There's Bad & Then There's 0th Percentile Bad
A healthy Yordan Alvarez will help the Astros EV, but a lot of it is baked in
This one wasn’t an original idea, but one I heard on a now-forgotten podcast.
The Astros were last in MLB in average exit velocity in 2025, and my interpretation was that the podcast was blaming Jose Altuve and his 85.1 MPH average exit velocity.
Afterall, he was the only player identified by name.
Altuve’s career mark of 86.7 average exit velocity is around 3 standard deviations below the 2025 league average, and his 85.1 number for last season is even worse.
But this problem is bigger than Altuve (no pun intended, it just worked out that way), as you can see on the chart below.
The Astros are 30 of 30, in the 0th percentile, 1.7 standard deviations from average, and over 4 standard deviations from the best.
More bats from a healthy Yordan will help, and some of the guys below the MLB average have been jettisoned, but with lineup staples of Pena, Meyers, Smith, and Paredes joining Altuve in the below MLB average range, I’m not sure a huge improvement will come with the current roster construction.
It’s baked in.
The Astros simply haven’t and probably won’t hit the ball hard.
There are numbers that counterbalance this a bit. Houston is just a tick below average in wOBA, and their BABIP (not shown) is a few points over average.
There’s some hope in Jeremy Pena, who hit the ball the hardest of his four-year career last season, but even that was still below average (88.9 MPH, 33rd percentile), and Isaac Paredes tied for a career high, but that was below average, too.
Thinking back to the 2025 season, it felt like a lot of innings were “easy” for the opposition pitchers.
Soft grounders, “can of corn” flies, and pop-ups.
Soft contact with little chance of finding a gap or falling in.
Exit velocity isn’t everything, as the wOBA numbers above show.
The Mets and Royals missed the playoffs.
The Guardians and Brewers made the playoffs.
But exit velocity is another thing not in the Astros favor, with no immediate obvious short-term resolution.
As always, thanks for reading!