Bats took awhile to warm up last year, too
Although team’s strikeout rate is up, 54 runs through 13 games lines up precisely with 2017
MINNEAPOLIS — Relief overtook Alex Bregman’s face at the end of the question. His first home run of the season came an hour earlier, part of the Astros’ frenzied but futile comeback against the Twins, and one month earlier than his first homer last season.
“My God,” he said Wednesday, “I thought it was going to be another wait till May kind of thing. It’s good to get that out of the way. Let’s keep hitting them.”
If this all feels familiar, it should.
For a second consecutive year, the Astros stand at 9-4 after 13 games — still far too small a sample size to draw any absolutes — with an offense vacillating between paltry and prolific.
Proven, and expected, stalwarts George Springer and Marwin Gonzalez are mired in earlyseason slumps. Neither is
hitting .200.
Bregman wasn’t either until his four-hit game Wednesday, when the Astros bludgeoned Twins starter Kyle Gibson.
They strung six hits together against him in the fifth inning — mind you, the team mustered only seven hits in each of the first two games of the series at Target Field — and climbed back from an 8-1 hole.
“We need to put innings together, and we can, and we will,” manager A.J. Hinch said afterward. “We rush to judgment a little bit on how things are going based on series by series, but I think we have a pretty potent offense, and I think everybody in the league knows it.”
Neither Hinch nor his players chose to fret after a series loss in frigid Minnesota conditions. Second baseman Jose Altuve scoffed at any talk of “frustration” after Tuesday evening’s defeat.
“Not really,” he said, asked if the offensive rut was draining. “It’s only 11 or 12 games, and we did the same thing last year.
“We didn’t start really good, we weren’t battling to score runs, until we woke up and won the World Series.”
Examining the two 13-game segments reaffirms Altuve’s reassurance, though it does introduce one somewhat troubling strikeout trend.
It should be noted, though, the 2018 team played three games in abysmally cold offensive conditions. It also has been without Yuli Gurriel, a contact hitter who, upon his expected return in Friday night’s series opener at home against the Rangers, will allay some of the strikeout woes.
In 2017, through 13 games, the team produced a .747 OPS and slashed .268/.346/.400. This season, it is slashing .254/.341/ .389 with a .730 OPS. Both teams scored 58 runs and had five games of 10 or more hits.
The 2018 Astros have drawn 54 walks — tied for third in the major leagues and five more than at this time last season. Bregman, even amid his funk, has drawn 10 free passes. Only Andrew Benintendi had drawn more, entering Thursday’s games.
“In the Padres series, I swung at some marginal sliders instead of making those sliders be more middle of the plate,” Bregman said Wednesday after the first four-hit game of his career. “Kind of thought to myself this series I had to swing at pitches over the middle more and stop chasing in and away off the plate.”
Such plate discipline was an emphasis in spring training, Bregman said. Last season, the Astros had just 88 strikeouts through 13 games. Their 17.3 percent strikeout rate was the lowest in the majors, too.
Here is where the comparison between the two seasons diverges. The current Astros bunch has struck out in 24.6 percent of its plate appearances. The 122 punchouts were tied for third most in the majors entering Thursday.
Hinch hinted multiple times in Minneapolis that the team is expanding its strike zone more than is normal. FanGraphs charts O-swing and O-contact percentages. O-swing is the number of pitches a player swings at outside the strike zone. O-contact is the percentage of contact made on said pitches.
Across all of last season, the Astros had a 29.2 percent Oswing rate and a 68.4 percent Ocontact rate. The league averages were 29.9 and 62.9, respectively.
Through 13 games, two players — Jake Marisnick and Carlos Correa — have O-swing percentages higher than 35. They’ve combined for 26 strikeouts. Springer’s O-swing percentage is lower than average, just 28.4 percent, but he leads the team with 16 strikeouts.
Springer has just eight hits since his historic opening-day leadoff home run against the Rangers. Still, unsurprisingly, Hinch pens his name atop the Astros’ order every day.
“What we saw Bregman do today, we’re going to see George do and Marwin (do),” Hinch said Wednesday, “and guys are going to break out because it’s a talented offensive team.”