FanGraphs Baseball

It’s not a question of whether the Astros are good. There’s near-unanimous agreement that the Astros are good, and the only people who disagree haven’t been paying attention. It’s more a question of how good the Astros really are. Are they as good as a wild-card contender? Are they as good as a runaway division favorite? I don’t know! Nobody does. But like any team, the Astros could be improved. And over the past several months, rumors circled around a similar theme: The Astros could use an ace.

Reports linked them to Chris Archer. Reports linked them — and continue to link them! — to Jose Quintana. Reports linked them to Chris Sale. And so on, and so on. A great starting pitcher could improve any team, but the idea implied has been that the Astros pitching staff could be some kind of vulnerability. The offensive depth is there. The group of pitchers? More question marks.

The Astros haven’t pulled the trigger on a pitching trade. They still could, and any number of things could go wrong. But the team has steadfastly believed its pitching is just fine. In the early going, there have been four positive signs in particular. Or, if not that, four positive reminders. Let’s run through some big reasons why the Astros probably count as one of the best teams around.

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On Monday, the Cardinals announced yet another contract extension, having agreed to a long-term deal with outfielder Stephen Piscotty. This (presumably) wrapped up a busy extension winter for St. Louis, as they had previously kept Yadier Molina from hitting free agency after the season and had bought out Carlos Martinez’s arbitration years in exchange for a few of his free agent seasons. This followed last year’s long-term deal for Kolten Wong, who himself followed Matt Carpenter in deciding to take guaranteed money from the Cardinals early in his career. And this group is all coming on the heels of similar deals for Jaime Garcia and Allen Craig. It’s safe to say that the Cardinals are fans of the early-career contract extension.

And it’s pretty easy to see why. While the Craig deal has turned into a lemon, they were able to move him for value while he was still viewed as an asset, and they’ve saved a bunch of money with the Carpenter extension. The history of these kinds of contracts suggests that the Cardinals are more likely to save money on the Piscotty and Martinez deals, and the franchise’s ability to keep their home-grown stars is one of the reasons they’ve been so successful for so long.

But the Piscotty extension is interesting beyond just a continuing example of the Cardinals being a well run franchise. Because, barring some type of unexpected signing in the next few weeks, it feels like Piscotty — a perfectly solid player with perhaps limited star potential — is now the kind of guy who teams are more able to sign early on.

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About a month ago, Travis Sawchik and I posted back-to-back articles about Dylan Bundy and how he could make or break the Orioles’ season. I didn’t exactly say that he was the most important player on the roster not named Machado or Britton, but I heavily implied it in a wink-wink nudge-nudge manner. In Bundy, the Orioles have a former prodigy who could realize his potential in 2017.

He took the first step towards that on Wednesday night.

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We had multiple Pirates articles here at FanGraphs yesterday. Craig Edwards, for example, wrote about how Gerrit Cole’s slider went missing against the Red Sox. Travis Sawchik wrote about the embattled shift. I contributed, as well, with a piece called “Searage, Taillon, and the Pirates Upstairs“.

I’d spoken to pitching coach Ray Searage and right-hander Jameson Taillon on Monday, and the latter followed up on our conversation with a stellar effort on Wednesday night. Making his first start of the season, Taillon tossed seven scoreless frames against a potent Boston lineup. His most impressive performance came in the fifth inning. In a scoreless game, the Red Sox had put runners on second and third with none out. Taillon responded by recording consecutive strikeouts, then got Dustin Pedroia to bounce back to the mound.

I planned to follow-up with Taillon this morning to get his thoughts on the performance, particularly in regard to his sequencing. Unfortunately, this afternoon’s game was postponed early due to weather, and the Pirates clubhouse wasn’t opened to media.

Despite that disappointment, I do have follow-up Taillon content to provide. The majority of what he told me earlier in the week wasn’t included in yesterday’s article, with today in mind. Here are the highlights.

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Taillon on why he’s throwing more two-seam, and fewer four-seam, fastballs: “I kind of put pressure on myself to command my four-seam. Basically, I got a little too fine with it at times. The two-seam is just a much more aggressive mentality, and I do put guys on the ground with it. I’ll throw bad two-seams in my head — out of my hand, I think they’re bad — and I’ll still put hitters on the ground. It’s a better pitch for me.

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While pitcher wins and losses have been abandoned by many as a means to assess a pitcher’s effectively, the traditional measurement of performance from a bygone era is still attached to every pitcher in the game. And even though pitchers have limited control over the ability to win and lose games, Chris Archer’s 19 losses last season do tell a story. They tell a tale of frustration, of an uneven campaign, and of poor luck on balls in play (and out of play) even as his underlying skills and fielding-independent numbers were suggestive of a pitcher who deserved a better fate.

Despite Archer’s 27.4% strikeout rate and the 19.5-point differential between his strikeout and walk rates (K-BB%), the Rays still managed to lose 23 of the 33 games Archer started.

But his Opening Day start against the Yankees suggested that Archer might be poised not only to bounce back by traditional measurements, but that he might be ready to leap to a new level of underlying performance thanks to an improved pitch.

After working as a top-of-the rotation arm mostly via a fastball-slider combo, Archer might have a new important variable for opponents to consider: an improved changeup.

Archer threw 13 changeups in the season opener versus the Yankees, and many of them were of the fading-, diving-, bat-missing, lefty-neutralizing variety.

An Archer change against Jacoby Ellsbury…

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We now have landing pages for all 30 Major League Baseball teams. These pages can be accessed through the Teams menu on the navigation bar above, simply by clicking on a team’s name. You can also access the pages directly, like so (no spaces in team names):

Many of the stats and features on the team pages are available in similar forms elsewhere on the site. We’ve now collected them into one place, however, so that readers can more quickly access team-specific information and analysis. As with any new addition to FanGraphs, we plan on expanding and adding features to the team pages as time goes on.

There are five different tabs on each page: Summary, Stats, Schedule, Pitcher Usage, and Depth Chart.

Summary

This is a quick overview of the team’s season. It includes boxes for the next and most recent games, division standings, team stats, depth chart, and roster notes.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jake Arrieta’s velocity loss, the league’s artificial velocity gain, and whether the Astros won the winter, then answer listener emails about topspin and the turf, the Mariners’ and Blue Jays’ 40th anniversaries/seasons, disagreeing with projections, intentional-walk predictions, Madison Bumgarner’s batting, the negative value of player mistakes, single-game double-play leaders, a pitcher who always throws strikes, forecasting final stat lines, and more.

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Episode 729
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses not only the opportunities available to, but also the challenges that face, players who possess competence both as hitters and pitchers; examines one of the few metrics that becomes reliable in a sample size of one; and explains the strange composition of the Padres’ roster.

A reminder: FanGraphs’ Ad Free Membership exists. Click here to learn more about it and share some of your disposable income with FanGraphs.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)

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Tuesday was a good day for the Cubs. Most of them are good days for the Cubs, but on Tuesday, they earned their first win of 2017, edging out the Cardinals 2-1. Jason Heyward and Javier Baez drove in the runs, but the star was Jake Arrieta, who spun six innings with just an unearned run going against him. He piled up six whiffs, and it was a good way for him to get things going. If the Cubs have any potential vulnerability, it has to do with rotation depth. As long as Arrieta and the other guys are clicking, the Cubs are at least as good as anyone else.

On TV, Arrieta looked effective. In the box score, Arrieta looks effective. But what was the deal with his fastball? This is an open question. I don’t have an answer. I just have evidence that makes me think thoughts.

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