More Winning, Despite Nothing to Play For: A Final Sixth Report
The Astros had one of their best sixths of the season, going 19-8 despite wrapping up the AL West early. It's more evidence of the quality of this team.
It ended just as it began, with another Astros victory.
The regular season ended on Wednesday afternoon with the Astros winning 3-2 over the Phillies. From an entertainment standpoint, the game centered on a face off between the Maton brothers; Phillies utility man Nick singled off of Astros reliever Phil in the top of the eight.
From a preparing for the playoffs standpoint, the game centered on the performance of Framber Valdez on the mound. Valdez has suffered through two straight bad starts. But on Wednesday, he went five shutout innings while striking out 10 Phillies. It was a reassuring performance to those prone to worry.
Attention turns toward the playoffs with the Astros able to watch the Wild Card round at home due to receiving a bye to the Division Series round thanks to having the best record in the AL.
The end of the regular season also closes out the Final Sixth of the regular season. Here at the Orange Fire Substack, we analyze the baseball season in sixth--each is a 27 game segment that corresponds to, but not exactly, the sixth months of a baseball season. I use sixths because it is easier to compare equal sections of the season--all sixths are 27 games.
The focus on Sixths allows for examining samples that are large enough to draw out potential shifts in the team, its players, and how they are faring. It also avoids the biases created by determining arbitrary endpoints at the end of slumps or the beginning of hot streaks by creating pre-determined endpoints.
So how did the Astros do this sixth? Well, as they did in the each of the previous five sixths this season, the Astros had a winning record this sixth. In fact, this is the twelfth straight sixth in which the Astros have a winning record. This of course speaks to the quality of the the Astros team. But that is more clearly demonstrated by the 106 wins this season and the 95 wins last season.
Having a winning record in every sixth for two straight seasons speaks to the consistency of our favorite ballclub. The Astros put out a quality effort just about every night. That quality effort doesn’t always produce a victory; the Astros have lost 123 games over the last two seasons. But it is a big explanation why this team does not fall into long losing streaks. As my podcast partner James Christopher likes to point out, the longest losing streak for the Astros this season was 4 games. And don’t worry if you can’t remember it; it happened in April.1 And in 2021, the longest losing streak was six games (and was also in April).
Why has this team won the AL West in each of the last two seasons? One reason is that they avoid long losing streaks; they are too good to get on one.
Overall Record: 106-56 (.654)
Record This Sixth: 19-8 (.703)
On Pace for a Record of: 106-56 (.654)
The final sixth of the season felt perfunctory. The Astros entered the sixth with an 11 game lead in the American League West and a 6 game lead for the best record in the AL. For the Astros to lose either lead would require a big losing streak, and I covered in the section above why that was unlikely.
And the team put any of those small worries to bed by winning each of their first four series of the sixth over the Angels, Tigers, A’s, and Rays. The first game of the Rays series clinched the AL West, and the Astros celebrated not just with champagne, but by winning the next two games of the series to complete the sweep.
The Astros then finished the season with a 8-game homestand that, coincidentally, featured two different opponents—the Rays and Phillies—clinching playoff berths while at Minute Maid Park.
The Astros had little to play for this sixth. And yet, they played well, winning five of these eight games. Again, it speaks to the overall quality of this team.
Team Offense & MLB Rank.
R/G: 4.55 (8th). OBP: .319 (7th). SLG: .424 (5th). OPS: .743 (7th). OPS+: 111 (7th).
I wrote a whole post on the offense last week, so I’ll summarize my thesis here. The Astros offense has taken a step back from last season, but still is in the top third of offenses in baseball, and, as a result, is plenty capable of scoring runs in the playoffs.
Over the final sixth of the season, the Astros averaged 4.78 runs per game. The 129 runs they scored over that time period was the 5th best in the majors. It provides further support to the thesis of my post about the offense—it’s a top tier offense, even if it isn’t one of the handful of the best offenses in the majors.
Team Pitching and MLB Rank
RA/G: 3.20 (2nd). FIP: 3.40 (1st). WHIP: 1.10 (2nd). K/9: 9.5 (3rd). BB/9: 3.1 (13th)
In writing about the Astros clinching the division title, I wrote the headline “How the West Was Won…With Pitching and Defense.”
And you can see why in these numbers. It is notable that the Astros lead the league in FIP, which is an acronym for Fielding Independent Pitching. It is supposed to factor out all of the random luck that occurs on batted balls and focus on the three things that a pitcher can control—strikeouts, walks, and home runs.
You can see that the Astros are 3rd in the majors in strikeouts per nine innings, but they are 13th in walks per nine. So how are the Astros able to lead the majors in FIP? They lead the majors in home runs per nine innings (at 0.8).
Astros hurlers have kept batters in the yard this season. It’s kept the batters they have walked from scoring. Heck, it’s kept just about anybody from scoring. In fact, this is the best Astros team at keeping the opposition from scoring.
Team Fielding and MLB Rank
Fielding Runs Above Average 42 (4th). Defensive Runs Saved: 63 (5th). Ultimate Zone Rating: 17.5 (7th). Outs Above Average 27 (3rd). Defensive Efficiency: .719 (3rd). Errors: 72 (6th).
Another reason that the Astros are able to keep other teams from scoring is that they have a very good defense; one that is clearly in the top tier in the majors. While defensive metrics are notoriously finicky and inconsistent, each of the advanced measures ranks the Astros 7th or better. Again, this team is very good at getting to balls and turning them into outs.
The Astros have two strong Gold Glove candidates. Kyle Tucker has 11 Defensive Runs Saved on the season, which is tied for 7th best among major league outfielders, and tops among those who play right field. Jeremy Pena is 2nd among all American League players in defensive bWAR value.
Notable Player Performances
Yordan Alvarez. .354/.443/.707 .476 wOBA. 220 wRC+
Yordan Alvarez is really good at hitting baseballs. He will end the season second in the majors in OPS behind only Aaron Judge. In fact, Alvarez is one of only two players with an OPS over 1.000 this season. And look at those numbers this sixth. I think his hamate bone is fine.
Trey Mancini .155/.265/.296. .255 wOBA. 13.3 BB%. 22.9 SO% .176 BABIP
Mancini’s surface numbers are terrible, with a batting average of .155 dragging both his On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage below .300. But look closer and there are some encouraging numbers. Despite slumping, Mancini still walked over 10% of the time. He kept a good eye at the plate. And he struck out at the same rate as he has throughout his career. His .176 BABIP shows he’s hitting in bad luck. Over the long haul, BABIP tends to move toward the league average. Hopefully that happens during, not after, the playoffs.
Cristian Javier 5 GS. 28.1 IP. 0.32 ERA. 37 SO. 8 BB. 1 HR.
Stunningly good. Javier has pitched extremely well all season and then got even better over the season’s last third. In the Final Sixth, he allowed 3 runs (only 1 earned) in five starts. This season has cemented Javier’s place in a major league rotation for years to come, and the Astros rotation this postseason.
Rafael Montero 12 G. 11.2 IP. 1.64 ERA. 12 SO. 2 BB.
This is a shoutout to Montero, who has been our best reliever this season. He’s best combination of actual run prevention (2.39 ERA) and executing the fundamentals of run prevention (2.64 FIP).
Their Place in the Race
At the top. Where they belong. And on their way to the playoffs, but not before a brief rest while the teams that didn’t earn a bye slug it out in a best-of-three game series, each of which is likely to provide proof of concept of Billy Bean’s theorem that “the playoffs are a crapshoot.” And the best part is that we don’t happy to worry about them as Astros fans.
And here’s how the Astros broke that losing streak on April 24.