of those curve-heavy pitchers use variations of shape and speed to keep hitters off balance–as opposed to the more common practice that our tunneling metrics gauge where every pitch is meant to look as similar as possible right up until the breaking point. Our numbers show that McCullers is not eschewing this form of deception. In fact, he uses it pretty well against left-handed hitters. He’s just got a platoon-split problem. A reverse one.

Righties see him more clearly, posting a .257/.344/.412 line over his career compared to .232/.305/.340 for lefties. Within his individual sequences, I spotted one major tightrope he’s trying to walk. The two-seamer and curve reveal their planes quickly. If McCullers throws a knee-high heater, the curveball will have to be in the dirt away to achieve deception. That particular sequence? He can do that.

What happens, though, when a hitter sits curve and easily lays off the low stuff? Often, they end up with his sort of visual.

ZuninoAndSegura.jpg

If McCullers doesn’t give in, they work a walk. If he does give in, they get their shot to try and drive an elevated curve. My big eureka moment went something like this: Whoa, McCullers could just throw his two-seam high and outside to righties more often, above where he lives with the breaker. He never does that!

Lance-Chart.png

Maybe he could diversify his curveball’s shape a little–throwing a dropping version and a more slider-y version with different speeds. A beat later: That … sounds a lot like Corey Kluber?

Another beat later: That is Kluber.

***

It’s tempting to think of an unconventional pitch mix or approach as something conjured out of thin air, a burst of pure creativity. But creative leaps, in all sorts of fields, are more often born of constraints. Kluber’s four-seam fastball wasn’t great. Then he didn’t get the grounders you’d expect from a sinkerballer. Eventually, he played his nebulous but incredible breaking pitch off his cutter’s sped-up swerve and the fastball’s opposing horizontal movement, and voila.

McCullers, unfortunately, might not have glove-side command of his fastball. We’re going to watch a ho-hum sequence from last season to get a glimpse at that possible limitation. Before we start, look at where his catcher, Brian McCann, sets up.

McCannShot.jpg

It’s a 1-1 count, and he wants McCullers to get ahead by running his two-seam back over the outside part of the plate. No one chases his two-seam. No one chases Kluber’s, either. This particular offering’s power comes from how it can sneak into the zone after appearing to set a course well wide of the imaginary barrier.

Kluber has totally mastered this. As he peppers the high, outside corner, hitters swing at the rare up and in heat. His sweeping breaker appears there like a mirage in the desert–a mistake fastball, sent from the heavens just for them–and then vanishes.

If McCullers sets the bait as McCann asks, it could get the batter, C.J. Cron, to two strikes and put him on the defensive against anything in that vicinity–making a subsequent curve even more deadly.

The ball ends up more on the inside part of the plate, though, which doesn’t add anything new into Cron’s calculus. So when that two-strike curve breaks off–as pretty as it is–it doesn’t convince him to commit.

That might just be a limitation. What can McCullers do on the other side of the plate, where he often does locate the fastball (intentionally or not)? One sequence will do for showing the potential here. Against Aaron Judge in Game 4 of the ALCS, before he went all-curve-all-the-time, McCullers broke off this tandem.

High, inside two-seam with much better horizontal movement than usual:

Followed by a curve that appears to burst from his hand in a similar way, only to dive toward the plate:

Boom, strikeout.

This spring, McCullers amped up the movement on his two-seam, as helpfully documented by Rob Friedman’s essential @PitchingNinja Twitter account. It looks better to the naked eye, a notion confirmed by early movement numbers. Having thrown it 80 times so far in regular season action, it has averaged almost three inches more horizontal, arm-side movement than it did last season. He’s also throwing it for more strikes, but I’d be lying if I said the sample is meaningful for that last bit.

No, the renovated fastball provides McCullers the opportunity to change the circumstances under which he’s working. Yes, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest he may struggle to use this great-looking blitz-ball in the traditional way. It may not matter, though. While it was always naive of me to think he could follow a Kluber roadmap, he’s demonstrated he can blaze a trail all his own. Perhaps he will bust righties in on their hands with it and then see how his curve can play off it. Maybe he does find a way to use it as a chase pitch.

I truly don’t know where he will go with it. I don’t think anyone does. We like comps and patterns and role models. We like to understand what a guy should be doing, so we can watch and say whether he is doing it. Some people (raises hand) like it so much that we can fall into the super-duper-obvious trap of funneling someone on to one of these tracks when there simply isn’t a preexisting track for him.

I’m going to stop here and wait. These are the constraints with which McCullers appears to be working. He may soon reveal to us a totally novel way of getting around them. Let’s watch closely.

Edited by Seasick Sailor
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we need something to shake shit up - hinch getting ejected, bringing up someone/sending someone down, a fight, whatever. we seem to have this general malaise about ourselves and it's pretty easy to spot. yeah we're playing games  but  we're not playing our game. seeing too many guys do too much on their own or trying to be a hero with one swing, shit just snowballs over time - last night, runner on 2nd, marwin swings at a 3-0 pitch that he wouldnt be able to do much with. end of an inning, no run scored on and lose by a run. take the pitch, extend the inning, work the pitcher, put emphasis on the defense, etc - too many self-thwarted outs. 

we're used to waiting at-bats out, swinging within ourselves and make hard contact - as much shit as he gets, i did like gattis prolonged at bat last night - baby steps but still ones we shouldnt have had to wait until the third week in april to make. something will light this team, i don't know what is but needs to happen sooner rather than later. you can't win a division in april but you can play yourself outta win easily. i suspect we'll make some internal moves that we don't see coming - and one we expect seeing coming at some point this year. hang in there boys, long season. 

 

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2017: 73 runs in the first 17 games.

2018: 68 runs in the first 17 games.

Meh.  Some of y'all are ridiculous.  

What odds will y'all give me that the Astros and Dodgers both win their divisions by at least 5 games?

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51 minutes ago, huge said:

how in the world are we going to win anything meaningful without a closer?

Remind me... who was that “go to” closer during games 6&7 of the ALCS and the World Series?   There are a lot of great arms in the bullpen.  No need to pigeon hole them.  

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2017: 73 runs in the first 17 games.
2018: 68 runs in the first 17 games.
Meh.  Some of y'all are ridiculous.  
What odds will y'all give me that the Astros and Dodgers both win their divisions by at least 5 games?


Sure but look at it more on a per game basis.
I’ll update my previous stat since it happened again.

2018- in 17 games we’ve had 6 scoring 1 run or less
2017 - we had our 6th game scoring 1 run or less on May 22nd

That shit isn’t insignificant.

Also, I further looked into the numbers for 2017. The worst stretch the team had was 5 games out of 17 scoring 1 run or less. It was games 104-121. Our record in that stretch: 6-11. So yeah, thank goodness we are actually on the positive side of the ledger right now.

Someone send these boys some slumpbusters!!
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2 hours ago, Ldogg53 said:

 


Sure but look at it more on a per game basis.
I’ll update my previous stat since it happened again.

2018- in 17 games we’ve had 6 scoring 1 run or less
2017 - we had our 6th game scoring 1 run or less on May 22nd

That shit isn’t insignificant.

Also, I further looked into the numbers for 2017. The worst stretch the team had was 5 games out of 17 scoring 1 run or less. It was games 104-121. Our record in that stretch: 6-11. So yeah, thank goodness we are actually on the positive side of the ledger right now.

Someone send these boys some slumpbusters!!

 

i really hope our runs per game and worst stretch stats and how many games in how many we've scored 1 or fewer stats are good enough to win playoff games.  because that's how they measure it, right?

some of you really need to stop whining and look at facts.

we're 10-7.  we're not hitting at all, and we're winning games.  at a .588 clip which is good for 95 wins.  whomever is talking about us digging a hole for ourselves needs to math more.  the yankees are about to be 8-8, the indians are 8-6, the nats are 8-9, the dodgers are 6-9. and the cubs are 7-7.  i agree it could be trouble if we dig ourselves a hole like we did in 2016, but that's not happening.  we're just not hitting.

so one of two things is going to happen moving forward.  either we won't hit all season, and it won't matter at all anyway.  or we'll start hitting like we're capable of hitting and we'll win a bunch of games.  i understand we're "wasting" great pitching performances, but our rotation is pretty decent, i'm sure they'll give us a couple more chances.

you guys sound like me watching longhorn football.  sheesh.

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