Kikuchi's Effective Stuff and Durability Will Help the 2024 Astros

Kikuchi's ERA is not good this year, but a look under the surface stats show he's effective at striking out batters and avoiding walks. He gives up hard contact though.

Quickly after the reports surfaced just before first pitch in last night’s game against the Pirates that the Astros were acquiring starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi in a deal for Jake Bloss, the conventional wisdom quickly congealed on my timeline that the Astros had acquired a mediocre starting pitcher and had give up too much to get him.

I’m going to address these two components in separate articles. In my next article, I’ll address what the Astros gave up to get Kikuchi and the many knock-on effects trading Bloss, and what turned out to be Joey Loperfido and Will Wagner for Kikuchi will be for both future Astros teams, and the 2024 Astros.

But in this article, I’ll look at what the Astros added for the rest of this season in Kikuchi. Kikuchi has some of the best stuff of any pitcher in the majors and he has harnessed it so far this year to have an effective strikeout and walk rate. He gives up lots of hard contact and that erodes the quality of his strikeout and walk rates. But most importantly for this team, he is a very durable pitcher and we can anticipate he’ll take the ball every fifth day and give the offense a chance to win the game. He makes the 2024 team better.

Kikuchi’s Strikeout and Walk Numbers are Quite Good

If you look at Kikuchi’s surface numbers, you see a pitcher with a 4.75 ERA this season, right near his 4.72 ERA for a his career. But if you look at his surface numbers, you’re doing baseball analysis like its 1985.

Kikuchi has given up a Batting Average on Balls in Play of .344 this season, well above the MLB average of .290. Analytical research shows that most BABIP variation is due to luck—more balls are falling in against Kikuchi than “should.”

What Kikuchi has done well this season is to strike batters out and to avoid walks. The chart below shows Kikuchi’s numbers and his rank this season among the 68 qualified MLB starters. Kikuchi is not a Cy Young Award candidate, but he is well above average at the things that pitchers can most control. He strikes out batters (18th best in the majors) and avoids walks (24th best in the majors). He strikes out 20.1% more batters than he walks, and that is the 16th best rate in the majors this season. In this stat, he is ranked just behind Logan Gilbert of the Mariners—an excellent pitcher—and slightly above Zack Wheeler of the Phillies—also an excellent pitcher.

Eno Sarris of The Athletic was positive about Kikuchi’s prospects in Houston beginning his article on Kikuchi by asking “Did the Houston Astros just get the best starter who will be traded at the deadline?”

Sarris notes the quality of Kikuchi’s velocity—he has the second fastest slider and fifth fastest curveball among qualified MLB starters. He also touted the “great ‘ride’ on the fastball — it doesn’t drop as much as hitters expect due to its spin.” Only Cole Ragans, Dylan Cease, and Tyler Glasnow have similar combinations of velocity and ride.

“Add up all of those pitch characteristics and Kikuchi is 11th in Stuff+ among qualified starters,” writes Sarris. Stuff+ is a metric that models pitch characteristic data (velocity, horizontal movement, vertical drop, etc.) to determine the quality of a pitcher’s “stuff.” And Sarris notes that “Add up all of those pitch characteristics and Kikuchi is 11th in Stuff+ among qualified starters.”

Lots of Hard Contact, Though

But for all his stuff, Kikuchi gives up hard contact, and that reduces some of the advantages created by his excellent strikeout and walk numbers. In this chart above, you can see that he is quite high in his home run rate, home runs per fly ball, and average exit velocity.

You can see that in his Baseball Statcast numbers in the image below. Kikuchi is in the red for strikeout and walk numbers—and well into the blue for the numbers based on the quality of contact he allows. He is 7th percentile in average exit velocity, 8th percentile in hard hit rate, and 14th percentile in barrel rate.

We can expect a high number of strikeouts and a low number of walks from Kikuchi, and his high BABIP is likely to come down closer to league average in his time in Houston. But we can also expect more hard hit balls than we like.

A Record of Durability

The other thing we can expect from Kikuchi in an Astros uniform—he’ll take the ball every 5th day. Kikuchi has been on the IL only twice in his major league career—and one of those times was missing one game for failing COVID protocols in the 2020 season. In 2021, he missed 21 games with a neck strain.

Kikuchi has thrown 20 or more starts in each of his five full major league seasons, including this season when he’s made each turn in the Blue Jays rotation.

The Astros of course desperately need durability in their rotation. Only Hunter Brown and Ronel Blanco have avoided the injured list during the season. Three Astros pitchers have had season ending surgeries—Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy, and J.P. France—and two returning from surgeries in 2023—Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers—have been slowed in their rehab process.

The team has only 5 healthy starting pitchers on their 40 man roster at the moment (still true since Jake Bloss went to the Blue Jays as part of the return). The Astros need a starting pitcher to do what Kikuchi has done throughout his major league career—take the ball each time and give his offense a chance to win the game.

Yusei Kikuchi is an effective major league starting pitcher. He has flaws, but on a team that needs effective and durable starting pitching, he is quite valuable. This move makes it more likely that the Astros win the AL West this season.

The cost to make this upgrade was quite high, both to not only future Astros teams, but also to 2024 Astros. I will cover that in the next article.