The Astros had quite a day on Tuesday, and not just because they reunited with Justin Verlander via a trade with the Mets, nine months after he helped them win a World Series. In another callback to last year’s success, they showcased the quality of their homegrown starting pitching as Framber Valdez no-hit the Guardians. Unlike last year, when Cristian Javier threw combined no-hitters (plural!) against the Yankees on June 25 and the Phillies in Game 4 of the World Series on November 2, Valdez did it solo — making him the first Astro to throw a complete-game no-hitter since Verlander himself, on September 1, 2019.

Prior to Tuesday night, the 29-year-old Valdez had already stepped into the breach to front the Astros’ rotation after Verlander’s offseason departure. He earned All-Star honors for the second year in a row, his 3.19 FIP and 3.2 WAR both led the staff’s starters, and his 3.29 ERA trailed only rookie J.P. France, who had thrown 34.1 fewer innings (91.2 to 126). He had even notched a complete-game shutout already, on May 21 against the A’s. It was the second of his career; he had one against the Tigers last September 12.

Still, on Tuesday night Valdez was even more dominant than in those shutouts. He “only” struck out seven batters, but six of them were from among the first 12 Guardians he faced, as if to make it abundantly clear this wasn’t Cleveland’s night. He only went to a three-ball count twice, and walked just one batter: Oscar Gonzalez, who led off the fifth by winning an eight-pitch battle, a particularly tenacious plate appearance for a hacker who entered the night with a .229 on-base percentage and a 3.6% walk rate. Five pitches and one out later, Gonzalez was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Will Brennan, meaning Valdez faced the minimum of 27 on the night. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets’ losses are the American League West’s gains. Three days after the Rangers landed Max Scherzer, the Astros have reacquired Justin Verlander, who less than nine months ago helped them win the World Series, and soon after pocketed his third Cy Young Award. In exchange for the future Hall of Famer and a whole lot of cash, the Mets are receiving two of the Astros’ top prospects, lefty-swinging outfielders Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford.

This is the continuation of a stunning about-face for the Mets, who signed Verlander to a two-year, $86.7 million contract in December and opened the season with a record-setting $352 million payroll. They entered Tuesday at 50-55, 17.5 games out of first place and six back in the Wild Card race, with seven teams above them. Once owner Steve Cohen gave general manager Billy Eppler the green light to trade closer David Robertson to the Marlins last Friday, the dominoes began falling, with Scherzer waiving his no-trade clause to be dealt to Texas, and then Mark Canha being sent to Milwaukee on Monday.

As with the Scherzer deal, the Mets are eating the majority of the remaining money on Verlander’s contract to improve their return. They sent $35.5 million out of the roughly $57.7 million remaining on Scherzer’s two-year, $86.7 million contract to Texas and received middle infielder Luisangel Acuña, a 50-FV prospect who’s currently no. 56 on The Board. Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the Mets will send $52.5 million of the $93 million remaining on Verlander’s pact, assuming his 2025 conditional player option vests. They’ll pay $35 million to help cover this year and next; he’s due around another $14.2 million for 2023 and $43.3 million for ’24. If he pitches 140 innings in 2024 and does not have a right arm injury that would prevent him from being on the active roster for Opening Day ’25, he’ll make $35 million, of which the Mets will pay half. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros have yet again acquired pitcher Justin Verlander and cash on deadline day, this time from the Mets for outfield prospects Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford. Verlander, signed to a two-year, $86.667 million contract before the season, put up a 3.15 ERA and a 3.81 FIP in 16 starts for the Mets. The exact amount of cash being sent along with Verlander is not yet known.

Verlander pitching for a team that wasn’t the Astros just felt kind of odd. While he certainly didn’t spend the bulk of his career in Houston, it’s where he had his personal pitching renaissance, where he clinched his future Hall of Fame membership, and where he got his championship rings. Verlander in blue-and-orange felt like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Jean-Luc Picard is kind of a sad-sack 60-year-old ensign because he didn’t get in a bar fight as a youngster. Or maybe it’s like when you’re trying to buy a Coke at some rural gas station, but they’re out, and you end up with some bizarre generic cola that may have been sitting there since the Reagan years. Verlander’s opinion may vary, but from at least this fan, it feels like something that went wrong has been set right by Scott Bakula.

The Astros aren’t just trying to satisfy nostalgia; they needed a starting pitcher, so why not one they have a longstanding relationship with? A rash of injuries has left the rotation thinner than they would like heading into the homestretch, and they have a real dogfight this year with the Rangers, who’ve already added Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery; there’s no lapping the division by 15 games. Verlander has shown some clear signs of aging this year, as hitters are less prone to whiffing and are hitting the ball harder, and his control isn’t quite as precise as in the past. But these are normal things for a 40-year-old pitcher, and nearly every pitcher who is still in the league at 40 is going to fall out of it during the ensuing few seasons. Houston isn’t asking Verlander to carry the team, but to be a dependable, healthy arm who keeps the team in games. That he’ll do.

The money has not yet been disclosed — check my colleague Jay Jaffe’s upcoming piece for this and more — but my initial guess is “a bunch.” Verlander’s contract is a hefty one, and both Gilbert and Clifford are legitimate prospects; I can’t imagine the Astros would have parted with them if they were also paying full or near-full freight on Verlander. Our prospect team has already shifted in Gilbert as the new No. 1 prospect on the Mets, and while his stats at Double-A Corpus Christi are far from eye-popping, you have to remember that this is his first full professional season. ZiPS sees him peaking as a near two-win outfielder in the .260/.330/.400 range, though the error bars are quite wide when you’re talking someone with so little professional experience. ZiPS is highly interested in Clifford’s power upside (as is the scouting community), but there are a lot of questions about his plate discipline and defensive value to be answered.

MLB will have to approve any deal where more than $2 million changes hands, as will be the case with Verlander and Houston. That has not happened yet, so the deal will not be official for a little while .

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) August 1, 2023

Stay tuned for more on the trade!

With the trade deadline just a day away, at last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, making exceptions here and there, but for the designated hitters, I’ve lowered that to zero, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the second full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, five are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, and 10 are at 1.0 or above. DHs as a group have hit .242/.321/.419 for a 102 wRC+; that last figure is up one point from last year. This year, we’re seeing a greater number teams invest more playing time in a single DH; where last year there were three players who reached the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five, and the same is true at the 400-PA threshold (on pace for nine this year, compared to seven last year) and 300-PA threshold (on pace for 15, compared to 12 last year). That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox sent closer Kendall Graveman to the Astros for catching prospect Korey Lee on Friday afternoon. Graveman, signed by the White Sox to a three-year contract days before the 2021–22 lockout started, put up a 3.30 ERA and a 4.00 FIP in 110 appearances with Chicago. This caps off a busy end-of-week flurry for the Sox: Graveman is now the fifth pitcher they’ve traded in 24 hours, after Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Lance Lynn, and Joe Kelly.

Graveman’s peripheral numbers have slid this season as his strikeout and walk rates have continued to deteriorate, and the six homers he’s allowed this season almost match the eight he surrendered in 2021 and ’22 combined, but I’m slightly less concerned about this than I would be in many similar situations. For one, his plate discipline-against numbers don’t support his problems in these departments. Batters are making contact against Graveman less often than any time in his career (ignoring his five-appearance debut season), and his first-strike percentage, a useful leading indicator of walk rate, is better than ever.

Some of the changes seem to be from conscious approach decisions. Graveman started throwing his four-seamer a lot more often in 2022 and has continued that this year but is now almost exclusively throwing it center-high. The result has been a lot more loft on these pitches. In fact, basically all of Graveman’s pitches, including his sinker, have been hit about 10 degrees higher than last year. It’s been enough to transform him from a reasonably strong groundballer in recent years to a pitcher allowing more fly balls than average. On the negative side, his slider has lost some bite, with its break closer to league-average than at his peak, leading to a lower whiff rate (35%) than in 2022 (43%) or ’21 (44%). ZiPS sees him with a 3.59 FIP for the rest of 2023 in Houston and a 3.72 mark in 2024. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Framber Valdez had a bad start on Monday. Over just four innings of work, he allowed four runs, all earned, thanks to a seven-hit barrage and two walks. Hey, that’s pitching. Everyone has bad games – or sometimes the hitters have good games. Eight of the 10 best starters in baseball this year, as measured by WAR, have already had a game where they allowed four or more runs. That’s also true for 17 of the top 20. We’re not that far into the season, but everyone has blowups from time to time.

That’s true… for everyone other than Valdez. He’s a machine. This is only the sixth start he’s made since the beginning of the 2020 season that didn’t last at least five innings, and he’s made 72 starts in that time. He set an all-time single season record with 25 straight quality starts (at least six innings pitched, no more than three earned runs) last year. He doesn’t get roughed up early and depart. He doesn’t allow a pile of runs. He’s on a truly remarkable tear, and I wanted to put some context around it.

To come up with a fair scale, I leaned on game score, a statistic created by Bill James and updated by Tom Tango that tries to distill each start into a single number. Fifty is average. Forty is replacement level. Seventy means a great game, and 90 a truly transcendent one. It’s a blunt tool, but it’s a useful way to explain how consistent Valdez has become. Read the rest of this entry »

The loss of Jose Altuve to a broken thumb suffered during the World Baseball Classic has been a blow to the Astros, but while the team is off to an uncharacteristically slow start at 16-14, Mauricio Dubón has risen to the occasion while filling in for the eight-time All-Star. The 28-year-old infielder recently reeled off the season’s longest hitting streak, and on Monday exacted a bit of vengeance by collecting three hits that helped send his former team, the Giants, to defeat.

While playing for Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic quarterfinals, Altuve was hit in the right thumb by Team USA’s Daniel Bard, suffering a fracture that required surgery to set. At the time, the Astros estimated that Altuve would need two months before resuming baseball activity, putting him on track for a late May or early June return. The expectation was that unless general manager Dana Brown could add a player from outside the organization in the waning days of spring training, Dubón and rookie utilityman David Hensley would cover the keystone during Altuve’s absence.

It felt like a big opportunity for a nearly-forgotten player. The Astros acquired Dubón from the Giants last May 14, in a straight-up trade for backup catcher Michael Papierski, who played just five games for San Francisco before being lost to the Reds on waivers. It was the third time in five and a half years Dubón had been dealt; after being drafted in the 26th round out of a Sacramento high school by Boston in 2013, the Red Sox included him as part of the Travis Shaw/Tyler Thornburg swap with the Brewers in December ’16. Dubón played in the Futures Game the following summer but his progress to the majors was interrupted by a torn left ACL in May 2018. He topped out as a 45 FV prospect, no. 5 on the Brewers’ 2019 list, but played in just two games for the team before being sent to the Giants in a deadline swap that brought Drew Pomeranz to Milwaukee. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of reasons why the Astros are off to a cold start in 2023 and, as of Thursday morning, are looking up at the Angels and Rangers in the AL West standings. While their Pythagorean record suggests they’ve actually played better than their record, their April offense has been an extremely unbalanced one. To a large extent, the AL’s fifth-place team in runs scored has been driven primarily by Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker.

The Astros currently have three positions with an OPS under .600 for the season: catcher, first base, and designated hitter. Catcher as an offense sink was always expected; nobody had a secret belief that Martín Maldonado had offensive performance as part of his skill set. Designated hitter should improve once it has a smaller dose of David Hensley and Corey Julks at the position. That leaves first base, the home of José Abreu, the longtime White Sox slugger who was Houston’s biggest signing this winter. He has struggled in the first eighth of the season, hitting .266, but with so little secondary contribution that his OPS stands at a miserable .605. Given his age, three-year deal, and the necessity to get at least some offensive contribution from first base, how worried should the Astros be about him?

The general belief, at least among Astros fans, is that Abreu has historically been a slow starter, and that any issue will take care of itself, but I think that’s too easy a “solution” to his early-season struggles. First off, the supposition that he has historically been a worse hitter in April is factually 100% accurate. Among players in the wild-card era, he has one of the largest splits between April and rest-of-season OPS (OPS is certainly good enough for an examination such as this). Since the start of the 1995 season, there are 300 players who have accumulated at least 750 plate appearances in April; Abreu’s career split — 90 points of OPS — is large enough to make the top 20 and, unless I’m miscounting, enough to rank him third among active players:

Offense is generally lowest in April, so some kind of shortfall is not unexpected. The 300 players in this class, as a group, had a .794 OPS in April and an .806 OPS the rest of the year. With a quarter of a million April plate appearances between them and a total of nearly two million plate appearances, a 12-point OPS is a significant one, and Abreu’s history dwarfs this one.

So, he’s a bad player in April, and everything will just work outself out? Not so fast. Read the rest of this entry »