I was wondering about Yordan’s chase rate this season.
Looks like it’s the highest it’s been in his career. 30 by Baseball Savant’s formula, up from 26 last season.
By comparison Altuve is at 38 (32 for his career).
No conclusions from me, just felt like Yordan has been chasing.
I feel like the whole team is chasing a lot more than previous years. 3 times a week the other team will have a starter go 6 innings on less than 80 pitches and that just almost never used to happen. I don’t know if that’s an Espada thing, a front office thing, or just a byproduct of having a much shorter lineup than past years but it’s not great.
My guess would be more non productive hitters and the good ones pressing because they don’t trust the ones behind them like they have in the past. Dubon, Pena and Diaz swinging at anything thrown closer than the on deck circle doesn’t help, obviously.
Hey, the Astros are near the top! Wait… why are the Marlins, White Sox and Rockies also at the t… oh, no.
Dubon, Altuve, Diaz, and Pena are all among the 20 worst chase rates in the majors.
Where are you finding the team plate discipline numbers on Savant?
I just googled team chase rate
Super glued the skin, JB Welded the bone and all is well
So last night really exposed the Astros lineup against lefthanded pitching (which apparently the A’s have 37 lefty relievers in their pen). With Alvarez, Tucker, Singleton, Gamel, Heyward, Caratini hitting RHed…it’s been pretty ugly from the port side. I know Alvarez has historically hit lefties well, but there are times when he gets eaten alive. Last night was a recipe for how to completely shut down the Astros’ offense.
This teams strength is it’s pitching.
The offense is … uneven.
As is the defense.
Shudder.
That is the part that galls me the most.
Defense has been spotty at times, as has the pitching. But it’s the offense that worries me the most. Perhaps it’s just because last night that was the glaring problem, but it seems to me that there is more often pathetic offense unable to support quality pitching/defense than the other way around.
Offense is definitely the most inconsistent, and the biggest problem. But it’s precisely because the offense is so spotty that the defensive miscues are magnified. If they make a play in the 12th last night, they might have survived to play a 13th.
And I don’t care what the front office spreadsheets say about the expected value of swinging away with the new rules in extra innings, the Astros’ extra-inning record says it isn’t working. Unless Yordan is leading off, the leadoff guy needs to do whatever maximizes the chances of moving the runner to third, ESPECIALLY if they’re at home and the visitors failed to score in the top of the inning.
Yeah if you asked me the most likely scenario for this team’s demise, failure to score runs would be the cause.
Defensive lapses are liked missed FTs in basketball. Frustrating but they happen.
This should be a no-brainer for a manager.
Last night as an example of the pitching or defense failing in some way is a non-starter with me. Arrighetti pitched well. He got nicked by some soft contact in the first inning, and the one pitch in the second, but after that, the pitching defense held them scoreless for 9 innings. You have to win that game. You just have to. Bregman, 0-5…Tucker, 0-6…Pena…0-5…Runners left in scoring position with 2 outs: Bregman, twice…Tucker, twice…Pena, McCormick, Caratini, Heyward. They were 2-17 w/RISP and your leadoff hitter had both of those hits. That’s not on the pitching/defense.
Last night 100000000000% was on the offense.
My lament on the defense was just a general observation for the season.
As smart as the Astros evidently are in most every other aspect of baseball, their extra-inning record since the zombie runner points to something deeply lacking. It makes me think of how Larry Dierker refused to amend his play-for-the-big-inning style (that was so abundantly successful thru 162) for the playoffs; likewise how the late great Billy Beane said, about his rules for succeeding on a shoestring through the regular season, “My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs.”
They’ve had such a wellspring of talent the last seven years that they’ve just flat outplayed everybody else a couple times but I honestly can’t think of an Astros team during this run that evinced any interest in the “fundamentals” of small ball. It’s tempting to think of how much more successful they might have been had they tried to incorporate that element of the game, but OTOH it could be that letting small ball rot and optimizing contact has been the secret sauce the entire time.
Either way it is ugly baseball and not fun to watch when your heart’s in your teeth.
To me this all comes down to situations. Ok, perhaps the “metrics” say you score more runs by not bunting. But that has squat to do with scoring this particular runner in this particular inning with this particular batter at the plate. Which is why those who say “you should never bunt” or “never send the runner” or “never whatever it is” drive me nuts. Too many of the analytic eggheads completely ignore situational baseball.
