The Bullpen Again Look Strong and Stable Amid Injuries and Uncertainty Elsewhere
The Astros Spring Training has been dominated by negative headlines. Lance McCullers did not come into camp healthy and won’t be ready for Opening Day. Michael Brantley is still recovering from shoulder surgery and had to leave camp to deal with a family emergency; he will open the season on the IL. And those pale in comparison to Jose Altuve not just suffering a broken thumb in a WBC game, but also needing surgery that will keep him from doing baseball activities for two months.
But in the face of bad news to both the lineup and the rotation, one part of the Astros has remained healthy and seems poised to once again make major contributions when Opening Day comes next week.
The bullpen was a big reason that the Astros dominated the 2022 postseason. Astro relievers threw 54.1 innings across 13 playoff games and allowed only 5 earned runs. That’s a 0.83 ERA. Did you miss watching pitchers hitting in 2022? If so, you could tune in to the innings where the Astros bullpen pitched in the playoffs. They held opponents to a slash line of .126/.215/.208.
The key members of the playoff bullpen—and more—return for the 2023 season. And the bullpen has stayed healthy so far in Spring Training.
In this article, I’ll highlight some different aspects of the projected Astros 2023 bullpen. None are true stars for the team because no one pitches enough innings to have a huge impact. But collectively, they should be a huge strength and source of stability for the team in 2023.
Back of the Bullpen Remains the Same…And Very Good
I’ll start at the end; that is, with the back of the bullpen. They are very good. Again, see the numbers on the bullpen’s performance in last year’s playoffs.
Further evidence of this is provided by a new pitching projection system developed by Jordan Rosenblum and Eno Sarris. The new projections use previous stats but add in data about the characteristics of the pitches thrown by each pitcher. These data are publicly presented at Fangraphs, and are measured on scales that determine the quality of a pitcher's Stuff, his Location, and then a combined measure called Pitching+.
Data on the quality of pitches has an advantage over data on more traditional statistics—they allow us to derive conclusions more quickly.
Sarris writes “Pitching+ now comes online faster and is more predictive in small samples than strikeouts minus walks, the most powerful small-sample statistic based on results.
These data are thus quite valuable early in a season for all pitchers. And they are valuable for analyzing relievers, who are always prone to the issues created by small sample sizes.
So what does this projection system show for the back of the Astros bullpen? That it is very good. The chart below shows the projected ERA of the top bullpen arms under the new Pitching+ projections. I added each relievers rank among all major league relievers.
The top five arms in the Astros bullpen are all projected to be among the top 70 relievers in baseball. Unsurprisingly, Ryan Pressly—who had a 1.40 win probability added in the 13 games of the 2022 playoffs—projects as one of the top handful of relievers in baseball. But so does 2022 breakout Bryan Abreu—he of the 19 Ks in 11.1 postseason innings. Abreu is projected for the 13th lowest ERA among major league relievers in 2023.
The other three back-end relievers—Rafael Montero, Hector Neris, and Ryne Stanek—are all projected to have ERAs between 3.28 and 3.44. They are not elite bullpen arms, but they are remarkably solid options.
Few, if any major league teams, have this much depth in their bullpen. The back end of the bullpen should remain a big strength for the Astros in 2022.
Ronel Blanco Wins Last Bullpen Spot
The final bullpen spot will go to Ronel Blanco. Blanco impressed the team’s decision makers with an impressive Spring Training and adapted well to being asked to stretch out so he can cover multiple innings as a long reliever. The ability to stretch out and cover multiple innings gave Blanco a leg up over his competition for the bullpen.
So did Blanco’s performance this spring. Over 14 spring training innings in 6 appearances so far, Blanco has struck out 17 batters while walking only 3. That has led to a 0.64 ERA.
In 2022, Blanco made the team out of Spring Training, but was sent down in mid-April. He had give up 5 runs in 6.1 innings, striking out 7 but walking 4. Blanco spent the rest of the season at Sugar Land, where he struck out 58 while walking 19 in 44.2 innings. Those numbers look similar to Blanco’s in 2021, when he struck out 57 an walked 16 in 45 innings.
The AAA numbers are good but not great. They indicate that Blanco will perform at a slightly below average rate. For the final spot in the bullpen, that is acceptable. But the hope is that Blanco’s Spring Training performance is evidence of an improvement in his skill level.
The Astros Will Have an All Right-Handed Bullpen
The man who Blanco beat out for the final bullpen spot was Matt Gage. From a talent standpoint, this move is not surprising. Gage is a veteran minor leaguer who has bounced around between different organizations and a stint in the Mexican League.
He did have an excellent season in 2022 (his 2.78 ERA in 42.1 innings in AAA earned him some time in the big leagues. But the Blue Jays did not keep him on their 40 man roster this offseason. That allowed the Astros to pick him up off of waivers.
Many expected Gage to win the final spot in the bullpen in large part because he is left handed. It is unusual for teams not to have a left handed pitcher in the bullpen. For years, managers have called in a LOOGy (that is a Left handed One Out Guy) to get a platoon advantage of a dangerous left handed hitter. And then just as quickly, those managers were back out on the mound to call on a right handed reliever to deal with the rest of the opponent’s lineup.
Dusty Baker is well known for his preference for a left handed arm in his bullpen. And this offseason, the Astros front office seemed to be working to address Baker’s desire for a portside option in the pen. The team signed Austin Davis to a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training in November. Then in February, the Astros claimed Gage on waivers to occupy the final open spot on the team’s 40 man roster. New GM Dana Brown even paid a small signing bonus to Gage to get him to accept the Astros claim rather than exercise his right to become a free agent. In addition, the Astros have Blake Taylor and Parker Mushinski on the 40-man roster as left handed options out of the bullpen.
But none of these left handed pitchers can serve as a long man. And between the need for a relievers who can throw multiple innings and Blanco’s big Spring, Gage and the rest of the left handers will start the season in Sugar Lang.
Phil Maton. Can He Help?
When we last saw Phil Maton, he gave up a hit to his brother Nick in one of the possible the most intense at bat you’ll ever see in a meaningless Game 162 ever. How intense was it? Maton broke his hand punching his locker in anger after the game, which kept him from pitching in the playoffs.
This story just adds to the constant frustration of Maton’s career with the Astros, and frankly, his entire major league career. A review of Maton’s page at Baseball Savant shows his promise. Maton ranked in the 93rd percentile in fastball spin and 97th percentile in curveball spin in 2022. His pitches have high levels of horizontal movement, well above average for his curveball and slider and well below average for his 4-seam fastball.
These excellent numbers help him reduce hard contact. He was at the 97th percentile in average exit velocity and hard hit rate. He is at the 69th percentile in barrel rate. And yet, his output does not reflect these high spin, high movement pitches. These are outstanding numbers. And yet, Maton only produced a middling 3.84 in 65.2 innings in 2022. His xERA (4.28) and FIP (4.33) were higher.
There are strong reasons to believe that Maton can figure out how to harness his big spin and movement into a lower ERA. It’s why James Click traded for him to help the Astros bullpen in the 2021 playoff run. But we keep waiting for Maton to do that. And projection systems are skeptical. The Pitching+ model projects him for a 3.60 ERA this season. Other projections are more pessimistic.
Seth Martinez
I’m saving the best for last among the eight men who make up the Astros Opening Day bullpen—Seth Martinez. Obviously, he is not the best pitcher in the bullpen (that’s Ryan Pressly), but he is guy in the bullpen who is the easiest to root for.
I root for Martinez for two reasons. First, he is a remarkable success story for the Astros player development system. The Astros acquired Martinez in the minor league Rule 5 draft in December of 2020. He had been a control pitcher in the A’s organization to that point, with good results (3.21 ERA), but with strike out rates so low (21.0%) that he did not seem like a useful prospect.
Is is unclear what the Astros saw in Martinez, especially since his 2020 season in the minors was wiped out by the pandemic, but the player development staff was able to harness his stuff. Martinez increased his strikeout rate to 32.0% in AAA Sugar Land in 2021, earning a brief call up in September.
The second reason that I root for Martinez is that while he pitched very well in the majors, he kept getting sent back down to Sugar Land due to “a numbers crunch” on the Astros 26-man roster. He was up and down in the Spring, then established himself as a major leaguer over the summer, only to be sent down in August when Lance McCullers was activated. He then returned to the majors when Ryan Pressly had a brief IL stint, only to be optioned again to AAA in mid-September when Justin Verlander returned from his own short trip to the IL.
Martinez seems to have secured himself a place on the roster for 2023 and will not be the first man sent down when a pitcher comes back from the IL. Instead, he can focus on helping the Astros in the bullpen.
Among those who originally worked on Pitch+ data was Max Bay. He is no longer involved with the public project since he now works as a Research and Development Analyst in the Front Office of the Astros.