The Astros are 6-7...again. Why History Shows That the Sluggish Start Won't Last
For the fourth straight year, the Astros started the season 6-7. But they are scoring and preventing runs at the rate of a top tier team. More wins should follow.
The Astros have started the season 6-7. Attitudes are better today than they were on Tuesday night, thanks to the 7-0 shutout victory. Jose Urquidy had a Quality Start. Alex Bregman and Corey Julks went deep.
On Tuesday night though—after a 7-4 loss on a walkoff three run homer—Astro fans were less positive.
Some said the loss was embarrassing.
Some said it was depressing.
Chandler Rome, an objective journalist and not a fan like Schwab or Dubose, said it showed “how thin their margin for error is.”1
Of course, no one like seeing Ryan Pressly give up that homer. Tweeting through it is certainly one coping method. I recommended a more offline and traditional method.
But one question to ask about the 7 losses in the first 12, now 13 games, is how meaningful those are in the long term? Are these the correct reaction to a bad stretch of game.
One thought is that bad teams don’t have bad stretches or start the season. Well, I have news for you about the 2022 World Series winner.
Yep, going 6-7 does not eliminate you from winning the World Series. The team overcame the sluggish start to go 100-49 over the last 149 game of the season.
In fact, these sluggish starts are not new for the Orange and Blue. In 2021, the Astros started 6-7. They went on to win 95 games and the AL West crown, a more reasonable target for this season. Of course, some 6-7 starts are harbingers for a poor regular season. The 2020 Astros also went 6-7. The sluggishness of the start continued throughout that year’s shortened season—the team went 23-24 the rest of the season. Though they woke up in time to go on a deep playoff run to Game 7 of the ALCS.
So in each of the last four seasons, the Astros have started the year 6-7. In two of those, it was not a harbinger of doom. But in one, the team played at that same pace for the rest of the season.
One conclusion from looking at the team having the same record at this point in each of the last three seasons is that we cannot really tell a lot from a team’s first 13 games. At that makes sense at one level. It’s a long season and no 13 games are representative of an entire season’s worth of work.
Run Scoring and Prevention Look Fine
But if we look below the record, we see a lot of good signs for the Astros. With today’s win over the Pirates, the Astros have now outscored their opponents 66-53. That’s a 13 run difference over 13 games, or exactly one run per game. The Astros expected, or pythagorean, record is 8-5.
The Astros are 0-3 in one run games, including a pair of losses in extra inning games. Their biggest loss so far is by three runs, and they have won three games by six or more runs. Most sabr-metric analysis finds that wins or losses above or below a team’s expected record are due to chance, as are performance in one-run games. And over the long haul, a team’s record should tend toward its expected record.
Looking further under the hood shows the team is playing better than its record. The offense has scored 66 runs in those 13 games, tied for 6th best in the majors. Their .337 on base percentage is eighth best in the majors.
On the run prevention front, the Astros have allowed 4.08 runs per game, which is 7th lowest in baseball to this point. Their ERA is even better at 6th best in baseball. The strikeout to walk rate is at a similar point—6th best in the majors at 3.00.
A Team Better Than Its Record
In short, the team is in better shape than its 6-7 record after 13 games. It is scoring runs and preventing runs at a high rate. It is certainly not the elite rate we saw last October. But the good news is that we are not in October.
The Astros have now started 6-7 for four seasons straight. They have taken three paths since then. Two of them led to AL West championships, with one of those being 106 wins and top seed in the playoffs. The third was to a disappointing below .500 regular season.
The review of the numbers here indicates that the team is not likely to take the path of the 2020, and not just because its not a 60 games season played before vaccines allowed for an end to the worst of the pandemic. The Astros have a better and deeper pitching staff than the 2020 squad, and they should get back three starting level players over the next month or two.
The team has scored and prevented runs in the top third of all MLB teams so far. There is every reason to think that their record will reflect that ability soon enough, or if not soon enough, then over the rest of the 162 games.
It’s early. We need perspective. Though I’m really glad I’m writing this after a shutout win rather than another loss.
I strongly believe that margins are always thin in baseball, especially in a single game. That’s true no matter how good or bad your team is.