Burrows allows a 3 run Crawford Box shot in T1
Castillo throws 9 total strikes in 24 pitches and the Astros get nothing bottom 1.
Me, accustomed to watching the Stros…“He threw 9?”
God, this is such a dogshit baseball team.
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What a great pick up Mike Burrows was. Great job Dana.
And that’ll do it for me. Absolute fucking meatball down the pipe for 2 run homer to Garver to make it 5-1.
I’m outta here.
Hey, come on, man, that was Garver’s 3rd hit against righties this year. Guy’s on fire and you can’t hope to contain him all day.
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I still think Burrows will come good. The results have been awful but the underlying numbers have been better. He’ll never be a TOR arm but he was never meant to be. I think he’ll be a solid 3 when some of his shit luck turns around
Espada leaves Burrows in for 100 pitches, he wraps it up by giving up a 2 out, 2 run double to the 9 hitters.
Top 6, and it’s 7-1.
Burrow’s era after 9 starts is 5.72. He’s already given up 10 home runs so far this season. He’s got his work cut out for him if he wants to catch Jose Lima’s team record of 48, which he set in 2000.
With Burrows the path to success is pretty plausible, and it was a fine trade. Six years of cost-controlled #3 (if they can get him right) is worth a lot. I also don’t think they gave up all that much for him in the first place. Anderson Brito is promising but could be a reliever and he just reached High A. The other piece was Jacob Melton, and I’ll let that speak for itself.
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Coming into today ERA 5.59, expected ERA 3.77. He’s pitched way better than his results. Even today, the Raley homer was an out if it’s a foot to the right and was only a homer in 6/30 parks. That’s 3 runs that are pretty unlucky, especially against a lefty with a Berkman special. The results are bad, no question, but writing him off based on bad luck results is bad process
This question of actual ERA vs expected ERA is an interesting one. In last night’s game (I think) they showed the “leaders” in this spread. I think Burrows was #3, and the first two were having poor years, too, as you would expect. But you didn’t look at any of those three and say “oh, he’s obviously a good pitcher, that’s just bad luck.” No, there’s the distinct possibility that all three are bad pitchers (at the MLB level, obviously), and there’s some other unaccounted-for factor that explains those spreads. I don’t think the numbers we’re looking at now should necessarily give anybody hope for a turnaround.
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Burrows is the only Astros pitcher that qualifies on the MLB ERA leader board. The only one. He is #77 out of 79 qualifiers. He worked very hard today to catch #78 Luzardo from the Phillies but fell just short by 0.05. Maybe next time.
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Things like FIP and xERA have long been a far better indicator for future ERA than ERA itself. Result stats are prone to flukes and luck, especially in a smaller sample size.
Burrows exit velo, chase %, BB% and hard hit% are all 70+ percentile on baseball savant. So he’s not getting hit hard, he’s inducing chase, he’s not walking guys and he’s getting lit up.
Sometimes the underlying metrics do trend toward the results but way more often than not, the results trend toward the underlying metrics, especially for pitchers.
I don’t know the rationale and underlying calculus is for expected ERA. I do know that Burrows is at #77, #76 and #74 for ERA, BAA and WHIP respectively. Since WHIP does not give a good view into batter power against, the fact that Burrows is chasing the Lima HR record, we can assume that that stat blind spot is filled with a bunch of no bueno. And, since the Astros are in the 90th percentile on errors with only 16 on the year, we can fill that other WHIP blind spot with a bunch more no bueno.
I’ll admit that I don’t pay a lot of attention to some of the metrics such as spin rate, expected era, whatever rate. I look at old school numbers such as era, wins, losses, strike outs, etc and what I see live when someone pitches. What I see when Burrows pitches is someone who can’t seem to escape a big inning. He doesn’t seem to throw hard enough or have enough movement to blow it by a hitter when he is out of the zone. His secondary pitches aren’t good enough at this point to fool hitters. Burrows wouldn’t even be in the conversation to crack the top 5 on some of our teams from 2017-2023. He has a lot of work to do if he wants to have success at this level. I do wish him success but it’s going to be a long season if he’s our most consistent pitcher.
He’s got a lot of the right ingredients but a shitty 4-seamer, and that’s a real problem for a changeup artist.
On another note, I wouldn’t call the Zach Cole leadoff experiment an UNQUALIFIED success.
It might be a success if you’re looking for an unqualified candidate.