Playing Time Breakdown and Other Astros Minutiae

Astros take opener from Tigers, look for series win with Gusto

With a little help from Trey Sweeney, the Astros took game one of the three-game set with the Tigers Monday night in Houston.

Long balls from Christian Walker and Jose Altuve put Houston ahead, but Detroit’s defense failed them late and let the Astros widen the margin and Josh Hader closed the door as he’s done all season.

Batter and Pitcher Season Projections

We just updated these yesterday and the movement is minimal, but there was upward mobility on Altuve and Walker home runs with the blasts last night.

Kaleb Ort has been added to the active pitchers, with Whitley on IL.

Expected Win Total

Back to 90.

Projected AL West Standings

A virtual tie.

As a reminder, my standings blend run differential and actual Ws and Ls and as the season goes on wins and losses mean more than run differential.

So, if the Rangers continue to win this will take care of itself, but right now 80+% of the projection is based on Run Differential.

Playing Time Breakdown

Who’s on second, what’s in left, right and center.

The Rotation

Houston’s starting rotation currently has the 7th-best ERA at 3.57, with a matching FIP and a 3.60 xFIP.

The Astros are tied for the league lead in quality starts at 14 (Cardinals), which means Houston is getting 50% quality starts (and 1 Kikuchi Start).

When getting a quality start the Astros are 9-5 and when not they are 6-8.

Astros starters are getting Easy Innings (10 or less pitches) 21.2% of the time, Shut Down Innings 73.3% of the time and retiring the side in order almost 35% of the time.

Rando Stats of the Day

For his career Yordan has hit much better as a left fielder than as a DH. This season he is slashing .222/.360/.278 as a left fielder (25 PA) and .216/.307/.378 as a DH (88 PA). All three of his home runs have come as DH.

Cam Smith is slashing .262/.354/.500 at home and .138/.219/.207 on the road. All three home runs and 8 of 10 RBI have come at Daikin Park.

Right handed batters are slashing .097/.094/.226 against left-handed Steven Okert in 32 plate appearances with with a -10 OPS+.

I’ll be back Thursday or Friday with a Minor League update and other “interesting” stuff.

Friday night, I’ll be at the Corpus-San Antonio game to scout the Hooks.

As always, thanks for reading!