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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread

Planet Houston

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

Altuve currently has an ISO of .123. (ISO = SLG-AVG.) 

The last season he finished with an ISO this low was 2014 (.112). That year, he struck out in 7.5% of his PAs. He is currently striking out in 15% of his PAs. 

His K% was up the last 3 years compared to 2014 - but so was the ISO (power): .146, .194, .202. 

So...he's striking out at a career-high rate while also losing the power gains he made since 2014. Not a good combo. 

Yeah, this has been a growing concern for me as well.  His average fly ball distance and exit velocity are pretty similar to last year, but his barrel rate on fly balls has dropped fairly substantially. 

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TexArcher
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Bregs is going Crawford Boxes right here.

ERhine
ERhine

Prior to the footage being edited by Bender:

wesleywest
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Two Diamond Club tickets available for the Sunday night game.  Free.  Need to pick them up from me in 77027. Rules: Poster must be a big contributor to this thread/last years shag thread.  No gue

UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9365

Posted
Posted
At this point in the season with off days, injuries, etc. does anyone really have their original starting rotation in the same spots?

Rotations weren’t matched up like that since the opening series.

That said, Keuchel has had some bad luck with his mound opponent:

In 13 starts, he’s faced an opening day starter 6 times (Severino and Kluber twice, Bundy and Odorizzi), plus Paxton twice and Manaea once.

 

That said, mound opponent has nothing to do with being a shitty pitcher...unless he’s developed Giles mental-midget syndrome and he’s so defeated staring in to the opposing bullpen that he’s giving up before he’s even taken the mound

Judging by a first inning ERA of 9.00 this year, maybe there is some truth to that.

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Lat22

Lat22 3981

Posted
Posted
Keuchel is such a bitch. He's not as good as he thinks he is. He whined at the trade deadline last year. His "we're not the Cubs" bullshit. 

He should really learn to shut the fuck up. 

And he’s an Arkansas Razorback. 

338c432a1e28b443fa0b8a0558ecb295.jpg

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utxmike05

utxmike05 1825

Posted
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And Dallas is from Tulsa OK.  I was at the game..got there bottom of the 1st and was confused when we sat down and my gf said “they got 4 points already?”  I was thinking “silly girl she must be looking at the hits or some other thing on the board”.  Nope. I glanced up and saw in the whole by 4 already.  

WS champs dont let a confer leader come in and do that shit.  Marwin and Bregman only ones hitting the ball. There about 4 deep outs at warning track.  Boys just need to get it together. Its hard for ea player to repeat like last year but they were firing on all cylinders last year. 

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Hank Chinaski

Hank Chinaski 6310

Posted
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37 minutes ago, mycox said:

Keuchel hasn't pitched that bad other than three outings including last night. His ERA was just over 3.60 until last night. He will be fine if he can work out that 1st inning thing.

Of his 13 starts:

5 (38%) have been really bad (4, 4, 6 and 7 ER; plus a game with 3 ER in 4 IP)

2(15%)  have been OK (3 ER in 7 & 6 IP

6 (46%) have been good

He's been good more often than he's been terrible...barely. These are the characteristics of an average, back of the rotation starter - wherein half his starts he will severely limit his team's chances of winning.  

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9365

Posted
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On 5/30/2018 at 11:58 PM, UTexasFight said:

Yes this week has sucked and this team definitely has some holes it will need to fill but we all need a big dose of perspective every now and then.

Keuchel is fine. Not great, not poor. Just fine.
And that’s fine on this 2018 team so far. His biggest “issue” may be that he’s part of a rotation that has three guys that could very well start the all star game right now if there were enough spots.

So far this year he has a 3.65 ERA and a 1.23 WHIP. That is EXACTLY his career average for those two stats.
The problem is he’s battling expectations of matching 2015 and/or the start he had last year in his walk year.
Unfortunately, he’s backed up to his overall career average when other guys in the rotation we weren’t expecting to be as lights out are blowing past him.

And all of that is fine...for now. Maybe not so much if Morton, Cole, JV come back to earth.

But for a dose of perspective, it still blows me away that our starters the last six days in May 2017 were:
Keuchel
LMJ
Musgrove
Peacock
Fiers
Paulino

Last year we rode some career offensive years by a few guys to a title (with some clutch pitching mixed in when it mattered). This year maybe we ride some career years on the mound by a few guys to a title (with some clutch offense when it matters). It don’t make a shit to me.
That’s part of what I love about this game.

Same as it ever was...

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9365

Posted
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Great stuff.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pitching-staff-threatening-to-rewrite-baseballs-record-books-1528306468

The Pitching Staff Threatening to Rewrite Baseball’s Record Books

The Houston Astros have put together a pitching rotation on pace to be one of the best ever. How? By making pitchers better than they ever knew they could be.

By Jared Diamond

June 6, 2018 1:34 p.m. ET

Anybody who follows baseball even a little assumed the Houston Astros would come into 2018 with top-notch starting pitching. A strong rotation helped carry them to a championship last year, and they only improved since, benefiting from a full year of Justin Verlander and the acquisition of Gerrit Cole in a January trade.

But nobody could have predicted this level of dominance. The Astros’ staff so far has performed so well that it threatens to rewrite record books, overpowering opposing lineups at a historic pace.

The numbers are nothing short of insane: Houston starters entered Wednesday holding batters to a .199 average and a .262 on-base percentage, while posting a 0.99 WHIP (walks plus hits per inning). They had allowed 6.5 hits and 9.3 base-runners per nine innings. They had struck out 29% of the hitters unfortunate enough to step in the box against them. All of these would be either the best or second-best since at least 1913. Meanwhile, not only is their collective ERA of 2.80 three-quarters of a run better than any other American League starting rotation—it’s better than two of the last five AL Cy Young Award winners.

It has put the Astros in position to compete for another title. Though they are currently trailing the Seattle Mariners in the American League West, they have the best run differential in the majors, a sign that they are likely even better than their strong record indicates.

So that explains what the Astros are doing. The more fascinating part is who they’re doing it with. Under general manager Jeff Luhnow and his ultraprogressive, data-driven front office, Houston has become the equivalent of the world’s greatest spa getaway for pitchers: They show up with something not feeling quite right and, after a massage and a body scrub, come out feeling better than ever before.

Take Cole, a former No. 1 overall draft pick who sputtered to a 4.26 ERA for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2017. After receiving the Astros treatment, he has a 2.20 ERA and leads the AL in strikeouts. The 35-year-old Verlander seemed to have lost the form that elevated him into one of the game’s best for more than a decade with the Detroit Tigers. Now, in 18 starts since arriving in Houston in a trade last August, he has an absurd 1.19 ERA and is currently the favorite to win his first Cy Young since 2011.

Then there’s Charlie Morton, who in his first nine major-league seasons had a 4.54 ERA. Since signing with the Astros before the 2017 season, he has a 3.36 ERA, including 2.84 this year. He threw the final four innings in Game 7 of the World Series last October, surrendering just one run and earning the win.

“Is that not the reality of life in general? People can be better,” Morton said. “You can be better than you are. They recognize that, and they’re OK taking risks with that fact, because they’ve identified something.”

As the Astros have gone on this run, Morton said he has heard two general reactions to their success. Either it’s, “’What are they doing? That’s pretty awesome.’ Or it’s, ‘Oh, they must be doing something the wrong way.’”

That’s how ridiculously good the Astros’ starters have been: They have raised suspicion that something nefarious might be afoot. Cleveland Indians right-hander Trevor Bauer, one of the sport’s most unconventional thinkers, fired off a series of tweets last month that insinuated the Astros were doctoring the baseball to generate more spin. The Astros do, in fact, lead the majors in average spin rate, which gives curveballs sharper break and creates the illusion of fastballs rising.

Houston pitcher Lance McCullers responded with a tweet of his own, saying, “Jealously isn’t a good look on you.” Bauer later clarified that he wasn’t targeting the Astros and was rather criticizing what he perceives to be MLB’s lax enforcement of rules prohibiting use of foreign substances on baseballs.

“Players use social media and make comments to the press to try to rib other players whether it’s friendly or competitive,” Luhnow said. “Fans seem to love it. It’s not going to affect the way we do things here.”

The question, of course, is what exactly it is that the Astros do there to transform good pitchers into great pitchers and great pitchers into unstoppable juggernauts.

Not surprisingly, the notoriously secretive Astros aren’t particularly forthright with explaining their methods, for fear of losing their advantage over their competitors. Asked why so many pitchers improve after getting to Houston, reliever Collin McHugh, another successful reclamation project, was willing to admit that “maybe there’s a small difference in philosophy that unlocks some things for guys.” Cole simply smiled.

“They know exactly what they’re looking for,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you what it is, but they know exactly what they’re looking for.”

It’s safe to say that in each case, the improvement stems largely from analyzing technology and data, allowing them to “identify underutilized talent,” Morton said. Then it’s up to the coaches to impart the information in a digestible way.

In the case of Morton, the Astros saw that his curveball spun at an unusually high rate—but he didn’t throw enough of them, instead relying mostly on a sinker. The Astros moved Morton away from the sinker and instead instructed him to pair his curve with four-seam fastballs up in the strike zone. Nearly two-thirds of his pitches this season are four-seamers and curveballs. In 2016, the year before he got to Houston, he threw those two pitches less than a third of the time.

The Astros altered Cole’s repertoire as well. He has all but eliminated his two-seam fastball and is throwing four-seamers more than half the time, up from 43% last season. He’s throwing his curveball on 19% of his pitches, a career high by a wide margin. While he wouldn’t go into specifics, Cole said the Astros showed him statistics he had never seen before about himself.

“It’s not like you’re changing who you are,” Cole said of the Astros’ approach. “You’re just identifying what makes you good.”

Luhnow is quick to point out that not every new Astros pitcher has taken to Houston’s ideas about how to make them better, either because of “physical limitations or unwillingness to try new things.” Increasingly, however, the latter is less of an issue, as the Astros’ reputation as pitcher-whisperers grows.

At this point, it’s hard to argue with the results.

“All they need to do is improve 1 or 2% from what they did last year, and you can talk about some dominance, like we’re seeing right now,” Luhnow said. “It’s amazing to watch.”

Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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Posted (edited)

Josh James has looked better and better in Fresno striking out nearly 40% of the batters he has faced by throwing mid to upper 90s with a very nice breaking ball.  Although he has been starting at CC and Fresno, from his pitch mix, it sounds like he could be our own homegrown Ken Giles.  Hopefully we get to see him in Houston this September.  

https://www.milb.com/milb/news/houston-astros-prospect-josh-james-racks-up-career-high-13-strikeouts/c-280006730

Edited by Fozzz
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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8051

Posted
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20 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

Hold on to your butts...another Fedorowicz/ McCullers battery tonight.
 

Nothing like the calm, collected presence of LMJ on the mound to make me feel good about pulling out of an accelerating tailspin at treetop level.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9365

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I agree.

Tonight ends a stretch of 16 of last 18 against CLE, BOS, NYY and SEA.
Win and finish 8-8 in those 16.

Then feast on some weaker teams the rest of the month (6 each against KC and TB, 3 each against Tex, Oak and Tor).
Meanwhile, Seattle has 10 in a row against BOS and NYY starting June 14.

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