“Listen, while I’m here, the window is always going to be open.” -Jim Crane (February 7, 2024)
The Astros spent the offseason remaking their pitching staff. That staff now has an MLB-worst 6.32 ERA. They’ve walked more batters than any team in baseball. The starting rotation has thrown fifteen innings over their last five games. Hunter Brown is out indefinitely with a grade 2 shoulder strain. Javier is out with the same injury, not that he was getting outs when healthy. Tatsuya Imai has an ERA over 7 and is walking more than one batter per inning. #2 starter Mike Burrows is holding strong with an ERA of 5.63. That’s a lot of pressure to put on staff ace Lance McCullers, whose right arm is held together with scotch tape and bubblegum.
This has all put the bullpen in a no-win situation, but even then, they look like shit. Bryan Abreu has an ERA just under 20. Long-men Ryan Weiss and AJ Blubaugh have had to step up; instead, they’ve dick-stepped to a 7.32 and 10.80 ERA respectively. Hader is still out, but is tentatively scheduled to face hitters next week.
Yes, this staff has played six games in Sacramento and Denver. I did not get the impression watching those games that the venue was the problem.
The bats have more than done their part at home and on the road. Altuve and Walker are hitting like new men. Yordan is hitting like a god. Hell, all the regulars are hitting well aside from Yainer. As good as they’ve been so far----and they’ll come back down to earth----the pitching has been worse.
I don’t want to overreact to fourteen games. I am sure the Astros will not finish this season with a team ERA over 6. I just don’t see the path to a winning record, much less to the postseason. So what do you do about it? Is the window still open?
The window is always open. I think Crane will always try to put a winning team on the field. That’s doesn’t mean they’ll always be good at it. TBH, I didn’t see injuries to Brown and Hader. I didn’t think Abreu would be this bad. I didn’t think Imai would be a disaster. Pretty much everything that could go wrong, has.
The team hits the statistically significant 10% game played mark at the end of tomorrow’s game. They have to win the next two games just to get to .500. There is no way this team generates a winning record this year.
The first week was fun, but a bunch of the warning signs were there.
Could the ABS be impacting the Astros strategy of elevating the 4 seam by making it less effective since the top of the zone is set rather than subjective? Could that be impacting walks?
I don’t know where to put this so I’ll put it here. It seems like the catchers aren’t any better at using ABS than Cam Smith is. The more I think about it, the more idiotic this becomes.
I haven’t looked for the numbers, but it seems to me that challenges should be initiated by the catcher at least 75% of the time, and that batters should initiate a challenge only in egregious situations, not dumbass situations of their own making they hope to get bailed out of which is what I see happening regularly.
If the Astros pitchers miraculously throw a strike and it’s called a ball, the catchers should have presence of mind to correct it. I mean, what in the world are we doing here?
I would hope that Janek could be ready later this year. Optimal timing? Probably not, but if Yanier isn’t hitting at least you know you will get good defense with Janek. Although I guess I have not idea if he’s good at framing pitches.
Personally, I wouldn’t be investing too heavily in Janek just yet. From everything I’ve read and seen, he has a cannon for an arm and is a good receiver behind the plate. But pitch framing is not one of his strengths.
Offensively, since being drafted in 2024, he’s struck out at a 30.5% clip with a slash line of .234/.300/.385 (the hit tool has been a major question mark during his pro career). He’s only 23 years old, so there’s still a lot of time to put it all together. This season in Corpus ought to tell us a lot about that.
