Hunter Brown had yet to pitch above High-A when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in April 2021. Two years removed from being drafted in the fifth round out of Wayne State University, expectations surrounding the Detroit-area native were high coming into that season, as he was ranked as the no. 2 prospect (50 FV) in the Houston Astros system. He’s since lived up to those expectations. Brown not only made his big league debut last September, he went on to log three scoreless appearances in the postseason, including one in which he blanked the Seattle Mariners in the 12th and 13th innings of an epic 1-0 Astros win that took 18 frames to complete. This season he’s been a mainstay in the Houston rotation. Over 25 starts, the hard-throwing right-hander is 10-9 with a 4.47 ERA, a 3.71 FIP, and 152 strikeouts in 133 innings.
Brown discussed a recent change to his delivery, and the current quality of his curveball, on Monday, one day before celebrating his 25th birthday.
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David Laurila: We talked pitching two years ago. Outside of being in the big leagues, what has changed since that time?
Hunter Brown: “My stuff and my pitch shapes are similar, but I actually made a bit of a change in my last outing. There’s a difference in my windup, and in the stretch, where my hands are coming set. And my shoulders are already lined up out of the windup. It’s just a little rocker step kind of deal. That’s something we’ve been talking about for a while. We’re trying to clean up some inconsistencies that came with my previous [delivery]. It worked against the Tigers [on August 26], and hopefully it will continue to work.” Read the rest of this entry »
It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Jose Altuve is at it again. The man is running a wRC+ of 160 or better for the third time in his career; in one of those seasons, 2017, he was voted AL MVP. The other was just last year. Rumors of his demise, which circulated throughout a disastrous 2020 season, have long since subsided.
And not a moment too soon, I might add. The Astros, held in check by the Rangers most of the season, are back on their heels after a three-game sweep at the hands of division rival Seattle over the weekend. The pitching staff has taken a step back from its unhittable late-2022 apotheosis. Primary offseason acquisition José Abreu was hitting like a utility infielder before a back injury put him on the shelf. Jeremy Peña’s power stroke has deserted him, as has Cristian Javier’s unique brand of fastball-heavy trickeration.
Houston looks a little wobbly, for the first time since at least 2020; setting aside that season’s unique circumstances (and the Astros made it to Game 7 of the ALCS anyway), the team has not wobbled this much since 2016. But Altuve, hitting .327/.420/.529 since his return from a broken thumb suffered during the World Baseball Classic, has held things together.
The Astros currently rank third in the American League in runs scored — not an uncommon sight for a franchise that has only been outscored by the Dodgers and Red Sox over the last decade. But they’ve done it with a lineup with some pretty big holes, with half of their eight players with at least 300 plate appearances this season posting an OBP under .300. The team’s offense has been driven this year mainly by four players: Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman, and Chas McCormick, with an assist from Yainer Diaz. A year ago, Houston signed Alvarez to a six-year, $115 million contract extension that ensured he would remain in town until the end of the 2028 season. Tucker, though, does not have a long-term deal and is scheduled to hit free agency after the 2025 season. What would a possible deal look like?
On Monday afternoon, the Astros had an off day before the start of a series in Baltimore, so they did what most defending World Series champions have done under those circumstances, and swung by the White House. There, Dusty Baker and his merry men were fêted by President Joe Biden, who commiserated with the beloved Astros manager over having to wait decades to reach the pinnacle of their respective professions.
What a lovely event, one that raises two questions. First: What the hell, Mr. President, I thought you were a Phillies fan? Between this and the similar ceremony for the Braves a year ago, Biden has used two of his three championship soirees to celebrate a hated division rival and the team that beat the Phillies in the World Series. The Bidens are already on thin ice after the First Lady showed up to watch a white-hot Phillies team in Game 4 of the World Series, only for them to get no-hit and lose three straight to end the season.
That leads into the second question: Encountering a sitting president has to be a provocative experience, even for a professional athlete. What effect does going to the White House have on a defending World Series champion? Read the rest of this entry »
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 landedMax 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 addedMax ScherzerandJordan 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 .
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 »
