Astros have hit on a successful recipe for wins

Divorcing slugging from strikeouts has produced victories.

HOUSTON— Sluggers strike out. In baseball, it is all but fact. The 1927NewYork Yankees led the majors in slugging percentage and strikeouts. The fifive players with the most career strikeouts averaged nearly 600 home runs. This season, major league hitters are on a record pace for home runs and strikeouts.

Slugging and strikeouts — like love and marriage, as the song goes, you can’t have one without the other. Unless you are the Houston Astros.

When the Braves host the Astros today and Wednesday, they will meet an Astros team coming in with a 56-27 record — the best in the majors through 80 games in more than a decade. The Astros’ hitters have the fewest strikeouts in the majors (561) while also leading in slugging percentage (.487).

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only two teams since 1910have led the major sin slugging percentage while recording the fewest strikeouts: the 1948 Yankees and 1995 Cleveland Indians. The Astros have contact hitters who punch, not slap.

“I don’t want guys swinging at a pitch unless they can hit a homer,” said Astros hitting coach Dave Hudgens. “I don’t want guys swinging at a pitch unless they can do damage. If you goin with that mind-set, you’re not going to miss your pitch as often.”

Hudgens, who has also coached for the Oakland A’s and New York Mets, said he had always approached hitting this way. To make it work, though, Houston built a talented lineup with no holes.

From 2011 through 2013, the Astros lost 324 games. As a new general manager, Jeffff Luhnow, overhauled the organization with an emphasis on analytics after his hiring in December 2011, players on the roster felt hopeless. “It was like we were trying to fifind a way to lose a game,” said utility man Mar win Gonzalez, a rookie in 2012.

Out fielder Josh Reddick, then with the A’s, remembers facing those Astros. Hitters, he said, seemed to race one another to the bat rack. It was going to be a good day.

But the Astros’ pitchers have evolved, too. They lead the majors in strikeouts, and their six most-used relievers average at least 10 strikeouts per nine innings. Just one team has ever led the majors in strikeouts by its pitchers and fewest strikeouts by its hitters, according to Elias — the 1911 New York Giants.

The Astros may soon become even stronger. Injured starters Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton and Collin McHugh should be back within amonth, and the Astros could push hard to add another starter before the July 31 nonwaiver trading deadline.

“Coming into spring, we understood we had a very balanced and very deep roster, and within that balance and depth, we were oozing with talent,” said Lance McCullers Jr., one of Houston’s starters. “I don’t know if you get that every year.”

The Astros did not quite have it in 2015, when they squeezed into the playoffffs after a hot start and beat the Yankees in the wild-card game. That season, Houston ranked second in the majors in slugging, but also second in strikeouts.

“Power’s exciting, power sells tickets and power wins games, at times,” Luhnow said. “But power usually comes at the expense of rallykilling strikeouts in other instances. It’s not a satisfying brand of baseball, and I don’t think it’s a winning brand of baseball, necessarily, to have 30-home run hitters with 200 strikeouts a year.

“You can have one of those guys, but we ended up having a few of the mup and down our lineup. So we made a decision to try to change the nature of our lineup by adding guys that made hard contact.”

Luhnow has trimmed several free swingers from the 2015 roster, including Chris Carter, Jason Castro, Carlos Gomez, Colby Rasmus and Luis Valbuena. Meanwhile, the young core of Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer has continued to improve, as have role players like Gonzalez and Jake Marisnick.

Surrounding them now are veterans who more reliably make contact: Reddick, Nori Aoki, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and Yuli Gurriel, a rookie with a long track record in Cuba. All but Aoki have power. The Astros lead the majors in on-base plus slugging percentage fromthe 8 and 9 spots in the order, essentially using 12 everyday players to shufle seamlessly in and out of the lineup.

“You don’t see a lot of teams with guys that can come off the bench and pretty much do the same kind of damage as the guys they replace,” Reddick said. “That’s a great tool to have.”

Reddick said he was not aware that the Astros’ hitters had the fewest strikeouts in the majors, but said it made sense because they work counts well and rarely chase pitches out of the strike zone. The Kansas City Royals took a similar approach in 2015, when they had the fewest strikeouts in the majors en route to a championship.

The Astros came close to winning their division series in Game 4 that year, but the Royals strung together fifive single sand an error to erase a four-run defificit in the eighth inning. The Royals did not have the Astros’ power but made an impression with their relentless attack. “Just a bunch of quality at-bats in a row,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said, recalling that loss. “What you try to avoid is empty at-bats.”