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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
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Mitch Hedberg

Mitch Hedberg 2090

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I was really hoping we would sign or trade for a one year stop gap in left field and leave Tucker in AAA this year. Depending on a 21 year old to come in and be some kind of offensive savior on a WS defending champ is asking a lot. Wish he showed a little more fire or passion but maybe just slightly overwhelmed. I have no doubt he will eventually turn it around. His hard hit balls suggest it’s only a matter of time. 

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TexArcher
TexArcher

Bregs is going Crawford Boxes right here.

ERhine
ERhine

Prior to the footage being edited by Bender:

wesleywest
wesleywest

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

Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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It's not like Tucker is even getting his ass kicked or anything.  He has a .359 xwOBA, and in small samples xwOBA is a better predictor of future wOBA than current wOBA.  I'd be a lot more worried about him if his K%-BB% had gone to shit, but it's pretty much the same as it was in Fresno.

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Rimbo

Rimbo 25778

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4 hours ago, Jshep34 said:

July 29 tyler shook hands with lilshep and signed his shirt. 3 years ago same thing happened for Valbuena 

That does explain it. 

Can little jshep have a meet-up with the Astros' training and medical staff?

Edited by Rimbo
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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8052

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2 hours ago, IDIOTsavant said:

Know the answer is Bregman, but thought I'd look up Mike Trout's numbers from his first call up: 7 for 43 with 1 HR and 6 RBI. Agree that we should probably let the guy get a few more ABs first before making any definitive statements. Also wanted to compare him to Ted Williams' first call up...but that guy started 1939 in the majors and won the MVP. Maybe we should pump the brakes all the way around.

To this point, Tucker’s totals are much closer to what the original Ted put up in 1943. 

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Ldogg53

Ldogg53 514

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July 29 tyler shook hands with lilshep and signed his shirt. 3 years ago same thing happened for Valbuena 

I’ll just add that I got a high 5 from Lil Shep last Friday. And in that time we’ve secured 2 huge bids that I was running here at work.

Lil Shep for Pope!
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David Dennison

David Dennison 18655

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39 minutes ago, Mitch Hedberg said:

Adam Jones cleared waivers. I wouldn’t mind sending a lottery ticket for a couple month rental. Power is down but still hitting good average. Better than anything we’ve put in left field. Come win a ring then go back to BMore. Tucker takes over next April. Three peat.

We should definitely talk to them.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9379

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Tyler Stafford, The Athletic

Tl;Dr: Basically putting the advanced metrics to what others have said above. Has been a little unlucky. K/BB ratio is good. Needs to stop swinging at so many strikes though. Glaring hole in his swing down and in will have to get fixed

When Kyle Tucker was called up by the Astros on July 7, they hoped he would be able to solidify their final outfield spot that has been a revolving door of Marwin Gonzalez, Jake Marisnick, Tony Kemp and other spare parts, and while Tucker has not come close to the results the Astros were hoping for, there may be hope behind his numbers.

During Tucker’s two brief stints (July 27-Aug. 1 and Aug. 11-present), the Astros, particularly the offense, has sputtered. They snapped a season-long five-game losing streak Wednesday, scoring more than seven runs for just the fourth time since the All-Star break. The win saved them from yet another sweep at home, having lost their previous nine games at Minute Maid Park.

Tucker, meanwhile, has slashed .157/.259/.200  and in just 19 games has been worth -0.5 fWAR, the lowest of any Astro this season. The question the Astros are left with as they try to lock up a division title away from the peskier-than-anticipated Mariners and A’s is whether this performance from Tucker will improve over the last stretch of the season.

I don’t think I will ruffle too many feathers here when I say that playing major league baseball is really hard. It’s no secret that rookies, even highly touted ones like Tucker, struggle more often than not when they first arrive. Alex Bregman, who arrived in 2016 with a similar weight of hype and expectation, did not pick up his first hit until his 19th at-bat. After 10 games, Bregman was hitting .053. You may or may not have noticed that Bregman is now a bonafide star, so early results are not indicative of future production.

But that doesn’t ease the tension of the here-and-now. Tucker may very well be invited to the Home Run Derby someday as Bregman was, but right now the Astros have a two-game lead in the AL West and may not have the time to wait for a corner to be turned.

However, when you look at the underlying numbers of Tucker’s first 58 plate appearances, the situation doesn’t seem nearly as dire. And the fact that the Astros chose to demote Derek Fisher over Tucker shows they believe his numbers aren’t entirely indicative of his actual performance either.

Strikeout and Walk Rates

When a hitter jumps from Triple-A to the majors, it is expected he will strikeout more and walk less. This is intuitive. Therefore, if a batter maintains his strikeout and walk rates or at least approaches them, it should be seen as a good sign.

Here are Tucker’s rates.

  K% BB%
Double-A 20.1 6.9
Triple-A 19.3 9.3
MLB 19.3 8.8

He is walking and striking out at a rate almost identical to what he did in Triple-A, where he posted a .390 wOBA.

It should be noted that ZIPS, Fangraphs projection system, has Tucker pegged at 25.1% and 7.1% rates for strikeouts and walks for the rest of the year, respectively. Though it’s been just 58 plate appearances thus far, that’s not far from the point where these stats start to stabilize.

A few years ago, Beyond The Box Score looked at the relationship between strikeouts and walks to productivity at the major league level of top prospects. You should read the whole thing because it is fascinating, but for our purposes, all you need to know is Tucker’s fits among the safer bets to have a productive career.

Plate Discipline

Walks and strikeouts tell part of the story, but plate discipline leads to both and thus can be even more telling. Let’s look at a chart of the swing choices Tucker has made this year. O is for out of zone, Z is for in zone.

  O-swing% Z-swing% Contact%
Tucker 24.2 80.0 77.3
MLB Avg 30.6 67.3 77.1

What these numbers say is Tucker is having no trouble recognizing balls and strikes. He is swinging at a below-league-average rate of pitches outside the zone, which is great, especially considering he is a 21-year-old rookie.

The issue here is he is not waiting for “good” strikes to hit. He is swinging at almost every single strike he sees and as a result of his bat-to-ball skills, is putting a lot of weak balls in play.

Minor league numbers are not publicly available and we only have 58 plate appearances to work with here, so all of the normal small sample caveats apply. From the numbers we do have, Tucker appears to perform best on pitches down and away.

TuckerEV.png

You’ll notice that the square in the bottom right hand corner, the proverbial happy zone for a lot of left-handed hitters, is blank. That is because he is missing those pitches at an alarming rate.

TuckerWhiff.png

Major league pitchers are going to be able to find a weakness quickly and it appears that Tucker’s is obvious. He has a hole in his swing in a place where lefties traditionally rake.

It doesn’t matter if it’s from a lefty.

Or a righty.

Tucker has not demonstrated the ability to hit a pitch down and in, and until he does he’s going to continue to get pounded there.

This is not the end of the world. Mike Trout had a hole in his swing with fastballs up and he fixed it [note: Kyle Tucker is not Mike Trout, this is merely an example]. With that in mind, he will need to a) do what he can to shore up that hole before his return to the big leagues and b) if he cannot handle those pitches as well, wait until he gets ones out of the place. If he is not capable of turning on the down and in pitches and doing damage there is no point in swinging at them, even if it they are strikes.

Luck 

If you thought you were going to get through here without a mention of xwOBA, you are a silly goose.

Tucker has run into some extraordinarily bad luck on balls in play. He has hit 12 balls with an exit velocity over 100 mph and has just two singles to show for it. This season, league-wide batting average on 100+ mph is .619.

According to xwOBA, Tucker has the worst discrepancy between his expected and actual results. For context, here is the difference Tucker is experiencing compared to league average.

  wOBA xwOBA Difference
Tucker .213 .355 -.142
League Avg .315 .328 -.013

More likely than not, Tucker’s luck will turn and he will resemble the hitter he has been at every other level of his professional career. But if the Astros run out of patience, they have the depth to replace a consensus top-ten prospect with proven major leaguers like Marisnick, Gonzalez or Kemp, even at a spot that is supposed to be a weakness for them.

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Seasick Sailor

Seasick Sailor 3747

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11 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

btw, jacob nix is making his 2nd mlb start tonight.  in his debut he went 6 scoreless with 4k/2bb and got the win.  i know he's not an astro, but i always root for our evaluations of guys to be accurate.

His outing tonight didn't go as well.

Gave up 5 in 2/3 of an inning and left with the bases loaded.

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Mez2

Mez2 4021

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Kyle Tucker needs to be more aggressive at the plate. Too many times is he letting cock shots down the middle or pitches he can drive go by him. Selective aggression is what he needs to exhibit, I believe he will eventually but there is such a difference between waiting on pitches to attack in triple A versus how you will be pitched to in the majors. Sucks that we're in a division race and don't have a lot of leeway for him to figure it out. The bright side is that his skill set and ability should play well in the long run, the fact he's making hard contact and putting good swings on balls he does put on play lend credence that way.

 

That said, I'd fucks with.Adam Jones or mccutchen for a month and a half, hit them seventh our line-up and see what happens. 

 

 

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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9 hours ago, Mez2 said:

Kyle Tucker needs to be more aggressive at the plate. Too many times is he letting cock shots down the middle or pitches he can drive go by him. Selective aggression is what he needs to exhibit, I believe he will eventually but there is such a difference between waiting on pitches to attack in triple A versus how you will be pitched to in the majors. Sucks that we're in a division race and don't have a lot of leeway for him to figure it out. The bright side is that his skill set and ability should play well in the long run, the fact he's making hard contact and putting good swings on balls he does put on play lend credence that way.

 

That said, I'd fucks with.Adam Jones or mccutchen for a month and a half, hit them seventh our line-up and see what happens. 

 

 

Per the article UTexasFight posted, Tucker is quite a bit more aggressive at swinging at pitches in the zone than the average major leaguer.  I disagree though with the author's point that Tucker is putting a lot of weak balls in play.  He actually has one of the lowest % of poorly hit balls/BIP on the team (next to Tyler White).  

It seems like Tucker's primary issue has been failing to elevate the ball.  Given his aggressive approach at pitches in the zone, I think he could be more selective at swinging at pitches in the lower third of the zone, which tend to be harder to elevate.  Elevating the ball will allow him to finally leverage all that velocity he puts on the ball which is wasted with grounders.

 

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WBT

WBT 20419

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6 hours ago, Fozzz said:

Per the article UTexasFight posted, Tucker is quite a bit more aggressive at swinging at pitches in the zone than the average major leaguer.  I disagree though with the author's point that Tucker is putting a lot of weak balls in play.  He actually has one of the lowest % of poorly hit balls/BIP on the team (next to Tyler White).  

It seems like Tucker's primary issue has been failing to elevate the ball.  Given his aggressive approach at pitches in the zone, I think he could be more selective at swinging at pitches in the lower third of the zone, which tend to be harder to elevate.  Elevating the ball will allow him to finally leverage all that velocity he puts on the ball which is wasted with grounders.

  

I get this feeling as well.  It seems like he is grounding into the shift 3 times a night.  Looking it up, his GB% is 50 even, which would put him 21st in MLB if he had enough ABs to qualify.

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