HOUSTON — Alex Bregman is the closest thing his clubhouse has to a spokesman, so reporters encircled his locker on Wednesday after another loss in a month full of them. One asked whether he believed the Astros’ 6-14 record is indicative of how the team has actually played.
“Yeah, I do,” he said after a long pause.
The record is Houston’s worst after 20 games since 2016, Bregman’s rookie season and the last year this franchise didn’t make the playoffs. Here are 10 numbers that illustrate how this teetering club ended up here:
22
The Astros have already used 22 pitchers this season.
Houston has been spoiled. Its 2018 team needed 22 pitchers to complete a 162-game season. So did the 2022 World Series champions. The 2024 Astros have cycled through that many across their first 20 games. No other team has used more.
Injuries to Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers Jr, José Urquidy and Luis Garcia necessitated the furious roster churn, but so did constructing an inflexible bullpen short on major-league experience. Houston has, at most, three relievers with minor-league options in its bullpen at all times. Two of them — Bryan Abreu and Seth Martinez — are in no danger of being demoted.
Not adding any established starting pitching depth this winter or during spring training, when McCullers, Garcia, Urquidy and Verlander’s injuries were already known, further tested the team’s organizational depth. Truncated starts from those thrust into action only continued the carousel.
10.9%
Houston’s pitching staff has a 10.9 percent walk rate across the first 20 games.
No American League pitching staff entered Thursday with more walks than Houston’s. Only the Miami Marlins, off to a historically bad start and saddled with some of the same injury problems the Astros have, had issued more free passes.
It’s easy to blame the walk problems on young pitchers rushed up in emergencies, but Spencer Arrighetti and Blair Henley are only responsible for eight of the pitching staff’s 86 walks. Bryan Abreu, Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier have teamed to walk 28 batters.
Hunter Brown has 10 walks in 13 2/3 innings. (Troy Taormina / USA Today)
Astros pitchers have done an admirable job of limiting hard contact. Only seven staffs had a lower hard-hit rate than Houston’s 36.6 percent clip, but the Astros aren’t competitive enough with their misses to generate any chase. The Astros’ 25.3 percent chase rate from its pitching staff is the third-lowest in the sport. Free bases are a byproduct.
1.84
Bryan Abreu, Ryan Pressly and Josh Hader have combined for a 1.84 WHIP across their first 24 1/3 innings.
Hailed as the Astros’ best bullpen triumvirate since Octavio Dotel, Brad Lidge and Billy Wagner locked down games in 2003, Abreu, Pressly and Hader have authored a horrific start to a season that began with so much anticipation.
Pressly boasts a 9.45 ERA after eight appearances. Abreu has walked seven batters, surrendered 10 hits and allowed three home runs in his first nine innings of work. The Astros have only handed Hader two save situations — and the $95 million closer blew one of them. His ERA is 8.31.
Four of the seven earned runs Pressly has allowed this season came in one outing. Ditto for Hader, who allowed four earned runs to the Braves earlier this week. Relievers aren’t supposed to be analyzed after a month, but Houston’s current circumstance magnifies this trio’s poor performance.
0.86
Ronel Blanco’s ERA is 0.86.
Baseball’s most disappointing team also has its best story. If any of Houston’s five injured starters broke camp healthy, Blanco would be — at best — a long reliever in the major-league bullpen. Instead, he has buoyed the Astros’ injury-ravaged rotation, a revelation in an organization adept at authoring them.
Blanco has allowed two earned runs across 21 innings against two of baseball’s most acclaimed offenses: the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers. Remove his three outings and Astros starters have a 6.19 ERA. Houston has six wins. Blanco has started half of them.
Blanco is bound to regress to a mean. A 3.01 FIP already suggests there’s been some good fortune in his first three starts, but even if he can continue to eat innings at a league-average clip, it will strengthen this rotation’s most obvious weakness.
General manager Dana Brown has absorbed plenty of criticism for Houston’s curious offseason, but Blanco’s brilliant start is something Brown should savor. If not for him imploring the team’s pitching coaches to convert Blanco into a starter last spring, it’s anyone’s guess where this team would be.
5
The Astros’ cleanup hitters have driven in five runs.
Only two teams awoke on Thursday with a higher OPS, batting average and OPS+ than the Astros. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers had more hits. Somehow, Houston is scoring just 4.35 runs per game, below the league average of 4.47 and fewer than 15 teams.
For a pitching-depleted team reliant on run production, it’s a poor start. Modern baseball does not revere the RBI — and it is far from a foolproof stat — but it’s difficult to ignore the absence of any consistency from the cleanup spot.
Entering Thursday, only the White Sox, Reds and Nationals had fewer RBIs than the Astros from the four-hole. Only five teams extracted a lower wRC+ from that spot in the batting order.
Alex Bregman began the season as a full-time cleanup hitter for the first time in his professional career, charged with cashing in opportunities the three batters before him always seem to create. Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker all boast an OPS above .890 and an on-base percentage above .370.
Bregman had just three RBIs hitting behind them. Manager Joe Espada moved him up to third in the batting order on Wednesday, slid Tucker into the cleanup spot and suggested this could be the lineup for the foreseeable future.
.343
Kyle Tucker’s expected batting average is .343.
Former manager Dusty Baker grew fond of calling Tucker his “hard luck guy.” Baker’s departure hasn’t turned Tucker’s fortunes.
Though Tucker is slashing .260/.374/.519 across his first 92 plate appearances, underlying metrics and the quality of his contact suggest he is still falling victim to bad luck.
According to Statcast, Tucker has a .343 expected batting average on the first 62 balls he’s put in play. The .83 point difference between his actual batting average and expected clip is the highest among American League hitters who’ve put at least 50 balls in play.
Kyle Tucker is in the 97th percentile in expected batting average. (Thomas Shea / USA Today)
Tucker has barreled 10 of the 62 balls he’s put in play and is chasing at just a 20 percent clip, four percentage points below his career average. He is hitting line drives 33.9 percent of the time — the league average is 24.8 percent — and keeping the ball off the ground.
No, Houston isn’t 6-14 due to one player’s bad luck, but it’s worth acknowledging within a lineup that’s struggling to score runs. Now that Tucker may be cemented in the cleanup spot, the Astros must hope Tucker’s luck starts to turn.
.506
The Astros have a .506 OPS in “Late & Close” situations.
Baseball-Reference defines a “Late & Close” plate appearance as one in the seventh inning or later with the batter’s team tied, ahead by a run or having the tying run at least on deck.
Houston has taken 104 of them this season and is slashing .217/.269/.237 for a .506 OPS. The league-average OPS is .679.
Of the 21 hits the Astros have, 19 are singles. Altuve is responsible for the only two extra-base hits, both doubles.
Altuve, Alvarez, Bregman and Tucker have all taken at least 12 plate appearances in these situations, which should be ideal. They are the team’s four most accomplished hitters. Alvarez is 1-for-11, Bregman is 2-for-11 and Tucker is 2-for-8.
For a team not producing runs, and hindered by a struggling bullpen, the absence of clutch hitting is crippling. For a team now 0-5 in one-run games, it’s worth wondering how a few more productive plate appearances in these situations could have shifted some results or at least given a pressing club some breathing room.
-23
José Abreu’s career OPS+ is 129. It was 87 in 2023, his first season with the Astros. It’s -23 after 57 plate appearances this season.
Abreu’s anemic performance gets accentuated with every loss and invites wonder how long Houston can continue carrying him on the active roster. His offensive malaise is well-documented, but being worth minus-3 defensive runs saved at first base underscores one glaring point: Abreu is providing no value to a team searching for any it can find.
Abreu is no longer an everyday player and, on days he does start, Espada’s attempts to hide him are futile. Abreu is hitting lower than ever before in his major-league career, but somehow still finds himself taking critical at-bats. He’s hitless in 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position, seven of which he’s taken from the eighth spot in the batting order.
Cole Winn’s first MLB strikeout against Jose Abreu pic.twitter.com/jMA7mil34s
— kennedi landry (@kennlandry) April 14, 2024
When an inflection point arrives is anyone’s guess. More than $30 million remains on the $58.5 million free-agent deal Abreu signed two winters ago. No precedent exists in Jim Crane’s ownership tenure to absorb that sort of contract before its completion, but if the season continues to spiral, he may have little choice.
.169
The Astros have extracted a .169 slugging percentage from first base.
First base loomed as an organizational deficiency before Abreu’s brutal decline began. Houston signed him before the 2023 season for that exact reason — there is no heir apparent at any level of the minor leagues. A reunion with former top prospect Jon Singleton last June only reinforced the shortage.
Singleton has six singles and two doubles across his first 36 plate appearances this season, an offensive explosion when compared to his counterpart. That Espada replaced Singleton with Abreu late in a win on April 7 is an alarming indictment on Singleton’s defense.
A timeshare between the two seems Houston’s most logical path forward until Crane or Brown decides to take drastic action. Prospect Joey Loperfido continues to crush Triple-A pitching, but also has 26 strikeouts in his first 64 at-bats of the season.
Though the team continues a crash course in teaching him, Loperfido is not a natural first baseman. Last week, Brown labeled him “a utility piece,” which may be his most valuable role on the current major-league club.
If Houston is seeking a more natural first baseman, Trey Cabbage — with a .998 OPS in his first 15 Triple-A games — could be a more logical choice. Loperfido, who hits left-handed, could play all three outfield positions and see spot time at first base. His 10 home runs are the most in minor-league baseball, but neither he nor Cabbage alone won’t solve the bigger position-wide problem.
142
There are 142 games left this season.
Houston has dug itself a huge hole. Since 1901, 118 teams have lost 14 of their first 20 games. Only two of them made the playoffs: the 1981 Kansas City Royals and the 2002 Anaheim Angels, who went on to win the World Series.
This is the sixth Astros team to start at least 6-14. The last to do it in 2016 finished 84-78 — and did not make the playoffs.
(Top photo of Alex Bregman: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)
