The Astros Offense is High Contact, Low Walk, Middling Power. Will That Work in the Playoffs?

Some say avoiding strikeouts works in the playoffs. Others say "ball go far; team go far." The Astros need to hope the avoiding strikeouts theory is correct this year.

Good news. The Astros 3-1 win last night over the Angels kept them 5 games up on the Mariners with 5 games to play. The magic number is 5. In short, it’s only a matter of time before the Astros clinch a spot in the playoffs.

As I have noted before, the Astros turned their season around this year because they turned their pitching around after a dreadful April. But the offense, well, it hasn’t been as good as the pitching staff.

Today I’m going to explore the Astros offense. Most particularly, I’m going to explore the very distinct style of the offense deployed by the Astros. And then ask the most important question—can this style work in the playoffs.

A High Batting Average, Low Walk Offense

How are the Astros doing offensively? Well, you can see the most important numbers in the chart below. The one that matters the most is runs per game. Here, the Astros are a decidedly mid-pack team. They’re 13th best in the majors at scoring runs at 4.56 per game this season.

But if you look at the numbers beyond that, you can see that the Astros are a little better than that offensively. The have the 10th best On Base Plus Slugging of any team in the majors and are 7th in weighted Runs Created (wRC+) at 109. That tells you they are 9% better offensively than an average major league team would be, accounting for things like schedule strength and park factors. Which means, they “should” be better than 13th at scoring runs.

The rest of the numbers help tell you the shape of the Astros run production this season. They are a high batting average team, but their on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG) are not as strong. Put this together and you see that the Astros hit a lot of singles—they are second in the majors this season with 927 singles.

Low Walk and Strikeout Rates

You may notice that the Astros are more highly ranked in batting average than they are in on base percentage. That is because the Astros put the ball in play a lot. As a team, the Astros have the 27th lowest walk rate and the 3rd best (or 28th lowest) strikeout rate. They put the ball in play.

Why do the Astros put the ball in play? One reason is that the swing a lot. The Astros have the 3rd highest swing rate in the majors. They swing at 31.9% of the balls they see out of the strike zone, again the 3rd highest rate in the majors. But for a team that swings at a lot of pitches outside of the strike zone, they do not swing and miss that much. Their 10.8% rate is mid-tier for major league teams.

Finally, another measure of the Astros “see ball, hit ball” approach is their called strike rate. It’s low. The Astros only let 15.1% of balls in the strike zone go for called strikes.

These swing metrics help us see why the Astros walk so little. They swing a lot, both at pitches inside and outside of the strike zone. They also help us see why they have a high batting average. They put more balls in play than most other teams, and more balls in play leads to more balls that find holes and become base hits.

A Mid-Pack Power Team

There is one more part of the equation about Astros hitting that I wanted to add to the occasion—power. As the table below shows, the Astros are a mid-tier team when it comes to key power metrics.

The Astros have hit the 12th most homers and the 15th most doubles in the majors. Isolated Power (ISO) takes a team’s slugging percentage and subtracts its batting average. On this measure, the Astros are 18th highest. Remember that the Astros had the 10th highest slugging percentage in the majors. This measure lets you know that much of that comes from the team’s ability to hit a lot of singles.

A Playoff Offense?

The style of the Astros offense is pretty clear—they are a high swing rate, high contact team. They put lots of balls in play, both because they hit a lot of singles but also because they put fewer balls over the fence than do top tier offensive teams.

Will this type of offense work in the playoffs? One argument that is will is that it has before. The Astros have had this style of offense before. They had the 3rd best strikeout rate in the majors in 2023, 2nd best in 2022, and tops in 2021. They have been high batting average in each of those season as well. As you know, the Astros did pretty well in the playoffs in each of those seasons.

One theory to playoff success is to avoid strikeouts. Playoff teams have a higher quality set of pitchers than does the average major league team. As a result, they strike out more batters. The Astros are successful because they combat strength with strength. By avoiding strikeouts, the Astros eliminate one of the strengths of their opponents and thus make their pitchers more average.

But there is another argument about offensive playoff success—ball go far, team go far. The team hits the most home runs usually wins. And one proviso of this argument is that home runs are more important in the playoffs because so many of the pitchers are of higher quality, and because more innings are pitched by relievers who can go max effort in an attempt to get swing-and-miss.

As a result, it is more difficult to string together hits to build up a rally. Hit the ball over the fence and you’ve made a rally all your own.

The big question for the Astros offense in this year’s is which theory of playoff offense is correct. For the Astros sake, it needs to be the avoid strikeouts theory.