How Will the Rotation Muddle Through?

Injuries to Jose Urquidy and Luis Garcia have tested the depth of the Astros rotation. The team has few options but to muddle through for a while with prospects or salary dump trade candidates.

On Sunday, Jose Urquidy left his start against the Phillies with an injured shoulder. And on Monday, the news got worse as Luis Garcia left his start against the Giants after only 8 pitches. Both pitchers were immediately put on the injured list.

These two injuries—along with the injury that has kept Lance McCullers on the IL all season to this point—create an obvious problem for the Astros moving forward: how to get enough innings out of their starting rotation with three key members out.

It seems they are going to have to muddle through.

Muddling through is an academic concept from the study of bureaucracy that presumes that change is made gradually through evolutionary reforms, not revolutionary change. It takes time to make big changes and instead of doing that, bureaucracies “muddle through,” slowing trying to reach their goal.

That’s a lot of academic talk for a baseball blog (even one run by an academic). What does all this mean for the Astros rotation? They are most likely going to address the injuries to Urquidy and Garcia by small changes, not big ones. The team seems likely to rely on internal options that are not ideal, but can be modestly effective. If they look outside the organization, they will likely do so for a small upgrade, rather than a big one.

Is this ideal? No, in the ideal, Justin Verlander would have re-signed for the league minimum and Jim Crane would have donated the $40 million in salary he saved to local food banks.

Is this livable? Yes, the Astros are a team with a large number of high quality players. The loss of two starters in the rotation can be survived. Let’s examine how they can and will do this.

Injury Update

I will start with the status of the injured players. We don’t know very much at the moment, though.

As Brian McTaggart reports below, an MRI revealed inflammation in Urquidy’s shoulder. He will be shut down for 10 days and then see how he feels. It is unclear when he will return.

As for Garcia, the update is even less clear. Garcia called out Martin Maldonado to the mound on Monday night after feeling a pain in his elbow. Garcia got an MRI on Tuesday, and, as Chandler Rome reported after Tuesday’s game, he was to get further evaluation from doctors on Wednesday. Information on that visit has not been shared with the public.

Will either Urquidy or Garcia be back this season? We do not know. The updates are more optimistic on Urquidy than Garcia, but the lack of specificity on both reports make it hard to know how long each pitcher will be out.

The only thing that we can say for certain is that the Astros will be without either pitcher for a while. And it could be a long while.

It will force the Astros to have to muddle through for a while, if not longer.

It is never good when the training staff is prominently featured in pictures about your baseball team.

The AAA Guys

The first part of muddling through will be using the depth options from inside the Astros organization.

The Astros called up Brandon Bielak when they put Urquidy on the IL. In February when McCullers announced that he was injured, I wrote about Bielak’s job as the #7 starter.

“Bielak is a modest step down from [Jake] Odorizzi. His skills would be enough to get the Astros through a rough spot where they lack another pitcher, but Bielak does not look like a pitcher the team should trust to make a bunch of starts. He can keep you in a game, but can’t win you one.”

We saw this come to life on Monday, as Bielak was called upon to replace Garcia on the mound. Bielak went 4 innings, walking 3 and giving up a 2-run homer to Joc Pederson. It was a cromulent performance, and the offense came alive for 9 singles and 7 runs while the rest of the bullpen held the Giants to 1 run in the other five innings.

The other rotation spot is likely to go to JP France. France was not called up immediately after Garcia went on the IL. Thanks to the off day yesterday, the Astros can use their starters on regular rest in Seattle this weekend with France taking a turn in the rotation next week in Oakland.

France has a low ERA so far at Sugar Land; it’s 2.23 in 19.1 innings so far. France can get strikeouts (26 this season, 136 last year in 110.2 IP), but his command is spotty (11 BBs so far this season; 51 last year). Projection systems think that France will have an ERA around 4.25 with both a high strikeout (26.1% according to ATC) and a high walk rate (projected at 10.6%).

Much like Bielak’s, these numbers seem passable over the short term. Both France and Bielak will provide something slightly above replacement level but below league average production on the mound.

They are the baseball definition of muddling through.

Lance McCullers recovery

The most obvious way that the Astros rotation can improve in the medium term is for Lance McCullers to recover from his own injury. It still seems that this will take some time to happen.

McCullers has begun throwing from the front slope of the mound, but has not progressed to throwing from the top of the mound. He will need to do that, possible for a few times, before he is sent on a minor league rehab assignment.

But it still seems we are several weeks, if not a month, away from McCullers taking the mound in a major league game.

Trade Candidates

An alternative to relying on pitchers from Sugar Land is to trade for a starter. But at the moment, it looks like the trade options are relatively limited. This early in the season, few teams are looking to trade one of their starting pitchers.

The one team that might trade a starting pitcher in the early going is the Guardians, who have started transitioning promising prospects like Tanner Bibee and Logan T. Allen into their rotation, and more suspect starters like Zach Plesac out. Plesac seems like a good trade candidate, but the issue is matching up with the Guardians, whose biggest need is a power hitting outfielder, especially if he is a lefty hitter. The Astros don’t really have such a player available.

The other trade alternative that could make sense is to rent a player. A team may be looking to unload a less desirable contract and if the Astros would be willing to take on their salary, would give the pitcher away for almost nothing.

For example, Larry the GM proposed that the Astros pursue Alex Wood from the Giants. This type of target makes sense. Wood is making $12.5 million this season and is an average pitcher at best. Wood will be a free agent at the end of the season, and if the Giants are giving up on the season after a slow start, may be happy to save money instead of pay him.

Of course, Wood is not a big name. If acquired, I would not value him not based on whether or not he could crack a top spot in the rotation, but based on the idea that he better than Brandon Bielak.

Not Likely to Make a Move for a Big Time Starter

The reason that the Astros would look at someone like Wood is because it is exceedingly unlikely that the Astros can make a trade right now for a top line starting pitcher.

There are not too many teams looking to sell a starting pitcher right now, in large part because most teams still see themselves as potential contenders. The season is not too far in that teams off to a rough start (e.g. the White Sox) aren’t willing to see if they can catch a hot streak in May or June and get themselves back into contention.

Only a few teams truly believe that they are out of it right now, and one reason those teams—e.g. the A’s, Tigers, Royals, Rockies—are out of contention is that they do not have a strong set of starting pitchers.

In addition, the prices for veteran stars is usually more expensive earlier in the year—why should a GM move a guy now when more injuries may mean more bidders later. Prices do not go down until right near the trade deadline.

It is worth noting that the Astros weak farm system is also an impediment to making trades. It would not hard for other teams with stronger farm systems to outbid the Astros when dealing top-flight starters.

Another reason that the Astros will focus primarily on small moves for the rotation rather than big ones is that a big move may not help them in the playoffs. The new acquisition may not make their playoff rotation.

At the beginning of the season, the Astros saw Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier as their top two starters and one could project those two to start the first two games of a playoff series. Injuries have not affected this plan [knocks on every piece of wood in this room]. A healthy Lance McCullers would start Game 3.

The biggest question is with the 4th starter. Since we do not know the extent of Luis Garcia’s injury, we do not know if he will be back to compete for the 4th starter position in the playoffs. We do know that based on his performance since being called up last September, Hunter Brown is a viable candidate for that 4th starter job in the playoffs.

So a big question that Dana Brown will have to address in evaluating the trade market as the calendar gets closer to the trade deadline is whether a pitcher is better than his current top 4 in the rotation. Because the current projected playoff rotation—Valdez, Javier, McCullers, and Brown—is pretty good.

And that is an important conclusion to reach about the injuries to Urquidy and Garcia. It is an issue to lose two of your starting level players. But baseball is a game where teams succeed by having a large number of high quality players. Even with the loss of Urquidy and Garcia, the Astros still have a large number of high quality players. And that means they should continue to be pretty good.