Preventing Homers; Getting Strikeouts; Production from the Bottom of the Lineup & an Awesome Bullpen: Why the Astros Won the ALCS
On Monday morning on the East Coast and Sunday night in Central Time, the Astros finished off the Yankees 6-5 to sweep the American League Championship Series.
In my ALCS preview, I said that the series looked “close on paper.” And by one measure that was correct; the Astros won a pair of one run games and a two run game. The games were close. But by the games won measure, it was not close. Or to put it another way.
So why were the Astros able to sweep the Yankees and win their fourth American League pennant in the last six years? Reviewing my ALCS preview, it actually highlights a number of key elements in this series.
The series looked to be close on paper, but it was less close on the field. The advantages that the Astros had walking into the series were manifest and magnified by what happened on the field.
The Kept the Yankees from Homering
In the regular season, the Yankees hit 1.32 home runs per game, and the Astros allowed 0.82. In the ALCS, the Yankees hit 3 home runs in 4 games for a rate of 0.75 per game. That number is much closer to the number allowed by Astros pitchers than the number hit by Yankee hitters.
In the ALCS preview, I wrote “If the Astros pitchers do what they have done all season and limit homers from opposing hitters, they are likely to win the series.” That take help up.
Bonus fun fact: All 3 Yankee homers were solo shots. Or to put it another way, the Yankees got as many runs from their home runs as the Astros got from one home run by Jeremy Pena.
And the Astros hit five more home runs in the series in addition to this one.
The Yankees Struck Out…a Lot
One would expect the Yankees to strike out a good bit. In the regular season, they struck out on 22.5% of their plate appearances, which was 16th best in baseball. And one would also expect Astro pitchers to strike out batters with some frequency. They were 2nd in the majors in K% at 26.0%.
But the rate of Ks by the Yankees was staggering. The Yankees struck out 50 times in the series in 142 plate appearances. That’s a strikeout rate of 35.2%. Or to put it another way, the Yankees struck out in over one-third of their plate appearances. Astros pitching absolutely dominated Yankee hitters.
I covered how the Yankees were not able to hit a lot of home runs in the series. One reason for that is that they could not put a bat on the ball. The Yankees scored only 9 runs in the 4 games of the series. Again, the inability to make contact with pitches from the Astros is a big reason for this.
The Astros kept the Yankees from scoring a lot, and their ability to get strikeouts was a huge key to that effort.
Production from “the other guys.”
One of my “things to watch” in the ALCS was “Who Gets Broader Offensive Contributions?” The two teams have the two best hitters in 2022 in Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez. The question was which players beyond the two stars would contribute.
I thought the Astros would because “the Astros have better candidates to do this in Altuve, Bregman, and Tucker.” And welp, I got 1 out of 3 right…this is baseball, so that’s pretty good, right.
But the basic insight is correct. The Astros succeeded offensively in the ALCS due to the efforts of its secondary players. But those contributions tended to come from those near the bottom their offensive talents.
If you sort the Astros individual hitting stats in the ALCS , Jeremy Pena is at the top with 1.175. Chas McCormick is second (1.026), Martin Maldonado is fourth (.929) and Yuli Gurriel is fifth (.867).
The Astros overall offensive line during the ALCS was very close to league average with a slash line of .238/.326/429 for a slash line of .755; they scored 4.5 runs per game. It was the production of these guys at the bottom of offensive production during the season that propelled these efforts.
The Bullpen Was Awesome
For as much the national media have accepted Jeff Passan’s framing that “The Astros Are Inevitiable,” the series was anything but.
As noted above, the Astros won three close games. Close games are usually coin flips, but there is tried and true method to winning more close games than you “should.” Have a great bullpen.
In his write-up of Game 4 of the ALCS, Ben Clemens of Fangraphs noted the contrast between the two teams’ bullpens: “While the Yankees had to cobble together bullpen innings, the Astros showed off their own strategy: just build the entire bullpen out of closers.”
The Astros sent out 3 pitchers who have been closers in their career in Hector Neris, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly, and a pitcher who seems on track to save a lot of games in his big league career in Bryan Abreu. It was effective.
In the ALCS, Astros relievers pitched 12.2 innings, striking out 19 batters and allowing only 5 hits and 5 walks. They allowed only 2 runs on solo homers allowed by Montero and Neris, but kept the Yankees at bay through each close game.
Particular kudos go to Ryan Pressly. Pressly faced 11 batters in the American League Championship Series and retired 10 of them, six by strikeout. Pressly threw 48 pitches in his 3.1 innings on the mound, and induced swings-and-misses on 23% of those pitches and got called strikes on 12 of them, for a Called Strike/Whiff% (CSW%) of 48%.
Pressly was as efficient as seems possible against major league hitters. His 3 saves produced a Win Probability Added of 0.49, which the best among Astros during the ALCS.
On to the World Series against the Phillies. Let’s hope the dominant pitching continues for 4 more wins.