The Astros are heading to the playoffs. Now what?
- Stros Talk
- Oct 5, 2021
- 6 min read
Gordon Liang
10/5/2021
On April Fools of 2021, in their first regular season game with fans in attendance since the scandal, the Houston Astros rendered the rest of the league as fools with a dominant offensive performance against the defending division champions. The crowd was loud. The bats were louder. The message was the loudest: the Astros did not come to play. 159 games, 93 wins and 66 losses later the defending champs are no more. The division is run by a familiar face. The Houston Astros are heading back to October.
The job isn’t finished though. Despite having a solid regular season, the peripheral metrics show that the Astros have been much better than their record shows for. It was a shame that their regular season results couldn’t show it but it’ll be an even bigger shame if their playoff results don’t show it. In October, your peripherals don’t matter. Expected Batting Average means nothing. Runs mean everything.
October is all about who's hot and who’s not and the Astros are leaning dangerously close to being the latter. After getting swept in Oakland, the Astros had any and all momentum halted as they braced themselves for a series against the best record in the American League. They had only scored eight runs in their last four games and the best offense in baseball desperately needed to get a ball rolling… or flying. Neither really happened as Michael Wacha started the game for the Rays and completed five innings of no hit baseball. Somehow, the Astros managed to steal that game on four true outcomes: a homer by Alex Bregman, a homer by Jose Altuve, an RBI walk from Chas McCormick and finally, a walk off RBI walk from Jason Castro.
While the Astros didn’t score an impressive amount in their series against the Rays, it was enough to win two of three and shut down the Mariners’ hopes of running away with the division. The best offense in baseball will play in October. What should fans expect from this redemption-hungry team?
The Astros are known for many traits. With sign stealing and without, the Astros have stayed a formidable offense for many years. They led the league in wRC+ in 2017, fell two points short in 2018, led again in 2019, got into a funk in 2020 but this year, your AL West champs are leading the league in wRC+ with one game left.
The Astros have been showing the league that they don’t need trash cans or imaginary buzzers in all the right ways. They have the best contact % and strikeout % in baseball and it’s not even really close. Houston is the only team with a contact % above 80% and the only team with a strikeout % under 20%. If hitting a baseball without sign stealing was as difficult as the platitude goes, the Astros are not showing it. They, to the public’s knowledge, have not been sign stealing this year and they are statistically suggested as the best offense in baseball.
The Astros aren’t just hitters, however. If they were, they’d probably meet a similar fate as the Yankees (who, to my surprise, are more pitching-heavy this season than hitting). The Astros have been flashing leather all season. For a good part of the season, they led the league in Outs Above Average (OAA). They currently trail only the Saint Louis Cardinals in OAA, are sixth in Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and rank fourth in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS).
A big reason for the Astros’ success comes from unlikely heroes. Aledmys Diaz in only 218 attempts has eight OAA. For context, the leader in OAA this year is Nicky Lopez who has twenty-five OAA in 576 attempts which puts him at a rate of 23.04 attempts per OAA. Diaz is producing at 27.25 attempts per OAA so while Lopez is obviously still a better fielder, Diaz has been on a great pace.
Their other unlikely defensive hero from the Astros came in the form of Chas McCormick who has really made a case for the starting role because of his glove if not for his bat. McCormick has racked up 11 OAA despite sharing the centerfield position with both Myles Straw and Jake Meyers this season. He has the fourth-best outfield jump this season according to Statcast. Straw, who is now one of the best defensive centerfielders, left the Astros with five OAA so every man the Astros put in centerfield this year has really produced with their glove while still holding their ground at the plate.
Of course, you can’t talk about the Astros’ defense and not bring up Carlos Correa. A year removed from losing the Gold Glove voting, he has cemented himself as one baseball’s best defensive shortstops. He ranks third amongst all American League shortstops in OAA and the man he lost the award to last year, J.P. Crawford, is sitting at zero OAA while the 2020 runner up sits at twelve.
With offense and defense being addressed, the last area of focus for the Astros is pitching. Pitching is by far the Astros’ weakest area but when you have a team as stacked as the Astros, even their worst area is decent from a general standpoint. In terms of peripheral vs actual results, the Astros find themselves in a weird mosaic. Their Earned Run Average (ERA) is the fourth lowest in the American League (seventh total) which is very respectable but looking at Skilled Interactive Earned Run Average (SIERA), their American League ranking drops to sixth (13th total). Their results are outperforming their peripherals but it’s not that simple. The Astros’ pitching staff in terms of luck have looked like a mosaic all season.
Lance McCullers Jr. has gotten praise all season and for good reason. According to Baseball Savant, his slider breaks 102% more than the league average slider and his curveball spin is in the 94th percentile. He’s one of the more underrated pitchers in terms of having stuff in his repertoire. McCullers Jr’s movement on his pitches is why he trails only Robbie Ray in the American League in ERA. He’s definitely gotten the results he’s wanted but how much of that was his own doing? McCullers Jr this year has a 4.01 SIERA and a 3.41 Expected Earned Run Average (xERA) which is a significant jump from his 3.16 ERA. This suggests that McCullers Jr may have been getting lucky during the season to pitch into a 3.16 ERA so he’ll be a player to watch in October to see if his luck continues.
Another player, for the opposite reason, to watch in October is reliever Brooks Raley. The Chicago White Sox are a very right-handed heavy team with Gavin Sheets being their only true lefty hitter so it’s possible that we don’t see Raley make an appearance at all but if he does, it’ll be very interesting to see the results he’ll bring. Unlike McCullers Jr, who seems to be pitching into a little bit of good luck, Raley wasn’t able to catch a break all season. He posted a subpar 4.78 ERA in 2021 but had a very impressive 2.91 SIERA. His other peripheral metrics like Fielder’s Independent Pitching (FIP) and Expected Fielders Independent Pitching (xFIP) were also very impressive at 3.27 and 2.90 respectively. Looking beyond the surface, Raley may even be nearing an elite level of pitching but unfortunately, the results have yet to look like the peripherals. It’s important to note that while he had been shaky holistically during the season, Raley ended his 2021 campaign on a very strong note, allowing only four runs in his last 18.2 innings pitched.
October is no guarantee for luck to go away. In fact, it can very well be the exact opposite. McCullers Jr may very well continue to dominate while Raley continues to not get the results he reaches for. The peripherals mean nothing in the postseason because SIERA doesn’t win games, runs do. However, they can and do tell us that the Astros may find some unexpected heroes this October because some pitchers may have been under the radar due to bad results but good peripherals. So what can we expect this October? Nothing. Well… not nothing. The Astros are guaranteed three things this October: an emotional Carlos Correa moment, at least three games and a showdown between two of baseball’s best managers.
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