2022 Houston Astros Thread

[Mitch Hedberg 2090]

Somebody get Deshaun Watson’s Rolodex and get Pressly a massage

[TonyTexas 10481]

2 minutes ago, Mitch Hedberg said:

Somebody get Deshaun Watson’s Rolodex and get Pressly a massage

Hopefully he doesn’t get a massage contact from Correa while he’s in town. 

[Scraps 13538]

Each team has a 2 game home/away “rivalry” series with the other league. It’s stupid that the Astros rivalry series is with the Rockies especially given our history in the NL Central and West. 

Its not just "rivalry" its "geographical rivalry".

Ours was taken away when we moved to AL....insert the rotation between other outcasts Colorado and Arizona

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

[Rockethorn1978 6061]

Glad we traded for a better hitting catcher!

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

Alex Bregman's Triumphant Non-Adjustment

By Ben Clemons

Quote

© Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe this isn’t charitable, but I picture Alex Bregman as being a lot like me. See, when I play a game – whether a sport or a board game – I’m always thinking about the most efficient way to win, what game actions are the most valuable, and how I can do those things more often. The best games don’t have clear best options at all times, but there’s almost always some strategy you can lean on to get ahead, and I greatly enjoy figuring that strategy out.

Bregman treats baseball like I treat Taverns of Tiefenthal, my favorite board game. He knows what the most valuable things to do in baseball are, and he does them more frequently than everyone else. If you look at his Statcast page, you’ll come away unimpressed. Hard hit rate? He’s in the 42nd percentile across the majors, below average. Think that hard hit rate is misleading? He’s average when it comes to maximum exit velocity (53rd percentile), barrel rate (50th), and even average exit velocity (59th). He’s well below average in sprint speed. It doesn’t sound like he should be an outstanding hitter, at least by the measurables.

Early in Bregman’s career, that would have been a laughable claim. He totaled 16.2 WAR on the back of a 162 wRC+ between 2018 and ’19, staking a claim as one of the best hitters in the game. But in the next two years, both injury-shortened, he fell back to earth. His .261/.353/.431 line was good for a 115 wRC+, a far cry from his earlier form. Was he a creation of the juiced ball? Sign stealing? Did pitchers figure him out?

This season would suggest otherwise. After a slow start – midway through June, he sported a 104 wRC+ – he’s gone on an absolute tear. His seasonal line now stands at .261/.365/.466, good for a 139 wRC+, and he’s quickly climbing every offensive leaderboard imaginable. He’s already compiled 4.1 WAR on the season, nearly double last year’s output and 18th among all hitters. He hasn’t done it by getting stronger or anything like that. He’s simply doubled down on what he was always best at: making the most of his own talents.

Bregman has always been a phenomenally disciplined hitter. Via Baseball Savant’s swing/take charts, we can show that graphically. Here he is in his superlative 2018 season:

That’s great work, and the reason it’s great work is obvious. That year, he simply didn’t swing at bad pitches. He chased bad pitches at roughly half the league average, and laid off plenty of pitches in the shadow zone as well. Sure, he took too many pitches thrown over the heart of the plate, but he did enough with the ones he swung at to make up for that. That’s a tradeoff that made even more sense considering Bregman’s modest raw power; he wasn’t giving up on Yordan Alvarez-level production on those balls anyway.

When he did swing at those juicy pitches, he was mostly trying to do one thing: pull them over the left field wall. That worked quite well for two reasons. First, everyone was a slugger in 2018 and ’19, the peak years of the home run explosion. Second, Houston’s ballpark is uniquely suited to Bregman’s gambit; the short left field porch means that plenty of balls that would have been lazy outs anywhere else left the yard.

Bregman has the purest form of pull power, aided by the stadium. In his career, he’s homered on 18.4% of the balls he has put in the air to the pull side. That includes all line drives, fly balls, and popups, not merely balls hit at ideal home run angles. When he goes to the opposite field or to center, that number falls to 2.7%. Don’t just say it’s a wall thing, either: he has hit 30.2% of his pulled air balls 100 mph or harder, double the rate at which he exceeds 100 mph when going up the middle or the other way.

That’s how Bregman operates when he’s at his best. In 2020 and ’21, he kept doing the same, but with reduced efficiency. He controlled the strike zone as well as ever, but wasn’t getting the power production that keyed his strong seasons. His approach depends heavily on hitting a steady diet of pull-side balls at homer-friendly angles. Those average batted ball metrics I mentioned above are already better than his raw power; his power plays up when he pulls the ball, in other words.

As you might expect from someone who gets all their power from pulling the ball, Bregman is at his best when he can turn on the ball. Here’s his isolated power on balls in play this year:

And while the extremes of that graph are partially due to sample size, it’s the same deal for his career as a whole. Inside and low, he’s ready to go. Away? He’ll try another day:

When he’s going right, a ton of those swings result in pulled, lofted balls that he hits 95 mph or harder. You won’t be surprised to learn that in his best years, Bregman produced a ton of those particular batted balls. What might surprise you, though, is that he’s nearly back to that clip this year, and that he’d already started to rebound there last season.

In fact, Bregman’s return to the top has mirrored his earlier ascent. How is he managing his amazing line? He’s just doing the same things he’s always done. Pull everything? Take a look at his home runs this year:

Swing decisions? He’s actually better than he was in 2018 and ’19 there, at least in terms of swinging at pitches over the heart of the plate while avoiding waste elsewhere:

One difference you might notice: Bregman isn’t actually adding much value by swinging at those pitches over the heart of the plate. Only three swing runs added despite swinging at so many cookies? He did far better than that in 2018, as we saw up above. But here’s a secret: that 2018 season was never very likely to repeat itself. He massively outperformed anything he’s done since in terms of production on contact. Even in his excellent 2019 season, his results when he swung at good pitches were only fair:

Compare 2022 to ’19, and Bregman’s process looks better. Sure, fewer balls are leaving the yard; as a dead pull, all fly-ball hitter without Judge-ian power, that was always going to be the case given the changing composition of the baseball. But if you’re looking at process, Bregman is doing a good job maxing out, like he’s always done.

In fact, here’s something interesting. He was already doing this last year:

What are we missing? Bregman was bad by his standards in 2021. He took the same process into 2022, and now he’s succeeding again? Sure sounds like I’m being too results-oriented in my evaluations.

Consider this, though: Bregman is healthy for the first time since 2019. In 2020, he dealt with persistent hamstring issues. Last year was even worse; he missed 58 games with a quadriceps injury, then played through a nagging hand issue that required surgery after the end of the season.

Lower-body issues are bad enough for your swing; throw in a hand injury, and perhaps it’s no surprise that Bregman’s contact quality suffered. He set a career high in groundball rate and a career low in line drive rate, the exact opposite of what he wants to do at the plate. When he did manage to lift and pull, he did just fine – he simply couldn’t do what he wanted to often enough.

One more thing is worth mentioning. When Bregman was at his best, he flat out destroyed breaking balls in the strike zone. He slugged above .700 when he put them in play in 2018 and ’19, and that didn’t leave pitchers with many options. Throw something bendy out of the zone, and he’d spit on it – he has one of the best eyes in the game. Throw him one of those pitches in the strike zone, and he’d probably watch it fly by – but if he didn’t, he was liable to deposit it in the seats.

That all fell apart over the last two years, and it was all part of the same problem; where he’d previously been excellent at elevating those pitches, he started pounding them into the ground. This is a really silly and specialized statistic, but I don’t think that makes it less meaningful. Take a look at his groundball rate on breaking balls in the strike zone, as well as his wOBA and slugging percentage on them:

 

Bregman’s Production on In-Zone Breaking Balls

Year	GB%	wOBA	SLG
2017	40.7%	.396	.632
2018	30.1%	.456	.710
2019	26.2%	.443	.827
2020	30.4%	.293	.435
2021	41.3%	.346	.540
2022	31.4%	.496	.800

That old bind is back again. Pitchers can’t throw him one of those pitches and expect to get away with it. That limits their options; there’s a reason he’s only striking out 12.4% of the time this year while walking 12.9% of the time. The in-zone breaking ball is one of modern pitching’s greatest weapons. Heck, the increased use of breaking balls in general is one of the great advances of recent pitching analysis. When it doesn’t work against a hitter, pitchers are left without options.

So what is Bregman doing of late that’s working so well? The same thing he’s always been doing: lifting and pulling everything he can get his hands on, taking everything he can’t, and generally maxing out his performance beyond what anyone could reasonably expect. This time, he’s just doing it while healthy.

 

TL;DR: Bregman hasn't changed anything. He's just healthy for the first time in a while. 

Edited August 24, 2022 by Seasick Sailor

[TonyTexas 10481]

That’s probably the playoff lineup with Mancini and Alvarez swapping fielding positions more often than not. 

[WBT 20411]

1 hour ago, Scraps said:

Its not just "rivalry" its "geographical rivalry".

Ours was taken away when we moved to AL....insert the rotation between other outcasts Colorado and Arizona

f selig

[dr99 551]

1 hour ago, Rockethorn1978 said:

Glad we traded for a better hitting catcher!

Isn't Maldy the shrink for Framber

[Scraps 13538]

2 minutes ago, dr99 said:

Isn't Maldy the shrink for Framber

yes but people are never going to get that.   

Just like he is Verlanders catcher and Dubon is now Verlanders CF.  

So when Game 1 of the ALDS we have Dubon playing CF everyone is gonna lose their shit 

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

Well LMJ isn't going to the pen, so Javier is the odd man out in the 5-man rotation? He's earned a starting spot, but he'll get more use out of the pen in the playoffs than he would as a 4th SP. 

 

[Scraps 13538]

4 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

Here’s a better one glance schedule 

 

Another note on the schedule:

As of now that KC trip falls on the same weekend that UH is playing at Kansas in football so if the football schedule holds up then KC is gonna be packed with Houston fans that weekend.  

 

[Hank Chinaski 6310]

16 minutes ago, Scraps said:

 So when Game 1 of the ALDS we have Dubon playing CF everyone is gonna lose their shit 

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

19 minutes ago, Scraps said:

So when Game 1 of the ALDS we have Dubon playing CF everyone is gonna lose their shit 

Dusty will probably bat him leadoff too. 

[Wulaw Horn 18968]

1 minute ago, Hank Chinaski said:

And not having Javier in the starting rotation motherfucker has merely been a top 20 or so pitcher in baseball, getting better by the day, but we aren’t going to have him in the rotation so we can mix in an Urquidy or Garcia start?  And we really might trot out a 600 ops guy at CF so we can “stop someone from going 1st to third?”  
These two items are so galactically stupid I don’t know how to process it. 
playoff games are a coin flip. No reason to hand the other team loaded dice. 

[Hank Chinaski 6310]

I actually don’t mind Javier as a multi-inning bullpen arm. That’s a nice weapon to have. But yeah, not if Garcia is making starts. JV/LMJ/Framber/Urquidy, with Javier and Garcia out of the pen.

Also, there’s a reasonable chance I’m gonna stroke out when Dubon (or Yuli) comes up in a playoff game with the game on the line because he’s hitting second in the order. 

Edited August 24, 2022 by Hank Chinaski

[tx 3 putt 76298]

if I remember right, garcia wasn't great out of the bullpen, javier was ?

 

id take martinez in the bp over garcia. garcia might be the odd man off the playoff roster if he doesn't start showing something 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by tx 3 putt

[kevwun 15608]

In no universe should Garcia get starts in place of Javier.

[runthebone 7931]

Start Javier, don't get cute aka stupid

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

10 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

we aren’t going to have him in the rotation so we can mix in an Urquidy or Garcia start?

We won't even use a 4th SP until the ALCS. Urquidy can fill that role just fine. Javier can make two or three appearances out of the pen over the same period. Seems like a good way to maximize his value to me. 

7 minutes ago, kevwun said:

In no universe should Garcia get starts in place of Javier.

In the payoffs, this is true. 

[Wulaw Horn 18968]

27 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

We won't even use a 4th SP until the ALCS. Urquidy can fill that role just fine. Javier can make two or three appearances out of the pen over the same period. Seems like a good way to maximize his value to me. 

In the payoffs, this is true. 

I like your thinking on the first. 
as to him being a multi inning revelation last year he pitched 6.2 innings prior to the World Series, only 2 of which happened in a game that was reasonably close

This was in a series where we ruined LMj’s arm and another one where we looked to be completely fucked starting pitcher wise. 
It’s not the best use of a top 20 starter in MLB.  

[IDIOTsavant 8437]

16 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I like your thinking on the first. 
as to him being a multi inning revelation last year he pitched 6.2 innings prior to the World Series, only 2 of which happened in a game that was reasonably close

This was in a series where we ruined LMj’s arm and another one where we looked to be completely fucked starting pitcher wise. 
It’s not the best use of a top 20 starter in MLB.  

In my mind it comes down to the fact that Javier is more likely to get a K in a big spot, whereas Urquidy is pitching to contact, and Garcia tends to do much better once he gets into a rhythm. He’s more likely to be useful in a big spot out of the pen…although I don’t think he’s done particularly well with inherited runners in his limited opportunities as I recall it (haven’t looked up the stats to verify my drunken memories).

[Wulaw Horn 18968]

39 minutes ago, IDIOTsavant said:

In my mind it comes down to the fact that Javier is more likely to get a K in a big spot, whereas Urquidy is pitching to contact, and Garcia tends to do much better once he gets into a rhythm. He’s more likely to be useful in a big spot out of the pen…although I don’t think he’s done particularly well with inherited runners in his limited opportunities as I recall it (haven’t looked up the stats to verify my drunken memories).

You know what else Javier is more likely to do?  Shove it up the other teams ass and win you a game. 

[UTexasFight 9375]

This guy 

[tx 3 putt 76298]

Also, how do you throw Altuve a first pitch fastball ?

[Js1 85085]

That dude fucks 

[TonyTexas 10481]

I was looking on the MLB app at the playoff schedule and it says for the divisional round the #1 seed plays the lowest seeded winner in the WC round. I didn’t realize that they reseeded and we would play WC #3 if they beat the AL Central winner. 

[TonyTexas 10481]

Popfest 

[Chuckie Finster 22598]

I was looking on the MLB app at the playoff schedule and it says for the divisional round the #1 seed plays the lowest seeded winner in the WC round. I didn’t realize that they reseeded and we would play WC #3 if they beat the AL Central winner. 

According to this, there is no reseeding. (There should be… very high likelihood for the 4/5 matchup to produce a better team than 3/6 most years.)

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-playoff-format-faq

[MirrOlure 14617]

Lol. Maldy almost gets thrown out on a missed cutoff throw on a standup double. Love it

[Guest]

oppo power.

[Js1 85085]

That’s our Altuve 

[cabowabo 4451]

Altuve’s base running is one of the worlds greatest mysteries. 

[Guest]

More HRs or TOOTBLANs for Altuve this season?

[rvm96 1643]

 

[tx 3 putt 76298]

8 minutes ago, rvm96 said:

 

maybe he can make the playoff roster ???

[tx 3 putt 76298]

#csb hank conger is the twins 3rd base coach 

 

[TonyTexas 10481]

29 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

According to this, there is no reseeding. (There should be… very high likelihood for the 4/5 matchup to produce a better team than 3/6 most years.)

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-playoff-format-faq

As is often the case, MLB can’t keep its story straight. This is from the MLB app

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by TonyTexas

[tx 3 putt 76298]

We play who play. We’ll beat them all 

[tx 3 putt 76298]

#csb - Jose Miranda and Lin Manuel Miranda are cousins 

[Wulaw Horn 18968]

Holy shit there is some leather being flashed at the SS position tonight. 

[billfromlaketravis 11358]

44 minutes ago, cabowabo said:

Altuve’s base running is one of the worlds greatest mysteries. 

He might someday be the worst baserunner in the Hall of Fame. 

[tx 3 putt 76298]

Slappy Alvarez 

[Wulaw Horn 18968]

3 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

He might someday be the worst baserunner in the Hall of Fame. 

I once watched the man score on a sac fly ton2B where the second baseman caught the ball standing with his heels on the infield dirt without falling down. 
I celebrate his entire catalogue, even the baserunning. 

[Mitch Hedberg 2090]

😂  From a 99% out to third base. I’ll take it in a 2-1 game but I still feel kinda bad for that left fielder. Nice job Breggy.

[HOOKEM4 5016]

You mean run...

[Gourmand 7774]

101.2 exit velo for Bregman on that sac fly with an xBA of .570

[billfromlaketravis 11358]

Correa got this infield huddle. That’ll  be $30 million per year. - Signed, Scott Boras

[tx 3 putt 76298]

Some damn good clutch hitting 

[Gourmand 7774]

BOOMBAH MANCINI