2022 ZiPS Projections: Houston Astros

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Houston Astros.

Batters

The outfield, the DH, and the catcher from the 2017 championship team are long gone, yet the Astros have carried on with nary a regret. Joining them on the ex-Astro list is the team’s former phenom, Carlos Correa. One could hardly call him a bust by any stretch of the imagination, but his injury history appears to have been enough to scare Houston off making a decade-long bet on him. The franchise has moved on from stars before, and it will again. But will it pay a serious short-term hit in the win department?

Honestly? No. Now, there’s no denying that a downgrade at shortstop is inevitable. But given Correa’s injury history, you can’t really pencil him in for 150 games. It was likely that the Plan B’s would get at least some playing time, and if 2022 was anything like 2017–19, that time could be substantial. ZiPS projects that we’re talking about a three-win hit for Houston. When you have a shortstop prospect slugging .600 in Triple-A, as Jeremy Peña just missed doing in 2021, it’s hard not to use that player! The more Peña and the less Aledmys Díaz that Houston gets, the better the post-Correa era will feel at the start.

Elsewhere, the Astros don’t really have much in the way of surprises. They have some dizzying highs in the trio of Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker, and Yordan Alvarez, and they avoid being awful anywhere. Even the catcher projections aren’t really that lousy. With catcher defense extremely tricky to quantify, I’m certainly open to the idea that Martín Maldonado’s defense is better than our crude numbers have captured.

As usual, I have zero faith in Yuli Gurriel’s projection. He’ll eventually suffer age-related decline, but I don’t know if it’ll be at 38 or 48 or 58. I’m not sure that when the sun enters its red giant phase, the last vestige of life on Earth isn’t going to be Yuli still hitting .290.

The Edgar Martinez comp for Correa as a hitter might raise some eyebrows. Remember: these are near-age offensive comps, so Martinez was playing third base at the time (so more likely to be compared to a shortstop than a DH). You almost never get a star with a top comp being someone actually in the minor leagues, but the Mariners kept coming to the puzzling conclusion that you ought to want Jim Presley playing baseball for you.

I do think that the Astros would benefit from a little more depth this offseason, though not necessarily of the expensive variety. Jake Meyers is recovering from a torn labrum, and with three starters well into their 30s, they would benefit from additional redundancy.

Pitchers

I keep waiting for the Astros to lose the pitcher who finally sends them over the tipping point. I mentioned above that the offense looked very different than the 2017 champs, but the pitching staff has suffered even more turnover. The only pitcher with an Astros championship ring at the World Series was on the Braves (Charlie Morton).

My concern going into last year was whether the Astros would be able to cobble together a rotation from Zack Greinke, Lance McCullers Jr., Jake Odorizzi, and a multitude of talented-but-raw pitchers with fascinating stuff. They did just that. Once pitchers started coming off the IL in May, Houston moved Cristian Javier to the bullpen not because they lost faith in him but because they had too much starting pitching talent available. How often is that a problem in baseball?

The Astros didn’t win the World Series, but I maintain that 2021 was Dusty Baker’s finest hour. He’s always been a great manager at the non-stat-nerdy parts of the job. The leftover bad feelings around baseball for the trash cananigans are the kind of thing that can distract a team, especially when it starts off with a rather “meh” April, as Houston did. But they didn’t. That’s what you expect from Dusty.

You don’t historically see him doing such yeoman’s work juggling a number of young pitchers. His ability to juggle a young rotation and manage a tired bullpen came into play in the World Series with the team down McCullers. The Astros didn’t win, but it worked wonderfully.

ZiPS is quite optimistic about Verlander, and while I would take the under on a pitcher approaching 40 who basically missed two seasons, I don’t think it’s a shocking projection or one he can’t actually achieve. The computer sees most arms repeating their 2021 performances, a more inspiring season out of Odorizzi, and interesting arms in the upper minors to provide depth.

The only real disappointment is the projection for Forrest Whitley. ZiPS was excited about him back in 2017, but after a 2018 suspension, multiple injuries, and disappointing performance in ’19, and then Tommy John surgery, the computer’s at the point where it’s got to see him pitching successfully in professional baseball before it falls in love. Four years is a lot of development time to lose.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2022 due to injury, and players who were released in 2021. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a big band orchestra that only plays nu-metal versions of baroque cantatas, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.36, similar to the post-June substance-enforcement environment.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2022.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter.