Question marks in the rotation

Was August and September an aberration or a sign of things to come?

With the news that Justin Verlander will start the season on the IL, I thought I’d interrupt our prospecting posts to focus on two members of the rotation who struggled the most down the stretch in 2023 and will likely be in the middle of the 2024 rotation, assuming J.P. France’s shoulder is OK.

Prospecting - Brice Matthews and Alonzo Tredwell

I knew intuitively the rotation struggled the last two months of the regular season, but France and Hunter Brown struggled more than the others and it’s fairly easy to speculate as to why.

Still, putting fingers to the keyboard shows just how badly these two struggled down the stretch.

1. BB% was way up (as it was for Framber, Javier, Urquidy and Blanco).

2. The home run % exploded. It doubled for France and was a lot worse than that for Brown.

3. They stranded fewer runners.

4. Induced fewer ground balls.

5. Lost something on their fastballs, particularly Brown.

6. ERA, FIP and xFIP exploded.

7. Pitching+ and Stuff+ dropped.

8. Add it all together and the Quality Start % plummeted.

In their first 35 starts combined there were 20 quality starts (57.1%) from these two.

In their final 17 starts there were 4 quality starts (23.5%).

The top is through July 31, the middle is August 1 forward and the bottom is the variance between the two. ERA, FIP and xFIP numbers on the bottom are the INCREASE of the stat, not the stat itself.

It’s not surprising both faltered given the innings they pitched before August 1, shown in the grouping at the top in the image above.

For the season, between Sugar Land and Houston France pitched 155.2 innings, far more than the 114 he threw in 2021, which was his most as a professional to that point.

Brown had reached 126.1 between Houston and Sugar Land in 2022, before his 155.2 last season.

(In a strange coincidence both pitched 155.2 professional innings last season when France’s time in Sugar Land is added.)

They both faltered once they went past their previous high in innings pitched.

Still, the numbers are stark and concerning and something to watch this season not only early to compare to early last season, but in monitoring their innings later in the summer.

Does Brown get his fastball back? Will we get the 67% quality start J.P. France?

My answers are likely yes to Brown’s fastball and no to J.P. France reaching 67% quality starts as that bar is crossed by few, namely Gerrit Cole, Logan Webb and Justin Steele in 2023 (Framber was at 64.5% last season).

The Astros didn’t have much of a choice last year with the injuries to Luis Garcia and Jose Urquidy and JV not arriving till August - these guys had to pitch for most of the season.

So, while the focus is on JV and when he’ll begin his season, I’ll spend some time making sure these two trend back to pre-August 2023 numbers.

Thanks for reading!