Elegy for ’18 – Houston Astros
(Photo: Keith Allison)
Like most teams that win the World Series, the 2018 Astros did not complete the two-peat, winning 103 games during the regular season but falling to the Red Sox in five, thus keeping the 2000 Yankees as the most recent team to win more than one World Series in a row. Russia may be the stumbling block for empire-builders, but despite arguably having a better team than in 2017, the Astros’ failed to repeat due to the implacable foe of World Series champions: a ten-team playoff in a sport in which teams are relatively close together in quality.
The Setup
Well, the 2017 Astros won the World Series. Which, if you didn’t already know that for some odd reason, you should probably at least have noticed unless you have a strange habit of not reading the opening paragraph to articles.
In my not-so-humbly-expressed opinion, borne from decades as a baseball fan and a couple more as a curiously paid observer, the greatest danger facing any championship team is inaction. When everything has gone right and a team has won baseball’s top honor, there’s a real tendency for that team to decide that each and every player on that championship roster helped lead the franchise to the fated promised land, like some sort of strange, baseball-specific Calvinism. Teams like the 2002 Angels, the 2005 White Sox, and the 2015 Royals all had disappointing follow-ups to their trophy runs and faded out of contention quickly.
While 2017’s follow-up wasn’t the most action-packed one for the Astros, as the team didn’t have many glaring weaknesses, they did still find it in themselves to pull of one off the offseason’s biggest trades, picking up Gerrit Cole from the Pittsburgh Pirates and making a deep rotation even deeper. The trade was a bit of a dice roll; Cole had never really fulfilled his early promise in Pittsburgh except for one shining season. But Houston thought the short-term upside in Cole was greater than the long-term value in the pitchers they gave up to acquire him, and showed they weren’t afraid to continue to tinker with the rotation, even leaving Collin McHugh in the bullpen.
With a deep rotation made deeper by the addition of Cole, and the quartet of Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and George Springer all still in their twenties for a few more years, Houston, like the other large-market teams, largely avoided dipping their toes into a weak free agent market.
The Projection
Houston didn’t have as obvious a cakewalk as the Cleveland Indians coming into the 2018 season, but very few saw a lot of real resistance for them in the AL West. Of the 40 FanGraphs writers and contributors who made 2018 staff predictions entering the season, 38 chose the Astros to win the West. In ESPN’s panel, 29-of-29 picked Houston.
And the ZiPS SuperComputer© didn’t beg to differ. While the computer thought the Angels had at least some path to a division title if certain not-too-crazy things went right for them, with a 95-67 projected record for Houston, ZiPS projected the Astros to have the second-easiest divisional crown, with 83.9% odds of winning, just behind the Indians at 84.4%.
The reasons for the optimism were, in foresight and hindsight, quite obvious. The Astros were overflowing with awesome, deep talent and had the resources to trade for in-season help if UCL tears somehow proved to be contagious. The team’s weak spot in 2017, designated hitter, looked to be an improved if not a league-beating spot, with the retirement of Carlos Beltran. And in any case, there wasn’t a lot of help available in free agency at that spot.
The Results
Somewhat boringly, a lot of things went right for the Astros; 103-win teams tend to have more than their fair share of breaks go their way, simply because lucky 100-win teams are more likely than unlucky 106-win ones.
That’s not to say everything fell on the sunny side for Houston. Some wounds were self-inflicted. The team made the controversial decision to acquire then-suspended reliever Roberto Osuna at the end of July, a move that read to many as unforced error, given the nature of Osuna’s suspension and the availability of other relievers on the market.
Others were just the way the game goes. Josh Reddick didn’t repeat the best season of his career and Yuli Gurriel’s power dropped off (not surprising for a 34-year-old). Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve both missed time due to injury, the former more seriously with a larger dropoff in play.
But as in the 143 episodes or so of The Simpsons in which Homer gets fired from the power plant before the first commercial break, things mostly worked out. The offensive losses hurt, but the team’s choices in role players arrested some of the loss, with Max Stassi, Tony Kemp, and Tyler White all making very real contributions to the team’s win total. The offense dropped from first in the AL in runs scored to fifth, but this was mirrored by an improvement from fifth to first in the team’s ERA.
Justin Verlander’s 2018 post-trade mojo continued to prove strong, and Gerrit Cole finally had became as unhittable as furious Pirates fans spent years hoping he’d be, seeing an almost 50% bump in his strikeout rate from 2017 after mostly giving up on his sinker, which batters had slugged nearly .500 against that year.
All told, Houston’s rotation collected 22.5 WAR in 2018, a franchise best. Not even the mid-1980s Astros, with Nolan Ryan and Mike Scott’s changeup and the weird world in which Jim Deshaies was a strikeout machine, were able to match that.
Probably the weirdest 2018 phenomenon for Houston was that despite winning games at an impressive clip, they weren’t truly able to pull away from the rest of the division until the last week or so of the season. Pythagorean Magic may sound like a really bad educational video game someone buys for their kids, but it was enough to keep Seattle in the race, to the extent that the Astros actually lost first place for a few days during a twelve-game winning streak.
And after the Mariners returned to earth or their Soundgarden albums or whatever it is Seattle people do in 2018, the Oakland A’s proved nearly as resilient. Despite finishing with 103 wins and never having a losing month in 2018, Houston never established a division lead greater than six games.
What Comes Next?
The big challenge facing the Astros in the present, and over the next few years, will be in dealing with what is a transitional phase in the team’s rotation, one of the big 2018 strengths. Of the five primary starting pitchers for the Astros in 2018, three are already gone: Dallas Keuchel and Charlie Morton to free agency, and Lance McCullers to Tommy John surgery. Verlander, Cole, and McHugh are all free agents after the 2019 season.
Even with an optimistic return from McCullers, that’s an awful lot of quality pitching turnover in a very short period. The team still has an above-average farm system with legitimate rotation candidates, one of whom, Josh James, looks assured of a 2019 spot. But it’s easy to see why when talking with the Miami Marlins about a possible J.T. Realmuto trade, Houston has reportedly been adamant about not giving up Forrest Whitley.
2019 ZiPS Projection – Alex Bregman
I’m going with Bregman here simply because I received a barrage of requests during his breakout 2018 for a ZiPS look into his future. And since I occasionally like to give the people what they want, let’s crank out some Alex Bregman goodness.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .277 | .367 | .494 | 581 | 97 | 161 | 40 | 4 | 26 | 95 | 77 | 94 | 12 | 137 | -1 | 5.4 |
| 2020 | .276 | .369 | .500 | 566 | 96 | 156 | 41 | 4 | 26 | 95 | 78 | 93 | 11 | 139 | -1 | 5.4 |
| 2021 | .272 | .366 | .496 | 563 | 95 | 153 | 40 | 4 | 26 | 94 | 78 | 93 | 12 | 137 | 0 | 5.2 |
| 2022 | .270 | .366 | .497 | 551 | 93 | 149 | 39 | 4 | 26 | 92 | 77 | 92 | 11 | 138 | -1 | 5.1 |
Yup, that’s a bonafide star. Enough of one that if Carlos Correa roars back in 2019, the Astros face some very interesting long-term questions. Imagine a world in 2020 in which the Astros are able to make a long-term deal with Bregman but not Correa. Bregman’s defensive numbers at third were hardly amazing, but he did a decent job filling in at short for Correa in 2018. At what point do you start to talk about a Correa trade, especially for a piece that fills up another hole, say in the rotation? It’s not so far-fetched.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
It felt weird enough having an elegy for the 100+ win Yankees. Even more weird having one for the Astros. But I can also see how both teams could have done even better last year, somehow.
I’m of the mind that the Astros are going be pretty aggressive about going after more spin-rate darlings. In particular, I’d expect they’re very interested in Chris Stratton, Sonny Gray, and Aaron Sanchez (apparently also Seth Lugo?).
I don’t know what they’re going to do in 2020, though. The team looks like a super-team next year if they can get a couple more guys for the rotation, but losing these versions of Verlander and Cole to free agency (or aging) is going to wreck them.
I wouldnt say wreck, they’ll have chances to upgrade and perhaps Whitley can take on a Sp 2 role by 2020- The div is also weak as shit
If (and this is a big if) Whitley, Josh James, McCullers, Cionel Perez, and Corbin Martin, all pan out and stick as starters and stay healthy, they have a rotation.
More than likely, they’ll have two- or three-fifths of a rotation out of that group, which means they’ll have to sign two or three free agents. And none of those pitchers, either through FA or others, are going to be as good as Verlander/Cole unless they spend tons of money just as Bregman and Correa (among others) start making real money and Altuve gets a $20M raise (or Whitley hits his ceiling).
There’s really no way around it…this team is headed for either a very expensive time or a rough fall in 2020. They won’t be bad, but they’re gonna be more like a wild-card contender than a superteam.
The Astros are paying Cole and Verlander a combined ~$33MM for 2019.
For 2020, they can re-sign/extend Cole (or Verlander, for less than Cole) using the $33MM they’re already spending there. They also have the entire FA and trade market to pick from, and they have McCullers, Whitley, James, and Peacock under control for 2019. And then they have a slew of other guys like Framber Valdez, JB Bukauskas, Corbin Martin and Cionel that are or will be ML-ready and can be used in trade or developed as starters.
Pointing out that the Astros’ one-two punch in 2020 won’t be as good as Verlander-Cole in 2018 is sort of obvious. But the idea that the Astros are going to be “wrecked” or in for “rough fall” is rather exaggerated/silly.
You seem to have an awful lot of faith in the pitching prospects and their ability to stay healthy/remain as starters, and also that they’ll have enough money to pay guys on the FA market/extend pitchers given how expensive the rest of the team is going to get. And whoever the buy on the FA market, even if it’s just reupping with Verlander/Cole, is going to yield diminishing returns pretty quickly.
By 2021, I suspect they’ll be able to spend some real money again, since Brantley, Reddick, and Springer will be off the books. That will pose its own problems, though. They’ll still probably win more than they lose, but I strongly suspect they’ll be a lot closer to the Mariners/Angels than the A’s in 2020.
You do realize this is THE team that has aced the pitching market the last couple years thru trades, fa, and minors… why do you suspect they suddenly fall of the cliff and take a 0 in that dept once the ver/cole tenures are up?
Now, yes, normally a bird in hand = 2 in the bush but this might be cut down to 1.5 in Hou case would be the analogy Id use – Big Fan of your posts trombone but unless you think Hou FO shuffle affects them in finding Sp moving forward I think your off here
I think they’ve had incredible success improving guys. But we’re talking about losing the entire second-best rotation in baseball from 2018. What do any of you expect is going to happen?
I don’t think they’ll have a “bad” rotation but I do think we have a tendency to underestimate how much arb salaries and mid-level free agents chew up resources.
I also think that the bird in hand/2 in the bush analysis dramatically overstates how often pitching prospects turn out as starters. It’s more like 1:4 or 1:3, and Houston is loaded with guys with good breaking balls and iffy command. (on the flip side, I doubt they need to worry about the bullpen).
Let me clarify, though: I’m not talking about a team fighting for relevance in 2020. We’re talking about a team in the high 80’s/low 90s win total. They’ll be pretty good. But they’re going to be outclassed by the Yankees, and potentially by some other teams in the AL too (Cleveland, Oakland, Blue Jays, Rays, etc). Unless they’re willing to pay a ton of money in 2020 while they wait for some contracts to run out at the end of the year.
A) The Yankees are probably going to OUTCLASS the whole world in 2020, little relevance on the AL west crown and chance to get into the ring for a 5/7 game series with them though (they arent rebuilding w that offence so……..)
B) The bird in hand also entails fa, trades, flier reclamation projects, milb players coming outta nowhere, things the excel at
Now if it were the Angels starting a staff from scratch (like they pretty much are Now) then yea Im a bit more skeptical-
C) Id also argue that panicking is the worst thing to do right now- Letting Morton/Dk walk IS the right move right now-
Now we dont know the “birds in the bush” but at least now they have more financial flexibility at that point and Really dont have to worry too much about this for another 365 days…. a lot of time for a smart FO (imo) to makes things happen- Knowing when to jump ship is so important these days, I think their fine w Dk/Morton gone and dont fear the future one bit
I guess I don’t really understand why you’d think the A’s will necessarily be better than the Astros. It looks like the position player cores are similar if not tilted towards the Astros, and the As rotation kind of looks like the Astros if you remove Cole and Verlander. So it looks like a race to see who can develop pitchers the best, but the Astros could probably run a payroll $60 million higher than the A’s and probably a better group of pitchers in the upper minors.
@DSzymborski: Pirates have Marte, Taillon, Archer and Polanco for a few more years which lines up well with Correa’s arb. Keller, Swaggerty, Tucker for Correa a good start to a deal?
In a vacuum it’s not a terrible idea, but hard to see the Astros trading one of the best SS in the midst of their winning window being as wide as it will get even considering Bregman.
THE BOARD has those guys at 55, 50, 50 FV. IMO, that isn’t anywhere close to acquiring Carlos Correa, who was just ranked as #5 in the FG Trade Value Series of 2018.
Granted, he has 1 fewer years of control and had a bit of a down year, but I think over the next 3 years he’s cost controlled through arb, and will be one of the… top 20 players-ish in the entire game.
I think he’s probably one of those players who is untouchable unless the prospect list includes Vladito or Tatis.
A bit of a down year is a bit of an understatement for Correa in 2018 (1.6 fWAR) and I _did_ say “good start to a deal”. Keller’s been written up as a top five pitching prospect in the game. They had him working on his changeup a bunch last year and his stat line suffered.
Maybe they should bring back Keuchel. It always seemed like a forgone conclusion that he’d leave. That was before McCullers’ TJ. It might be a good idea to lock in a market value top half of rotation guy. They need arms for this season and they’re better positioned for the following offseason. ST is right, losing both of Verlander and Cole could be a big problem for this team.
He’s from the area (OK) and would presumably be worth a bit more to Houston without the QO. It might behoove the Astros to swoop in with a good offer to Keuchel while the big spenders are still in Harper/Machado limbo.
But if the Astros want to pay “market value,” they should extend or re-sign Cole, rather than signing up for the already-declining Keuchel.
As it stands for 2019, their 5th starter might be Brad Peacock, and that’s not including Forest Whitely, widely seen as the best staring pitching prospect in baseball.
The Astros need to use their payroll resources to lock up stars for the long-term, not spending big money in the worst market (free agency), when it’s going to cost them a draft pick to boot.
I understand the perils of free agency and the age curve, but there’s also the win curve. Keuchel wouldn’t be my first choice of free agent headed into the offseason, but demands come down, and sometimes your #3 gets knocked out for the season. Depth is a good thing and part of what’s made Houston’s pitching staffs successful. You accumulate depth so you’re in the position of enjoying one of James, Peacock and Whitley making 25 good starts. Bad teams count on all three happening and are up a creek when they inevitably don’t.
As long as we’re talking about decline, Keuchel was a 3.6 WAR pitcher and projects at 3.3. Two pitchers projected for less than half of that WAR have been valued by the market at 1@9 approx. plus 40 FV prospect (Roark) and 3@10aav (Lynn). There’s absolutely an AAV where a pitcher twice as good makes sense at 5 years.
The win curve is exactly why the Astros shouldn’t sign Keuchel.
Upvoted for your user name.
For reference, here’s the projections of the #3-#6 starters right now. No one else on their depth chart projects over .5 WAR.
Collin McHugh 141.0 IP 4.29 ERA 4.26 FIP 1.7 WAR
Joshua James 128.0 IP 3.96 ERA 3.96 FIP 2.0 WAR
Brad Peacock 94.0 IP 4.10 ERA 4.04 FIP 1.2 WAR
Forrest Whitley 92.0 IP 4.59 ERA 4.62 FIP 0.7 WAR
Are you asking for 180 IP and Playoffs from three of these? I don’t think that’s a very good Plan A for a pitching staff that wants to pitch through any of the other three presumptive AL favorites.
I think they’d rather take their chances finding a new Charlie Morton than overpay for a non elite DK –
Win curves these days arent the same as they once were, teams from all different financial backgrounds ( Lad Hou Cle) are looking at more extending the window than the “all eggs in 1 basket” approach –
This is an organization thats been great at getting the best bang for their buck (inns) with pitching, I dont think they will make a fear based choice tied to a big contract at that- Knowing when to jump ship these days is perhaps just as important as hitting on calls these days
Couple things:
1. Re-Signing Keuchel won’t cost them a draft pick. You don’t lost a draft pick for signing your own player.
2. Even if you don’t think they should go down the Keuchel path (& I agree they probably shouldn’t), they probably do need another SP arm. They have been built on having 7-8 SP’s with 3-4 “starter only” guys (JV, Keuchel, Cole, Morton) & then 2-3 guys that can bounce between starting & BP (McHugh, Peacock, McCullers, Musgrove). Even adding in James & Whitley, they’re short a pitcher. & that’s assuming those 2 both pitch well as rookies. I think a short term reclamation project trade or FA signing is likely as insurance &/or so they can bring James/Whitley along slowly. Sonny Gray?
He’s talking about the pick Keuchel signing elsewhere would return, since he was offered a qualifying offer and turned it down. It’s an opportunity cost of resigning an outgoing QO player.
I agree with the second part. It doesn’t have to necessarily be Keuchel, but I think they’re clearly short a SP arm. Eovaldi would have been a perfect add for them. I’d very much be thinking about Keuchel if he could be had for Eovaldi’s 4 year, under 20 AAV range of contract. That’s a long waiting game though, and someone’s going to at some point strike out on both Machado/Harper and get a little drunk.
I agree the Astros should (and I think will) sign another starter to eat innings (or they might trade for a starter that’s better than an innings-eater and has some team control). My disagreement was with the idea that the Astros should re-sign Keuchel specifically.
So I think that the Astros are definitely down a starting pitcher, since their depth from last year is now their rotation this year. But I also think that Keuchel is likely a terrible buy at $100M or whatever it is he’s asking for. His K numbers have been going the wrong way for a while now and he’s been getting by nibbling at the edges of the zone. It’s a precarious way to live. If you’re spending that kind of money, you probably want some more assurances than he can offer.
The other part of this is: I don’t think it’s ideal having your #3 starter be McHugh during the playoffs, but he’s not far removed from being a very consistent 3-win pitcher. He was only in the bullpen last year because the rotation was so insanely stacked. Ideally you have another 3-win pitcher just waiting in the wings for the playoffs so you have another fireman for the playoffs, but it’s not like they’re hurting. They probably think they can squeeze by with him this year, and they may be right.
I suspect the Astros are just going to stopgap it this year–find someone who is here for a year or two and hope that McCullers bounces back and Whitley turns into the monster we expect him to, and then figure out a long-term solution for 2020 later. Kikuchi’s about the only longer-term solution who was out there, and he’s gone now. Morton would have been perfect, and I’m still very surprised they didn’t try harder to keep him. Extending Cole might be a wise, if expensive, move. I really do think that Sonny Gray and Aaron Sanchez are their best bets, and I like both of their chances of turning back into #2 starters in Houston–but it seems like their teams aren’t in a hurry to deal them. Maybe Hellickson?
Yuli’s hamate surgery in spring training was probably a non-insignificant factor in his power outage. I honestly have no idea what to expect from him. In 2017 he hit pretty well, but was credited as being a bad defender at 1st after having been a 3B for years. Last year he improved at 1st, but had the injury. If you want to be optimistic about him, he’ll be a year removed from the injury, with an extra year of experience at first, so he could be something like an above average defender who is a ~115 WRC+ bat, which should put him something like a 2-2.5 win player or so? If you want to be pessimistic, he’s an aging bad defender who hit for an empty batting average last year, which is probably a backup st best. I’d be really intrigued about what a season with Yuli at 3rd (where hes graded out well in a small sample) would look like, but that’s clearly not happening on his current team.
Can I call out the Alex Bregman chart? I mean, good golly. That’s basically the same superb year, rolled over four identical times.
And it’s Alex Bregman, so I believe it. But I’ve never quite seen that sort of chart on Fangraphs before. The man is, statistically, unreal …
And both the ZIPs and Steamer projections for 2019 are virtually identical to the Marcel projection on Baseball Reference. Bregman has jumped into the elite sector of MLB players right in time for the typical peak years on the aging curve.
On a COMPLETELY different note, Willians Astudillo has now overtaken Harper, Machado, and Trout to the #1 spot on the player search list.
#LongLiveThe FringeFive
His 4 strtikeout, 8 home run Winter League ‘season’ is a marvelous thing to contemplate.
Until game 3 i thought they would beat the sox. Couldn’t have known the sox bench collectively turned into babe ruth for two weeks.
Wow, what might a Correa trad even look like? Who could even afford that?
Your article is pointless. I write for a living. One must make the statement then substantiate it. This article is poo. Ever been chastised for a run on sentence? Get to the point unless you charge by the word.
I do. And a bill is coming your way!
Good job! Weird Zips has that info on bremgan. I’d be shocked if bregman put up those stats again. He’ll come back down to his normal this year. Hopefully hes been working on that poor 3B defense.