Archive for Astros

It should be pretty well understood that there isn’t one “right” way to pitch. Some pitchers succeed by throwing curveballs, others with changeups. One may get by with grounders, while another flourishes with fly balls. Corey Kluber works out of the zone for whiffs, and Bartolo Colon bombards it for balls in play. Every pitcher is different. It’s important to find what fits one’s unique style, and stick to it.

Dallas Keuchel has found what works for him. And he’d never looked less like himself in Tuesday’s superb Wild Card start than on his final pitch of the evening:
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The 2015 season has been chock-full of high-profile rookie debuts. From Kris Bryant to Corey Seager to Noah Syndergaard, I’ve certainly had no shortage of players to write about. But the most impressive rookie campaign — at least on a per-game basis — might very well belong to Carlos Correa, who’s developing into a superstar right before our eyes. Although he’s completed just his age-20 season, Correa’s been one of the best better hitters in the game since the Astros called him up on June 8th. His 133 wRC+ was the 28th best among hitters with at least 400 plate appearances this year, and second best among rookies, trailing only Kris Bryant. By the barometer of WAR per 150 games, Correa ranked 21st in baseball with mark of 5.2.

You probably didn’t need me to tell you that Carlos Correa’s been really good. This isn’t exactly news. So rather than dwelling on how good Correa is now, I want to consider what his impressive rookie campaign means for his short- and long-term future.

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Talking about matchups in a one-game playoff is an almost futile enterprise. Batter versus pitcher numbers have proven to be mostly useless, and other than a perusal of the platoon situations, a discussion of roster decisions around the edges, and some tinkering with the order in which you throw your pitchers, previewing Tuesday’s American League Wild Card game seems like heavy-breathing about the pre-game coin toss in football.

There is one way you can classify pitchers and hitters that may be meaningful to this game in particular, however. Because of the way swings work, there are matchup problems for certain hitters against certain pitchers. Most of the research says that extreme ground ball pitchers have problems with fly ball hitters — one study found fly ball hitters had better outcomes against ground-ball pitchers than any other matchup of batted ball mixes, and another found that this type of matchup produces the most line drives in baseball. And it makes sense, because fly ball hitters usually have ‘uppercut’ type swings that can reach down and produce power on the low pitch.

Dallas Keuchel has the second-best ground-ball rate in baseball. The Yankees should have Chris Young bat leadoff.

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Last night, the Astros lost, and for the first time since May 15, they find their playoff odds below 50%. They have but four remaining games to re-claim playoff position, and, I’m sure you’ve had a good sense of their struggles. A 10-16 September has dropped their playoff odds from 97% to 44%. It’s dropped their division-winning odds from 88% to 3%. It took so long to get used to the idea of the Astros advancing to the postseason, and then it felt like a given for weeks. Now people are starting to think about big-picture perspectives, like how it’s still been a great season regardless of whether it ends in a few days. That’s true, but it’s also not what Astros fans thought they’d be having to consider at the end of September.

In a certain sense, these struggles have been almost team-wide. While the position players rank third in baseball in September WAR and third in September wRC+, they’re also 22nd in Win Probability Added, owing to some lousy timing. Astros starters rank 18th in WPA, neither good nor bad. The bullpen, meanwhile, ranks 27th in WPA. The Astros have had several issues, but a once-reliable bullpen has been a big one. And within that bullpen, one arm in particular has come apart at the worst possible time.

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Last week, I addressed the Cy Young battle in the senior circuit and titled it “The NL Cy Young Showdown.” This time, it’s the AL’s turn — and “discussion” (as opposed to “showdown”) seems to be the proper way to characterize it. It’s been a low-key pitching season, comparatively, in the AL, with no one posting an ERA near Zack Greinke‘s, or pitching no-hitters or engaging in zany second-half shenanigans like Jake Arrieta. In fact, a general consensus seems to be building that the award is David Price’s to lose. Today, let’s have a full discussion, including utilization of batted-ball data, about the AL Cy Young and its three likely frontrunners, Price, Chris Sale and Dallas Keuchel.

Price, who turned 30 in late August, is the only one of the three with a Cy (2012) on his mantle, though he hasn’t finished above sixth in the annual voting since then. Sale has come progressively closer in the voting, checking in at sixth, fifth and third in the last three seasons, while this will be the first time on a ballot for Keuchel, 2015’s foremost pitching breakthrough.

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Astros shortstop Carlos Correa turned 21 years old just three days ago. That would have been a much more dramatic opening line if we weren’t living through the Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Manny Machado Era, but it’s a relatively dramatic opening nonetheless. Correa has looked like one of MLB’s premier players over his first 90 games and 390 plate appearances all while being younger than Bryce Harper. And Bryce Harper is very young.

It’s not much of a surprise that Carlos Correa is a great baseball player. In fact, Correa was supposed to be a great player. He was taken first overall by the Astros in 2012, and while some people saw it as a way to free up money for later picks, no one disputed him as a top-level draft target. Correa’s been an elite prospect his entire career, occupying the fifth spot on Kiley’s Top 200 entering the season, and the third spot on the Baseball Prospectus and ESPN (Insider) lists.

The particularly remarkable aspect of Correa’s 2015 season is not that he’s hitting 32% better than league average or that he’s gathered 3.1 WAR in under 400 plate appearances; the remarkable part is that he’s doing so in 2015. While Correa’s potential was widely acknowledged, no one really seemed to expect it to arrive so soon. Kiley filed a report on him in October of 2014, giving him present Hit and Game Power grades of 20 to go along with a “2017 ETA.”

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Over the last calendar year, Houston righty Josh Fields has been a top-30 reliever. That may not be the type of lede that grabs you by your collar and shakes a click out of you, but the “how” might intrigue you. Because Fields has changed one thing — a new pitch has helped — but it’s something that he changed mentally that really made the difference. And his faith had everything to do with that change.

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If I were writing this piece five years ago, the entire premise of the article would seem contrived. Only two pitchers won MVP awards between 1986 and 2010, and no pitcher had won since 1992. Pedro Martinez led the AL by four wins in 1999 (although only 2.5 using RA9-WAR) and didn’t win the MVP. But thanks to Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw, voters have begun to acknowledge that pitchers are baseball players who are eligible for baseball player awards, so they’re worth considering in our MVP discussions.

Attempt, if you can, to remember April 2014. Entering last season, Dallas Keuchel had thrown just 239 major league innings over two years. He was entering his age-26 season, so he had youth on his side, but he had pitched to a 130 ERA- and 120 FIP-. He gave up home runs, didn’t strike batters out at an impressive rate, and allowed an average-ish number of free passes. Perhaps you may have seen some potential in the lefty who managed a 90 xFIP- in 2013, but the odds of him turning the corner and becoming an ace were long.

Yet here we are. The emergence of Keuchel as an ace isn’t a new story. He spun a 3.8 WAR season in 2014 (4.9 RA9-WAR) and while most people expected him to be respectable but not great in 2015, he responded by elevating his strikeout rate and leading the Astros into their real first pennant race in a decade.

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As Melvin Upton steps to the plate and readies for the pitch, Buster Posey appraises him. First, he looks at his feet as they dig in. Gradually, his eyes move up Upton’s body, brazenly staring as he takes in information. Down pops the sign as the catcher moves his attention to the pitcher.

It’s not just idle ogling. He’s looking for clues. Which ones?

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In a very short while, the Rangers and the Astros will kick off a crucial four-game series, with the AL West up for grabs. There will be three more meetings between the teams after this series is complete, so any mistakes can be made up for, but this race is coming down to the wire. It’s currently the closest race of the divisions, and while the Rangers are already close at 1.5 games back, they were literally inches away from an even smaller deficit before the Astros rallied past the Angels on Sunday. The Astros know they can lose their position. The Rangers know it’s theirs for the taking.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t what people expected. Even just several weeks ago, by which point we’d come to believe in the Astros, the Rangers didn’t look like a threat. After the games on July 31, the Astros were up two games on the Angels, and seven games on the Rangers. The Rangers’ odds of winning the division were a hair below 2%. Now they’re a little above 22%, gaining about a game on the Astros a week. Since the beginning of August, the Rangers have gone 25-15, second-best in the AL. Since the same point, the Astros have gone 19-20, sandwiched between the Yankees and the Rays. What’s happened to cause the Astros to lose much of their advantage?

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