Offensive Offense Continues

Astros riding struggle bus at the plate

The Astros continue to struggle mightily at the plate, scoring just two runs on 3 hits against Jordan Hicks and the San Francisco Giants and now have a 44 wRC+ through 4 games.

As you can imagine, Houston is near or at the bottom of the league in most offensive categories, including dead last in slugging while recording just 3 extra-base hits in those four games.

Updated Projections

With 2.5% of the season completed, these are mostly the preseason projections except for guys like Dezenzo, Smith and Gusto.

Astros Expected Wins

It turns out not scoring many runs and giving up 7 is not great for your expected win total four games into the season.

Quality At-Bat Numbers

The Astros had the least quality at-bats of their first four games in the first game vs. the Giants with just 10.

What counts as a quality at-bat? Different people have different definitions.

Some of the things I look for:

Hard Hit >= 95 MPH

Base Hit

BB

HBP

SF

SAC

Advancing a runner

8+ pitch at-bat

RBI

Pitches per Plate Appearance

A big offseason push and Isaac Paredes is doing what he has always done.

For reference, the current league average is 3.93, so the Astros have 4 above and 9 below that number, but that’s 4 everyday players above.

Overall, the Astros are just two ticks lower than the league average at 3.91.

Base Running

The Astros were terrible at this last season and the hope was Tony Perezchica would help here (and with infield defense).

It’s way too early and there haven’t been many Astros on base.

Detailed Pitching Stats

It’s taken some work to get it set up and I may adjust along the way, but this kind of thing offers something not typically seen.

QS = Quality Starts

KS = Kikuchi Starts

EI = Easy Inning, which is defined as 10 or less pitches

SDI = Shut Down Inning, which is holding a team scoreless the half inning after the Astros score.

PSDI = Number of Potential Shut Down Innings.

IO = Retired side In Order.

A quick example: Framber had two easy innings in his six, and he also shut down the Mets twice after the Astros scored, so he was two for two in Shut Down Inning Opportunities.

Finally, he retired the Mets in order once in six innings.

Fangraphs uses version 2 of the Game Score metric and that’s what I’ll be using here.

Of note is that these change in retrospect, based on the constant used in the formula which is designed to keep the league average at 50.

I will update periodically.

On to the bullpen.

Still working through the kinks here.

Gusto looked fabulous, while Contreras and Montero struggled.

Rando Stats of the Day

Cam Smith and Jose Altuve are tied with net Win Probability Added at 0.07, with Christian Walker dead last at -0.40 for the batters.

On the pitcher side, Framber leads at 0.33, with Contreras pulling up the rear at -.012.

I’ll be back later in the week with another update.

As always, thanks for reading!