Back Home Again
Astros take 4 of 6 and return to Daikin with chance to pad AL West lead
While a loss in Pittsburgh is not ideal, the Astros ended up winning 4 of 6 on their week-long trip to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and given Sunday’s lineup, that’s all you could have asked for.
It’s back home this week as the Astros take on the troublesome (for the Astros) Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins.
4-2 should be the minimum expectation this week, but baseball has a way of reality-checking the best-laid plans.
Expected Wins, Projected Standings and Should Be Standings
The Astros sit at 88 expected wins
.
They had reached that mark as early as April 22 (not counting the first couple games with wild variances), so you could say they’ve been treading water since then.
On the flip side they were down to 84 as recently as May 6.
That’s the nature of baseball, ups and downs over a long season, hoping the winning streaks are longer than the losing streaks.
Houston has opened up a 7-game lead in the projected AL West Standings, which estimates the final standings if teams continue to play the way they’ve played to date.
You can find all of MLB Baseball Projected Standings right here.
The Should Be Standings tells us what a team’s record “should be” at this point in the season.
Currently, the Astros are 0.29 games to the positive, meaning they have benefited from a pinch of luck, likely due to a 10-7 record in one-run games and a 3-0 record in extras.
Seattle has been slightly more lucky at +0.45 wins, but the takeaway is the Astros aren’t winning on luck, but on the way they’re playing.
Batter and Pitcher Season Projections
Despite a lull on his first DH day ever, Jeremy Pena continues to be the catalyst of the offense.
In my mind, I put the number of 115-120 OPS+ as the minimum for a “Star” and Pena is approaching that at 111 right now.
His actual OPS+ is 139, but I see regression in the remaining 60% of the season for a player that came into the season with a career OPS+ of 98 over 1,842 plate appearances.
We continue to see regression from the bullpen, with Dubin giving up a couple of homers and Okert struggling a bit in Cleveland.
These guys aren’t going to be perfect and, like everyone else, are likely to confront some regression.
The key is minimizing it.
Quality Start Record
A bit of an outlier in Cleveland, as the Astros won their two non-quality starts and lost their quality start.
Long term, you know which one wins consistently.
Quality At-Bat Percentage
It’s easy to be excited by the way Jacob Melton plays, especially on defense, but let’s not get carried away with his bat just yet.
While he had a fantastic at-bat vs. Paul Skenes, the reality is he’s batting .150 and struck out 8 times in his first 22 plate appearances.
Team average is 38.3%.
Scouting Sugar Land
I was in Sugar Land Saturday and while there weren’t many young prospects on the field for the Space Cowboys, I did get a look at Brice Matthews.
I’m no scout, but I continue to be underwhelmed, though he made a nice play defensively, which was the theme of the evening.
To Matthews’ credit, he did walk twice in four plate appearances, but he also struck out looking and was caught stealing.
To me, Matthews appears to have replacement-level upside, not what I’d expect from a No. 1 pick, even one closer to the bottom of the first round.
He’s down to a .249 average, which is near his career average, with a .790 OPS+ and 17 stolen bases.
More impressive to me were the back-to-back smashes for extra base hits by Colin Barber and Luis Castro off 101 MPH fastballs from Joel Peguero.
Barber, a fourth-round pick in 2019, is struggling, hitting just .219.
Peguero hasn’t been very good, but turning around 101 is impressive.
Side note that Luis Guillorme made a couple of spectacular defensive plays at third.
Guillorme will be 31 in September, has had 882 MLB at-bats with a respectable .251 average, so we know what he is, “insurance”.
Guillorme is versatile, so if needed, I would feel comfortable with him for a while.
All the “one game” caveats should apply, and again, I’m no scout, just an observer.
Rando Stats of the Day
The Astros are slashing .262/.321/.411 with a .323 wOBA and 109 wRC+ since Yordan last played, going 20-14 in that stretch.
With Yordan available (though not always playing) the Astros slashed .238/.310/.359 with a .297 wOBA,91 wRC+ and were 16-15.
One of the crazier stats is Cam Smith’s average exit velocity being in the 32nd percentile despite it seeming like everything he hits is 100+ MPH.
As always, thanks for reading!