The Astros’ Rotation Is Good
The Houston Astros’ rotation is one of the best in baseball. This much is true. A top five rank in xFIP and FIP support the premise and a staff ERA in the top-half of the league does little to falsify it. Yes, that same rotation features Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez, J.A. Happ, Bud Norris, and Felipe Paulino. If their plan is to fingerprint and lock up any doubters like twin Foxes then so far everything is going on schedule.
Myers leads the team in innings pitched and while his 3.02 ERA is over his head, he must be considered one of the best offseason signings in the league. Rodriguez the mainstay of the group and Happ is the anti-Wandy. Norris and Paulino are products of the Astros’ system, with Norris being the breadwinner of the pair. Paulino is interesting in his own right, though, and that is whom I choose to focus on here.
Paulino’s stuff is majestic from the scope of a radar gun. His fastball averages 95.5 miles per hour and tops every starter in baseball that qualifies except Ubaldo Jimenez. Nevertheless, Paulino’s fastball holds a negative run value. This is startling for one reason in particular: Paulino is giving up a home run on less than 2% of his flyballs. That percentage is the clone on the other side of the mirror to his homer rate in 2009 which was out of this world ridiculous. The fastball run value being so horrid without balls clearing the fence is concerning.
Still, Paulino misses bats, gets a fair amount of grounders, and otherwise is pitching almost identical to his 2009 stats. The gopher ball is the difference between his FIP (3.24, down from 5.11) and why his xFIP has jumped. I do not think Paulino is a true talent five-run average pitcher. Instead – and perhaps sheepishly – I would expect him to be somewhere in the middle of those two xFIP. That’s mighty fine for a back-end starter in the National League Central.
Interesting. Perhaps I’ll have to rescind calling them the Disastros. But I’m not banking on it.
I mean, Brett Myers’ extension is still lolworthy. And he’s still the biggest a-hole in the league.
And, to be totally fair, they’re playing with their ideal starting five at the moment, no injuries or anything.
Most teams with young pitching… can’t really say that.
If someone were to get hurt, I’m sure there will be some cratering regression with lack of depth involved. Or if Brett Myers regresses majorly.
To be fair actually they’re not. Paulino is on the DL and if he returns will be pitching out of the bullpen.
And Bud Norris also missed significant time this season. Also, there actually is depth on the way, with pitching prospects Jordan Lyles and Dallas Keuchel likely pitching at AAA next season. So basically, you’re incorrect, BX.
I was shocked the other day to look at the standings and see the Lastros actually had a somewhat respectable record.
These first three comments should be put in the “Fangraphs Comments Hall of Fame”. Typical with a capital T.
In the comments to an article on the Reds back in february, I posited that the Astros rotation might be better than the Reds, and it appears to be so. However, the CAIRO projections accurately projected a lower runs total allowed by the Reds staff. The Astros bullpen has not been awful, and the main difference has been fielding. The Reds fielders have done well preventing runs and the Astros have not been very good at it (Felonious pointed this out to me in the comment thread).
It appears that all teh Astros need to do now is get some guys who can hit and field. 🙂 Seriously, even with Oswalt gone, the staff has been encouraging. Myers is certainly over his career norm. He always had astronomically high hr/fb rates. Maybe getting out of Philly helped in that regard, and at least this year the luck ran hisway on that score. Since he’s a groundballer to a degree, combine the 2 and he has really limited homers this year. Rodriguez came back from an early season slump. Norris and paulino flash some potential, if erratic. Nice that something has gone well for them, and that they have finally gone on a tear sans Berkman and Oswalt.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/dont-let-cincy-surprise-you/
No it’s not.
Yes, it is.
Geez.
If this keeps up, there’ll be as many “pro” Astro articles as their are “con” articles.
FWIW, I agree that ‘Stros rotation is good. I also feel that too much of “objective” and “unbiased” analysis at FT, isn;t all objective and unbiased … disappointingly so.
I have difficulty “ranking” their rotation among other rotations because I don;t feel as though I have a good baseline for what their rotation should expect to produce. They are doing well now. That I know. But as far as projecting their rotation for 2011, or comparing them to CIN or StL, I’m not sure I’d even attempt such a thing, and prefer to take a “let’s watch and see” type of approach.
Somebody else made a good comment about their health, and that’s often overlooked aspect. For example, there was an article talking about Suppan should not be starting. The article did not not mention that StL has 2 SP’s out for the season. I’m sure Nationals fans, or Oakland fans would love to see how their rotations could do if the top 5 were healthy.
Heck, I’d guess that injuries are often the most significant aspect of a team being successful/unsuccessful.
That’s true, but again, Houston has had its fair share of injuries to the starting rotation, with Norris missing over a month and Paulino missing half the season.
Throw Moehler in there too. Not that he was their ideal 5th man anyway.
E.R.A. is reflective of what they have produced. xfip is as well in a way, although not in a results based fashion, but what they have produced as far as strikeouts walks and types of batted balls. It is more reliable as a predictive indicator (although I am not completely sold on hr/fb being something pitchers have no control over, although Paulino has such extreme variance it seems mostly luck was in play).
To say that you don’t have a good baseline for what they should expect to produce is wrong. Xfip is what you would have expected them to produce fip wise. OK, so you say that doesn’t give you a baseline for their results next eyar? I think it does. And in fact, the link i provided above is to a pre-season comment thread wherein I specifically suggested that the Astros rotation might be better than the Reds rotation, and their xfips and fips this year suggest that is indeed what happened.
Astros starter e.r.a. 3.91 fip 3.7 xfip 4.02
Reds starter e.r.a. 4.16 fip 4.46 xfip 4.56
The Reds relievers were a little better, but the main difference is the fielding behind the pitchers. The Reds team uzr is 34.2, the Astros -14.6. So even with the better starting rotation, the Astros as a team gave up more runs, 619 to 603.
The Astros got a little “lucky” on hr/fb, so did the Reds, but the Astro number was even lower (somewhat surprising given their home stadia). The main difference between them to me is the Astro starter K rate. At 7.69 they are 3rd in baseball. The Reds at 6.11 are 25th. Reds pitchers have shown more control, but in k/bb the Astros are 8th, the Reds 25th. For all the advanced metrics, those are still about the most reliable predictors. And the Astros are 9th in GB rate, the Reds 21st. You can give up flyballs and still have a decent staff, a la the Giants (Cain has always been below 10% in hr/fb, home, road, lefties, righties -well, once he was at 11% against lefties, but that’s it, year after year-I suppose it might be like the nfc winning the coin flip 14 years in a row, but i doubt it-too many flyballs and a large sample for that to be likely in my mind, so i don’t think he’s simply an outlier).
In any event, the Reds had some injuries this year (but Volquez was known when I went over this in the pre-season). Maybe he comes back strong, Chapman, perhaps bailey makes a leap forward. But the end result was actually fairly predictable.
Much better fielding, somewhat better bullpen meant fewer runs allowed, and a much better offense, and voila, the Reds are a much better team. But at least the Astros had one componenet working well and possibly to build upon. Albeit Wandy and Myers aren’t spring chickens, but you have Lyles on the way.
Disclosure: I’m not a big fan of either of these teams. This just caught my eye pre-season.
All I meant by the comment is that I am unsure of how much they can repeat this type of performance, either because they are youngish, or because I don’t know as much about them as I should.
Looking at how a player “should” perform, or how a rotation “could” perform is sometimes deceiving. Lots of players/rotations have the “potential” to do something, but actually doing it is a different matter. See Gordon Beckham, and the recent article as one of the latest examples.
In terms of the Astros, I wasn’t trying to over or under credit what they’ve done, and in terms of predicting what they could/should do, I’m more of a “seeing is believing” type. They are definitely on the right track, and have taken a step forward (IMO) in terms of rebuilding and improving.
Cy Myers
Disastros? Lastros? Such short memories around here. They are one of the most successful franchises over the last twenty years in terms of wins, yet people have them relegated to Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Baltimore status. Interesting……
I believe stats are nice, but they only tell part of the story. My point is look at Billy Beane, who relied very heavily on stats, and not the eye test. Back to the Astros starting pitching, I am a huge Phillies fan, and watch every game. Therefore, I have watched both Myers and Happ. Furthermore, the dimensions of Houston’s ballpark are very similar to Philadelphia’s expect for CF, which is longer in Houston. Myers is having a career year this year, and the only time I remember him pitching this well was from August through the 2008 World Series. Basically, he uses a fastball and curve mixed in with a sinker and slider. When Myers was the most effective of his career he decreased using his sinker and increased using his curve. By keeping the ball moving away from hitters with the curve, he kept them off balance and unable to square up. In 2008, Myers was sent to AAA after getting off to a horrid start, in 17 starts he had 5.46 ERA, allowed 24 HR and walked 45 batters in 17 games. To make matters worse, he only allowed 3 runs or less in 6 of the 17 starts. When he came back up he allowed only 5 HRs walked 15 batters in and pitched at least 7 innings 9 times in 13 games, and didn’t allow more than 3 runs in all but 3 games. Not to mention he was part of the 1 2 punch that led the Phillie to the World Series. However, this 3 month period was the only time I saw Myers reach his potential on a constant basis. My guess for Myers success this year is he is using what he learned in 2008, use the curve more to keep the batters off guard because there were times he threw his sinker 1/3 of the time, and as a result he would allow roughly 30 HRs a year due to his sinker not sinking. When examining his stats, his WHIP is a career low, but his hits to IP is roughly the same. Therefore, he is not walking as many batters, which shows he is more in control of his pitches. The question is not Myers’s talent, its his ability to perform at this level on a regular basis.
As for Happ, he throws a fastball 80% of the time, but he hides the ball, and he has some crazy late movement on his pitches. Last year before the Phillies got Cliff Lee, Happ, a rookie, was our most consistent pitcher for the entire year. The problem Happ is going to run into is that the league will eventually catch up to him, and he will need to develop another pitch.
I have watched Wandy a few times, and he is one of the more unknown talented pitchers in all of baseball. However, I have not watched Norris nor Paulino. With that said, observing Norris’s game log for 2010 he has not shown any improvement in allowing baserunners on either by a hit or by a walk. He appears to pitch around 6 innings and allow 4 to 5 runs a game. Paulino might have a great fastball, and one day be close to striking out one batter per inning, but he allows way too many hits and walks. Before he got hurt this year, his whip was 1.59. I dont care how if every out you get is a strikeout, but when you allow that many baserunners you will lose games. In conclusion, besides this year and 1/3 of 2008 Myers is a solid #3, Happ has the potential to be a solid #2 as long as he adjusts to the league when they figure him out, Wandy is a #1, and at this point in time Norris and Paulino are lucky if they are even #4’s. I would take the Padres, Braves, Marlins, A’s, Giants, Cardinals, and Rays pitching staff before Houston. I would even consider taking the Twins and even the Mets (before the Santana injury) over Houston’s.
Therefore, your premise, “The Houston Astros’ rotation is one of the best in baseball. This much is true. A top five rank in xFIP and FIP support the premise and a staff ERA in the top-half of the league does little to falsify it.”
The problem with using xFIP to justify Houston as one of the best pitching staffs in MLB is funny. It is an experimental stat that adjusts FIP and “normalizes” the home run component. The problem with trying to use xFIP is that Houston’s Ballpark is going to allow a lot of home runs based on its dimensions. Also, this stat can be inflated by pitchers who do not throw fly balls. This is a perfect example of why people need to stop relying so much on stats, and start using their eyes.