This was supposed to be the year that things started heading in the right direction for the Houston Astros, you know. After bottoming out in 2013 with a third straight 100-loss season, a season-ending 16-game losing streak, 0.0 television ratings, and endless accusations of “not trying to win,” they were expected to at least trend upwards in 2014. Thanks to importing major league players in Dexter Fowler and Scott Feldman, welcoming top prospects George Springer and Jon Singleton, and seeing unexpected steps forward from Jose Altuve and Dallas Keuchel, it largely has. The Astros are still a bad team, but they aren’t even last in their own division, and they’re merely within the range of other bad teams, as opposed to drifting on their own private island of awful.

But despite some on-field positives, it’s still been a tough few weeks for the organization. The leaked Ground Control files were an embarrassment. Stories began to pop up about potential hits to the organization’s reputation thanks to their non-traditional methods. 2012 top pick Carlos Correa had a successful season cut short by a broken leg. 2013 top pick Mark Appel has struggled badly in A-ball. Now, there’s this: Casey Close, the agent for 2014 top overall pick Brady Aiken, is criticizing the Astros for how they’ve handled negotiations with both Aiken and another of his Astros-drafted clients, fifth-round high school pitcher Jacob Nix.

To catch you up for those just joining us: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently started taking golf lessons again. It’s the first time I’ve taken them in almost a decade, and in that 10 years I’ve developed a lot of bad habits. My shoulders over-rotate, my left knee collapses on the backswing, I release my wrists too early. I’m a mess, really. And working with a professional has shown me just how I got from being pretty good at something to fairly poor at it over 10 years.

It’s about creating a repeatable motion, really. Consistency is key. I can hit some dandy shots, but those are occurring less frequently. Inconsistency between rounds turn into inconsistency between holes turns into inconsistency between swings. Success comes from not only creating a good motion, but a dependable one. And getting there involves a long road of minor adjustments.

This didn’t start out as an Astros post. Technically, this started as a post about golf, but you know what I mean. I didn’t sit down to research the Astros at the outset. I was fiddling with PitchF/X numbers looking to see how pitchers were changing their positions on the rubber compared to last year. With some help from Jeff Zimmerman, I found the difference between x0 positions — essentially the horizontal position in feet where the PitchF/X cameras first pick up the ball. I sorted by the absolute difference, so that righties and lefties could be compared equally. Here’s how the top 30 shook out:
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Is that an inflammatory headline? It feels like it might be. It’s not like Jose Altuve was bad before, of course. But this is the Internet, where it’s important to entice people to click on stories, and if you’re reading this, then I’ve already won. Success! Anyway, maybe this is more of a “me” thing than anything else, but had you asked me prior to the season who the most overrated player in baseball was, Altuve’s name likely would have been mentioned. Not that Altuve was a poor player; far from it. It’s just that when you think about the reasons he was notable, the list would go something like this:

• Because he is a big league player despite his remarkably small stature
• Because he was one of the few decent players on atrocious Houston teams
• Because he made an All-Star team in his first full season
• Because he could steal bases (33 and 35 in his two full seasons) and hit around .290, which are shiny stats

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So, this is something you don’t see everyday. The Astros database, nicknamed Ground Control, includes archived notes on past trade discussions. While written in shorthand, the notes are pretty detailed, and are definitely not something the Astros ever expected to become public. But that’s exactly what has happened, as someone anonymously uploaded a couple of files to a data warehouse called Anonbin.

Here, you can find all the notes on discussions from last summer.

Here are the winter discussions.

Among the notes found in the leak:

The Astros asked for Dylan Bundy or Kevin Gasuman in return for Bud Norris. Which sounds hilarious, until you notice that they included Xander Bogaerts on the list of possible players they would want from the Red Sox. Bud Norris was eventually traded to Baltimore for L.J. Hoes and Josh Hader, plus a draft pick.

Maybe even more hilarious: the Astros asked for Lucas Giolito in exchange for Lucas Harrell. Lucas Harrell was eventually designated for assignment in April.

The Marlins apparently noted that acquiring Giancarlo Stanton would require George Springer and Carlos Correa; the Astros countered with Jarred Cosart and Delino Deshields. I wonder which side thought the other’s offer was more ridiculous.

A friend in the game has independently confirmed that these leaks are legitimate, and noted that every team in baseball keeps similar notes just like this. This isn’t necessarily an indictment on the Astros for having these kinds of notes, but it’s certainly an embarrassment to their organization that they were not able to secure them well enough to keep them from getting out. I would imagine there are a lot of teams that are quite unhappy with the Astros right about now.

Anyway, enjoy the leaks, because I bet it will be a long time before we ever see anything like this get out in the public realm again.

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

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Reymin Guduan, LHP, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Rookie-Advanced   Age: 22  Top-15: N/A   Top-100: N/A
Line: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 6/4 K/BB, 1.29 ERA, 3.97 FIP

Summary
Can you feel the heat?

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You may have seen mention of it. Considering it happened during a game between two of the worst teams in baseball, you’ll be forgiven if you hadn’t.

The Houston Astros visited the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday. The Astros came out strong, getting two runs in each of the first two innings. They wouldn’t score any more. The Diamondbacks would, however. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Houston was leading 4-3. Lefty Tony Sipp was coming off a fairly effective seventh inning and was brought out again to face Arizona’s three best hitters. Well, sort of. Here’s how the eighth inning played out: Read the rest of this entry »

For the Astros, Jon Singleton can be bad, and better than what the team has been running out there. To date, Astros first basemen have combined to be worth -1.0 WAR, worst in baseball by most of a win. No, the same players don’t project to be that bad going forward, but they certainly don’t project well, and Singleton’s promotion has been a while coming. The platoon that’s played was always intended to be a placeholder, and the place no longer needs to be held.

Yet the Astros don’t just hope for Singleton to be tolerably mediocre. He’s one of their top prospects, maybe a tier below George Springer, and he’s 22 years old until September. Most significantly, Singleton has had a huge campaign in Triple-A after struggling through a difficult and sometimes miserable 2013. Singleton’s made a leap forward, and this one is seemingly pretty easy to explain. That also makes it easy to buy into.

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For the last year or so, the Astros have reportedly been offering various long-term deals to some of the young players in their organization, using the carrot of guaranteed millions to try and buy out a couple of free agent years. Up until now, no one had signed the offer, and Evan Longoria remained the record holder for fewest number of days of service before signing a long-term deal. However, with first base prospect Jon Singleton, the Astros have now codified the first deal that officially includes a Major League call-up as part of the package.

According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, Singleton’s deal is for $10 million guaranteed over the next five seasons, beginning in 2014, with three team options that could push the total value of the deal to $35 million. By getting seven more years of team control after this season, the Astros are essentially buying one free agent year in advance — they would have owned the rest of 2014 anyway, plus six full seasons afterwards — and signing this deal now allowed Singleton to get promoted without worrying about the Super-Two deadline. Had Singleton not signed the deal, he likely would have spent several more weeks in Triple-A.

It goes without saying that this deal is a huge potential boon to the Astros. If Singleton turns out to be a quality player, he would have gone well beyond $35 million in his arbitration years and first free agent season, but if Singleton busts, they’re only out $7 or $8 million above and beyond what they would have paid by going year to year. Risking $7 or $8 million for a chance to save upwards of $30 million — let’s assume a high-quality slugging 1B would have earned ~$40 million in future arbitration earnings and another ~$25 million for his first free agent year — is a total no-brainer for a team like the Astros. There’s a reason they’ve been trying to get nearly every player with any modicum of talent to take deals like these. These deals lean very heavily towards the organization’s favor.

But for Singleton, this represents a significant guarantee. As an 8th round pick in the 2009 draft, he signed for $200,000, so he hasn’t been living in poverty as a minor leaguer, but between taxes, agent commissions, living expenses, and his admitted drug addiction, it’s safe to say that he probably doesn’t have a lot of that money left. In fact, when discussing this particular deal, we cannot ignore Singleton’s past words.

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Before the season started, we had the Astros projected for the worst starting rotation in baseball, by a good margin. It was simultaneously embarrassing and expected, as one Scott Feldman can do only so much. Yet, as I write this, the Astros’ rotation ranks ninth in baseball in WAR, having been more of a strength than a weakness. A lot of this has to do with the development of Dallas Keuchel, who Mike Petriello wrote about. Out of nowhere, Keuchel has blossomed into a possible no. 1, and recently there was a little controversy when Lloyd McClendon spoke in less-than-glowing terms after watching his team get shut down.

After the Astros [and Keuchel] beat the Mariners 4-1, McClendon said: “I saw average stuff. We didn’t swing the bats very good. At some point you’ve got to stop giving credit to average pitchers.”

Now I get to check this off the list of sentences I never thought I’d write: it’s not all about Keuchel, though, as his success has overshadowed the similarly surprising success of an unheralded teammate. ZiPS projected Dallas Keuchel for a 5.02 ERA. It projected Collin McHugh for a 5.25 ERA. Both have instead been absolutely phenomenal, and if you want to stretch the comparison further, let’s go back to the end of April:

After the Astros took their second in a row from the A’s on Sunday – the teams split a four-game series – A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson suggested that McHugh wasn’t flashing elite stuff.

“Stuff-wise, I thought he was OK,” said Donaldson, who went 0-for-3 with a walk. “I don’t think it was anything special. But he changed speeds well and pitched to his game plan.”

Keuchel doesn’t blow people away, but he’s blown people away. McHugh doesn’t blow people away, but he’s blown people away. In a world in which Dallas Keuchel is attracting positive attention, it’s time to divert some of that to another guy, who might be even more of a shock.

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Several weeks ago, there was some concern over Edwin Encarnacion. He was having a somewhat strikeout-prone April, and he was having an under-powered April, and Jays fans weren’t sure what to make of the guy going forward. He’s since hit 13 home runs in May, all in a span of 20 games, and now he basically seems like himself, and on a hot streak to boot. All concern has been erased.

Similarly, people were very worried about George Springer after an underwhelming first couple weeks. Of course, Springer didn’t have Encarnacion’s track record, and of course, Springer was a rookie getting exposed to the majors for the first time, but I’d field questions in my chats about whether or not Springer might get demoted since his power was totally absent. In April, Springer batted .182 without a single dinger. In May, he’s batted .325 with eight dingers, and he’s homered in four games in a row. Springer has been one of the best hitters in baseball lately, and the initial overreaction now seems silly and absurd. Give rookies time. Especially the really good ones.

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