Observations on a Bad Week (That Didn't Turn Out that Bad)
A losing week that didn't cost the Astros that much. France and Tucker slump. The 3rd time through the order penalty burns this week. Rest days when variance swamps everything.
One week ago, the Astros had taken control of the American League West, having just won a series against the San Diego Padres after having swept the division rival Rangers in Arlington.
A week later, the Astros stand diminished thanks to a 2-4 week against the two worst teams in the American League. The Astros dropped a pair of series against the A’s and then the Royals.
And yet, the diminishment is not that much. The Astros lost only a game off of their division lead, thanks for middling weeks from the three teams jockeying with the Astros for playoff spots. The Rangers and Blue Jays both went 3-3 and the Mariners went 2-4.
If you think you had a frustrating week of watching baseball, check out a Mariners fan.
Or we could be Cubs fans, who picked a particularly poor time to have a five game losing streak.
Because of the middling play of the other playoff teams, the Astros did little damage to their playoff chances this week.
As the chart below shows, the Astros are projected to stay ahead of the Mariners and Rangers for the AL West title. Based on the three major projection systems, they have between a 64% and 74% chance of winning the division, and a 94% to 97% chance of reaching the playoffs.
The Astros are projected to win 91 wins overall, which would be 7-5 over the last 12.
If things go sideways over the last two weeks of the season, then we will look back at this week as a big missed opportunity for the Astros. They had a golden opportunity to put some distance on their pursuers for their division lead and didn’t. But unless there is a collapse coming, the Astros remain in good shape despite losing 4 of 6 this week.
JP France has been one of the best stories for the Astros this season, going from a middling prospect to a key member of the rotation in short order. With injuries to Luis Garcia, Lance McCullers, and Jose Urquidy, France has proven invaluable.
But he has struggled recently. Those struggles have been caused in large part by a lack of control. France has walked 13 batters in last four starts. His previous start was a 10 run blowup against the Red Sox, so maybe he’s trying to hard to make the perfect pitch to avoid getting hit hard.
It’s not working, as he has recorded an ERA of 5.57 and an opponents OPS of .814 in those 4 starts. France needs lots to go well because he has modest strikeout totals. His K% for the season is 17.1%, well below the MLB average of 22.7%. On Saturday, his strikeout rate was 0%; France did not strike out any of the 22 batters he faced.
The biggest reason for the bad week was that the offense—after having a fabulous week against the Rangers and Padres—slumped in the first four games of the week.
In the first four games of the week, the offense slashed .198/.273/.333 and scored only 10 runs. The had scored double digit runs in 4 separate games in the previous weeks.
Kyle Tucker has been a big part of the Astros offense this season, and that includes contributing to the quick slump. He has slashed .200/.305/.380 in 50 at bats. Dusty gave Tucker the day off on Sunday to try to shake his slump.
Fortunately, the offense rebounded over the weekend in Kansas City, scoring 15 runs on 21 hits in the last two games of the weekend. Jake Meyers replaced Tucker in the starting lineup and went 2 for 4 with a homer and a triple.
Dusty Baker is quite consistent in the strategies he uses as a manager. He assigns his high leverage relievers to specific innings; he keeps players in their same spot in the batting order rather than adjust it when a starter is getting a day off; and he wants his starting pitcher to go to right about 100 pitches.
The third part often runs up against the third time through the order penalty. Batters do better the third time they see a pitcher in a game. For example, this year, opposing hitters have an OPS of .715 against Astro starters the first time they face them in a game. It’s .716 the second time through the order. But the third time through the order, Astros pitchers allow an OPS of .811.
The third time through the order penalty burned the Astros on both Friday and Saturday nights in Kansas City. On Friday, Baker let Cristian Javier face the top of the Royals order a third time in the 5th inning, and Bobby Witt, the Royals best hitter, homered to extend the lead to 3-0.
On Saturday, JP France gave up 2 walks, a single, and pop out among the four batters he faced a third time. Rafael Montero allowed one of the runners he inherited from France to score.
During the bulk of the regular season, the logic of leaving in pitchers to face batters the third time through the order is that one needs their starters to eat innings and take pressure off of the bullpen. In the playoffs, where rest is more plentiful and the stakes are higher, managers (including Baker) are more aggressive about using their bullpen.
As the season gets down to its final two weeks, the stakes for a team barely ahead of their division pursuers gets higher. I’m curious at what point, if any, Baker will shift his strategies to be more like a playoff game than an mid-July getaway day.
As I have noted before, a number of Astros fans have called for Dusty Baker to show more urgency in his decision making this season. Baker seems to have adjusted little, continuing to manage in a similar way throughout the season. As always, Baker seems to emphasize projecting an air of calm and the comfort of his players.
He did the same again yesterday, sitting Kyle Tucker in the midst of his big slump to give him a day to get right. Was this the right move? From a standpoint of trying to win yesterday’s game, no, it wasn’t. From a standpoint of getting Tucker right, we hope so.
Two notes about Baker’s emphasis on consistency and comfort.
The biggest advantages of this strategy—especially resting players on a regular basis—should show up at the end of the season. Astros players should be fresher than players on the Rangers—who have given few off-days to stars like Marcus Semien. Those benefits have yet to appear in the season’s final stretch; the Astros are 7-8 in October.
A truism about baseball that I have learned from Joe Sheehan is that “variance swamps everything.” That is particularly true in short series. The Astros likely benefitted from Tucker’s absence yesterday as Jake Meyers, his replacement in the lineup, went 2 for 4 with a homer and a triple.
Let’s hope variance works in our favor over the last 12 games of the season and into October.
Regarding the rest comment near the end, I fear the Astros might not be as rested/fresh as perceived. Bregman has played 149/150 games this year and all but one of them have been on his feet at third base. Pena has played 139/150, Abreu 129/150 (10-day IL Stint), and Tucker has played 145/150. Sure, you want everyday use out of your everyday players but there hasn't been as much rest mixed in as you might think.
Further, on the bullpen side the absence of rest really shows up and will likely only get exacerbated in the final 12 games as Houston makes a critical push. Six of the Astros relievers have 60 or more appearances this year (Abreu, Graveman, Neris, Montero, Maton, and Pressly). That puts all six of them in top-25 in appearances for AL RPs. No other AL team has more than 4 RPs with 60 or more appearances (CLE: 4; TOR: 3; SEA: 3).
Now, come postseason there will likely be some long-relief help in the bullpen in the form of spare starting pitchers (probably two of Brown, France, Javier, and Urquidy depending on who wins the SP3 job). But I'm not certain how much run those guys will get in leverage situations. Houston really didn't use those extra arms all too much in the postseason outside of the marathon ALDS GM3 in Seattle or blowouts like WS GM3 in Philly. Brown, Garcia, and Urquidy barely appeared at all in the 2022 postseason.
I disagree that Dusty has kept the lineups pretty much the same. Dusty changes his lineups all the time.