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What Makes the Astros Defense Great?

By Mark Simon

 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise if you watched them during the ALCS: The Houston Astros led the American League in Defensive Runs Saved with 89 in 2019. Houston’s defensive excellence is the product of a collective effort. Thirty players on other teams had more Runs Saved than the Astros leader, George Springer, who had 11.

Astros Defensive Keys      
* OF led MLB in Catch Rate on Flies & Liners  
* Infield led AL in Shift Runs Saved    
* Carlos Correa makes many great plays, few mistakes
* Martin Maldonado, Robinson Chirinos: great pitch blockers
* Zack Greinke: Nimble on the mound    

A great outfield

But Springer was part of an outfield that combined to save 45 runs with its defense, the second-highest total in the majors and 19 runs more than the next-best AL team (the Yankees, 26).

The Astros caught an MLB-high 62% of fly balls and line drives hit to the outfield (but not out of the ballpark) this season. Springer, Jake Marisnick, Josh Reddick, and Michael Brantley were the players integral to that.

Springer split his time and his Runs Saved between center field (6 Runs Saved in 75 games) and right field (5 in 59). That was a big jump from 2018, when he cost his team five runs with his defensive play. He’s usually best on fly balls to the shallowest part of the outfield (you’ll see that’s a trend here). Watch him on deep balls in right field. The numbers indicate that’s not his strength.

Marisnick is the team’s best ‘go back and get it’ outfielder, hence a valuable center fielder. He’s totaled at least 10 Runs Saved in a season as an outfielder four times. Since 2014, he ranks seventh among outfielders in Runs Saved despite ranking 60th in innings. He finished 2019 with five Runs Saved, with his strength being catching the shallow fly ball rather than the deep fly, as it had been in years past. The Astros have been using him as a defensive closer this postseason, bringing him in to protect late-game leads.

Jake Marisnick on Shallow Fly Balls
Opportunities* 78
Plays Made 59
Expected Plays Made 50
Plays Above Expected 9**
* Balls with Catch Probability >0%
** T-2nd among CF

In Game 6 of the ALCS, he replaced Brantley (with Springer and Reddick moving so Marisnick could play center). But Brantley is no slouch. He made a great diving catch to preserve the Astros lead that game. Brantley tied for the lead among left fielders with 10 Defensive Runs Saved in 2019.

The Astros play Brantley an average of four feet shallower than the average left fielder plays at Minute Maid Park. That likely helped him too in catching shallow flies, as he fared well above average in doing that. You saw that in the LCS catch.

Springer just missed DJ LeMahieu’s game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Game 6. That kind of ball is one that Reddick has made his season on. He’s snagged five home run robberies this year (here’s one), matching Carlos Gomez (2013) and Lorenzo Cain (2019) for the most in a season since Sports Info Solutions began tracking them fully in 2004.

Reddick’s nine Runs Saved in right field are largely boosted by those five catches. Otherwise, Reddick is a slightly above-average glove (he has a nice catch in Game 6 too). It will be worth watching how he throws. His Outfield Arm Runs Saved dipped from 3 to -3 from 2018 to 2019. He averaged five assists without a cutoff man from 2016 to 2018 but had only one unaided in 2019.

Shifts key to infield success

The Astros recorded 35 Shift Runs Saved in 2019, the third-highest total in the majors and easily the most in the American League. Houston put Yuli Gurriel, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman in position to succeed, and those players made plays pivotal to the team’s success.

Most Shift Runs Saved – 2019 Season
Dodgers 48
Diamondbacks 44
Astros 35
Cardinals 30

There’s versatility there if needed. When Correa got hurt, Bregman moved from third base to shortstop and Gurriel moved from first base to third base. The team survived until Correa returned. When Correa’s healthy, you can see he is a difference maker with plays like the double play conversion in Game 6 of the ALCS.

SIS tracks Good Fielding Plays and Defensive Misplays & Errors using a set of rules devised by Bill James that rewards both Web Gem-type plays and things like a nifty double play turn and punishes for things like slipping and falling or failing to convert a makable double play.

Correa averaged the most Good Fielding Plays per 1,000 innings and the fewest Defensive Misplays per 1,000 innings among shortstops in 2019. He’s the highlight reel star this year after Bregman played that role in years past.

Carlos Correa vs. Trea Turner
  Good Fielding Plays Misplays & Errors
Carlos Correa 25 9
Trea Turner 16 35

Bregman, Gurriel and Altuve are the consistent ones. Altuve’s not as nimble as he used to be, but Gurriel helps make up for that by the ground he covers at first base (and he helps his teammates out – Gurriel had only one Misplay & Error related to catching a throw).

In all, the Astros turned 76% of ground balls and bunts into outs last season, the third-highest total in the majors.

Pitch and Catch

Behind the plate, the Astros split between Martin Maldonado and Robinson Chirinos. Maldonado is Cole’s personal catcher and could start if the Astros use a bullpen game again. Maldonado has a reputation of being one of the best defensive catchers in the game. He ranked among the best pitch blockers this season and is typically one of the leaders in pitch framing and basestealing deterrence, though he was just a smidge above average in both this season.

Cole’s fine with that. He has a 1.30 ERA and a nearly 8-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in the 90 1/3 innings Maldonado has caught him.

Gerrit Cole By Catcher (includes postseason)
  Maldonado Chirinos
ERA 1.3 2.44
K-BB Ratio 7.6* 6.2
Innings 90 1/3 103 1/3
* 9.8 in regular season and LDS (137/14)

Chirinos is a below-average pitch-framer and average when it comes to basestealing deterrence. However, he’s an outstanding pitch blocker. His 96% block rate on potential wild pitches was highest in the majors. Chirinos was Verlander’s personal catcher. He’s caught every pitch Verlander has thrown this season.

As for the Astros pitchers, Cole and Verlander have one Misplay & Error between them and handle their positions well. They pale in comparison to Greinke, who might be the best fielding pitcher in baseball. He led all pitchers in putouts and tied Max Fried for the lead in assists. He also limited basestealers to 2-for-6 in stolen base attempts. This is something Greinke has been good at for a long time. He ranks second among pitchers in Defensive Runs Saved since the stat was first tracked in 2003.

We know that the Astros can pitch and that their best defense is when the ball isn’t hit at all, which happens often for Cole and Verlander. But it’s a great luxury to have the defense they do. It puts them in position to win their second World Series in three seasons.

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9,376

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Ya’ll like starting pitching?

 

 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/astros-nationals-a-historic-gathering-of-aces-11571659200

 

Astros-Nationals: A Historic Gathering of Aces

Houston and Washington will send the greatest combination of starters to the mound in a World Series since the adoption of earned runs as a statistic in 1913

 

 

 

 

 

When Bryce Harper rejected a $300 million contract offer from the Washington Nationals last off-season, they took more than half of the money they saved and spent it in an unlikely place. They signed a pair of starting pitchers, Patrick Corbin and Aníbal Sánchez, and inserted them into a rotation that already featured two aces in Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg.

 

At the July trade deadline, the Houston Astros proceeded with an equally surprising calculation. Despite possessing the American League’s second-best ERA at the time behind the lethal duo of Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, they decided to trade four prospects to acquire Zack Greinke, another elite starter.

 

The moves defied baseball’s modern conventional wisdom and came with obvious risk. Not only did the Nationals and Astros add to their greatest strengths, they chose to allocate their resources—and pin their championship aspirations—on an area teams increasingly appear reluctant to build a roster around.

 

Their gambles paid off in a big way. The Astros and Nationals will meet in the World Series in what looks like a historic matchup of dominant arms. In an era that revolves around finding creative ways to navigate 27 outs with a parade of relievers, these two organizations proved that, sometimes, no strategy beats the original.

 

“Baseball’s changed a lot,” Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle said. “But if you have horses, they can carry you.”

 

Data wonks like to use a metric called adjusted ERA-plus to evaluate pitchers across the generations. Despite the fancy math required to calculate it, ERA-plus essentially attempts to answer a simple question: How did a pitcher fare in a given year compared to his peers?

 

An ERA-plus of 100 represents a league-average pitcher. Cole posted an ERA-plus of 192 in 2019, according to Stats LLC, which means he performed 92% better than average.

 

By this measurement, the Astros and Nationals will send the greatest combination of starters to the mound in a World Series since the adoption of earned runs as a statistic in 1913. For the first time, this Fall Classic will feature outings from six pitchers who registered at 30% above league average or better during the regular season: Cole, Verlander and Greinke for Houston and Scherzer, Strasburg and Corbin for Washington. Four of those pitchers finished at least 50% better than average, and two, Cole and Verlander, came in at 75% better than average, both World Series firsts.

 

Together, this powerhouse group of six accounts for five Cy Young awards, an MVP and an average 2019 salary of $26 million. This winter, Cole will receive one of the largest free-agent deals ever awarded to a pitcher.

 

“Those guys that can go out and take the ball every five days are extremely valuable,” said Verlander. “They should be looked at as such.”

 

The current philosophy throughout the major leagues doesn’t necessarily agree with Verlander’s assessment. Relievers threw 42% of all innings in the regular season, setting a new all-time high for the fourth straight year.

 

Managers, buoyed by analytics, rarely allow their starters to face an opposing lineup more than twice in a given outing, resulting in many nights like the one this past Saturday: In Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, both the Astros and New York Yankees eschewed a traditional starter in favor of a “bullpen day,” using a total of 14 relievers, none for longer than 2 2/3 innings. After the Astros won, one of those relievers, Yankees setup man Zack Britton, admitted to reporters, “I still think starting pitching is what’s going to get you a World Series championship at the end of the day.”

 

For proof, just look to Houston and Washington. The Nationals trusted their starters to throw more than 65% of their innings, a MLB-high, while the Astros’ rotation threw 62% of their team’s innings, fourth-highest. They ranked second and third, respectively, in starter ERA, only behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, who compiled an NL-best 106 victories before falling to the Nationals in the division series.

 

So while new-age “bullpenning” can certainly succeed under the right circumstances, “There’s no doubt that having aces—and multiple aces—in the rotation relieves the pressure on the entire team,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said.

 

The challenge comes in accumulating those aces, a proposition that often requires a ridiculous amount of money and an iron-cast stomach. Between the constant threat of injury and natural regression, expensive pitchers often don’t pan out, and missing on a top-line starter can doom a franchise for years.

 

That didn’t stop the Astros from sending three players to the Detroit Tigers for Verlander in August 2017, two months before their first-ever World Series title. That winter, they parted with another four players for Cole and then four more this past summer for Greinke.

 

“There’s nervousness anytime you make a big deal like that because you’re taking a big chunk out of your farm system,” Luhnow said. Nonetheless, he made the three deals, knowing the potential consequences. Meanwhile, the Yankees, their vanquished ALCS foe, opted for relative austerity and repeatedly failed to shell out for a big-name starter. It cost them.

 

The Nationals took their reliance on starters to the extreme, focusing much of their financial capabilities on their rotation and valuing it more than anything else. Before the 2015 season, they gave Scherzer a seven-year contract worth a whopping $210 million, a remarkably bold choice for a 30-year-old pitcher. A year and a half later, they completed a $175 million extension to retain Strasburg, a former No. 1 overall draft pick. Last winter, they completed their trio with Corbin.

 

The gamble worked, with their starters enabling them to overcome a bullpen ERA of 5.66—not only the worst in baseball, but the worst for any team that ever reached the postseason. Mike Rizzo, the Nationals’ GM, believes strongly in the starter-first model. He served as the scouting director for the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks under general manager Joe Garagiola Jr. As Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling powered them to a title, Rizzo saw the importance of the starting pitcher firsthand, and he never forgot it.

 

“That was my foundation on how to build a championship-caliber club, and it’s stayed with me since then,” Rizzo said. “Good starting pitching is, to me, the key to any long-term success that you’re going to have.”

 

In many ways, the Astros and Nationals stand as opposite franchises in terms of how they operate. Led by Luhnow, an M.B.A. who entered sports from the world of consulting, the Astros pride themselves on their data-first approach, embracing analytics and technology perhaps more than any team in baseball. Rizzo assumed in his position from a traditional scouting background, and his old-school principles continue to inform the Nationals’ identity.

 

The two teams arrived in the same place and with the same backbone: in the World Series, led by starting pitchers who give hitters nightmares.

 

“Baseball has been around forever, and there are certain things that are truths,” Luhnow said. “There’s no need to reinvent things that aren’t broken.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Sarris nerd analysis on what to watch for:

https://theathletic.com/1305134/2019/10/21/sarris-five-things-to-watch-for-in-a-pitching-nerds-dream-world-series/

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9,376

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ok, keys to the world series.  i'll start.
1. get alex bregman fucking going.  his first rbi of the alcs was on that weak grounder in g6.  he slugged .222 in the series.


2. 2 stats in particular we’ve done all year we need to continue: on offense, led majors in fewest Ks and most BBs ( Nats were 4th and 8th FWIW).
Need to continue that MO. Work counts and get into their bullpen in the 5th or 6th.
(After George swings wildly at the first pitch from Scherzer tomorrow night, of course)
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Seasick Sailor

Seasick Sailor 3,747

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3 minutes ago, Jebus said:

Get Yordan going, or get Diaz into the DH Spot

This lineup will be a lot more dangerous if he can get back to his regular season numbers. The Nats don't have dominate lefties in the bullpen like the Rays and Yankess did, and they can only use Corbin so much out of the pen. If he can get out of his head, he has the potential to go off this series.  

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9,376

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3. Get Yordan going, or get Diaz into the DH Spot

4. Get Greinke some extra BP.

 

 

I disagree with 3. That’s easy to point to but that’s a luxury, not a key to winning the series.

 

Even before his playoff struggles, he was likely going to play 4 games at most in the World Series.

 

I will give you, he severely limits your late game PH options in DC but as long as he’s not GIDP or K’ing with RISP, I don’t view him hitting like the ROY as a key to winning the series

 

Sweeping or winning 5, sure.

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Jebus

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1 minute ago, Seasick Sailor said:

This lineup will be a lot more dangerous if he can get back to his regular season numbers. The Nats don't have dominate lefties in the bullpen like the Rays and Yankess did, and they can only use Corbin so much out of the pen. If he can get out of his head, he has the potential to go off this series.  

I have no doubt Yordan will be fine in the long run, just gotta lay off those high fastballs and stop expanding the zone so much in general.  Whether the break between ALCS and WS (and potentially sitting during any games in the NL park) will be enough to get him reset or not is the question to me.

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Jebus

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2 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:


I disagree with 3. That’s easy to point to but that’s a luxury, not a key to winning the series.

Even before his playoff struggles, he was likely going to play 4 games at most in the World Series.

I will give you, he severely limits your late game PH options in DC but as long as he’s not GIDP or K’ing with RISP, I don’t view him hitting like the ROY as a key to winning their series

Yeah, I suppose what I really meant was "get some offensive production out of DH/Right Field/Catcher", and I figured that of those 3, Yordan is the most likely to get hot during the series.  Plus, Reddick is giving us good defense in RF and the catchers seem to be doing a great job with the pitching staff, so we're at least getting SOMETHING from those spots, but no hitting from the DH spot means you're not getting anything from it.

I originally had "Work pitch counts on the Nats starters to get into their pen early and often", but your post popped up before I could finish mine, so I'm definitely with you on that.  Although the Nats bullpen in the playoffs has been much better than the Nats bullpen in the regular season. 

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Js1

Js1 85,095

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27 minutes ago, Jebus said:

3. Get Yordan going, or get Diaz into the DH Spot

4. Get Greinke some extra BP.

 

 

Greinke (.227) and Cole (.200) are career postseason hitters better than our DH was in the ALCS so it can’t be worse 

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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8,052

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1 minute ago, Mez2 said:

how the fuck are we supposed to do anything today at work; i havent done dick except read every article i can find and watch social post videos. 

soon, very soon...

This is why you have subordinates in any organization: so you can lean on them to get things done while you're strategizing. I realize that in this case what you're strategizing is how to root the Astros to a title, but it's strategizing nonetheless. 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9,376

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After stopping to read the Sarris article I linked above, the pitching matchups and home field timing is salt in the wound for Alvarez
I really can’t think of much worse than to be coming off of a series where you hit .045 (and looked as lost as that stat suggests) and then be asked to deal with Scherzer’s cutter and Strasburg’s changeup.


I’ll say this, if he does rise to the occasion, let me know where I can bet the house for him matching Rivera as unanimous first ballot HOF-er.

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housious

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25 minutes ago, Mez2 said:

how the fuck are we supposed to do anything today at work; i havent done dick except read every article i can find and watch social post videos. 

soon, very soon...

I saved a few excel sheets from last week when I came in this morning. But today's looking pretty bad from a productivity standpoint. 

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Js1

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1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Have you seen Cole bat since he came over?  

0/7 with 5 K

i also just saw Alvarez go 7/41 with 19 K in the last 11 games sooooo.....

19 K is the most in this postseason so far by an AL player, followed by Correa with 18. 

Again, can it be worse then what Yordan has done so far? 

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CycleTex87

CycleTex87 2,953

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1 minute ago, cabowabo said:

Found it.  11:17:13 pm.  Multiple Ring Camera views will be uploaded shortly which include my 14 year old son screaming multiple "sit the fuck downs" next to my 79 year old mother.  Good times.

 

1 minute ago, cabowabo said:

Found it.  11:17:13 pm.  Multiple Ring Camera views will be uploaded shortly which include my 14 year old son screaming multiple "sit the fuck downs" next to my 79 year old mother.  Good times.

Very good times.

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13,409

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I didn't realize that Cole had the highest Strikeout/9 IP ever this year. Obviously he was well behind the overall single season strikeout record (Nolan Ryan 383 not the 1880s records) but if Cole could have kept his 13.8 strikeouts per 9 IP and matched Ryan's IP from his record year of 1973, Cole would have had slightly more than 500 strikeouts. It's tough to compare pitching eras now with 5 man rotations and specialized relievers but Cole had a year that few if any have done.

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Gut Wagon

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29 minutes ago, cabowabo said:

Anyone have the time of Altuve's HR?  I need to go back and review my Nest Cameras to see what was picked up.

Just look at the 9-1-1 records. I'm sure they show a sharp spike in reports of screams and gunfire right then. I mean, more than at that time on your average Saturday night. 

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