Offense just offensive
Once-mighty Astros have been a shell of themselves at the plate this season
ARLINGTON — A hallmark of the Astros’ revival is gone.
For the first time in a run of four consecutive postseason appearances, the lineup is average instead of an asset. The team’s power has mostly vanished, and clutch performances are few and far between.
There’s a former Rookie of the Year and MVP. The nine everyday players have combined for three batting titles, nine Silver Sluggers and 16 All-Star selections.
The performance hasn’t matched the prestige.
The Astros bats are pedestrian at best and putrid at their worst. Their .740 team OPS is 20 points below the major league average.
Entering Saturday’s games, the sport’s average slash line was .244/.322/.418. Houston’s was .240/.312/.408. This is not a lineup littered with prospects learning hard lessons. These are proven hitters.
“You try to talk to the guys, but you also try to de-emphasize the fact that we’re struggling. You don’t want to put that anymore in their heads than is already there,” first-year manager Dusty Baker said.
“With a veteran lineup, you tend not to worry; you tend to worry less than you do with a young lineup. The youngsters really don’t have as much of a track record as veteran players do. You know that sooner or later water is going to sink its own level.”
Time is running out for an awakening.
From a scandal to a slump
The wild card series starts Tuesday. To advance, the Astros must rediscover their lost offense. They entered Saturday with a .240 batting average — identical to that of the tanking 2013 Astros who lost 111 games.
“I think the at-bats are getting better,” shortstop Carlos Correa said. “I think we’re getting hot at the right time.”
But nine months after the Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scheme was revealed, their offense is on pace for its worst season since 2014, and the jokes and jeers are endless.
Members of the 2017 team are among the lineup’s most critical underperformers. Correa, Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel have the worst OPS of their careers and have been the three worst hitters in the starting lineup.
Major League Baseball’s investigation into the Astros concluded the club committed no violations of the league’s electronic signstealing rules during the 2019 regular season or postseason. That lineup set a major league record with a .495 slugging percentage and hit a franchise-record 288 home runs.
Houston returned eight of the nine starters from that batting order. Reigning American League Rookie of the Year Yordan Alvarez took only nine plate appearances before undergoing season-ending surgery on both knees.
His loss left a gaping void, but even without him, the Astros seemingly had enough established, successful hitters to compensate. Most have failed.
Altuve has endured the worst stretch of his career, one that briefly moved him down to seventh in the Astros’ batting order. He’s one of four hitters in the everyday lineup with a sub-800 OPS.
Only George Springer entered Saturday with an OPS higher than .900. Last year’s lineup had four hitters above that mark.
“I would say as a whole it’s been a little difficult to get a bunch of guys locked in and to keep them locked in for an extended period of time,” hitting coach Troy Snitker said. “For an offense in the big leagues to be successful, you want to have competitive at-bat after competitive at-bat. You want as many guys feeling good and feeling dangerous in the lineup every day. I just feel like we haven’t had the consistency of having as many guys locked in together at the same time.”
The offense’s disappearing act remains something of a mystery. Players and coaches point to a rushed summer camp preparation and cite small sample sizes. An absence of in-game video is not helping, either.
Video blackout
As part of its health and safety protocols, Major League Baseball prevented teams from accessing in-game video or going into the replay room this season. More restrictions could be looming in 2021, too, after sign-stealing scandals in Houston and Boston.
But assigning all blame to the technology drain is disingenuous. Springer, who said he barely watches in-game video in a normal regular season, leads the team with a .902 OPS.
Correa, however, brought up the lack of video unprompted last week. And Snitker says the absence of video has hindered his lineup’s ability to adjust.
Houston leads the American League with 46 first-inning runs but has just a .647 OPS in innings seven through nine. During its second time facing a starting pitcher in a game, the lineup’s OPS falls from .795 to .739.
“That was one of the biggest strengths I felt we had as an offense. We had a bunch of guys who were willing to make adjustments in the game, they wanted to be coached in the game. They didn’t want to go 0-for-4 or 0-for-3 before they changed something,” Snitker said.
“These guys were doing it immediately. They know themselves well, but it’s hard to make adjustments when you can’t see exactly what it is. I don’t care how good your eyes are (or) how long you’ve been in the game, the game happens really fast.”
The malaise isn’t unique to the Astros. Offense across baseball is sagging during the 60-game season.
Former National League MVP Christian Yelich entered Saturday with a .205 batting average and .785 OPS. Seven qualified major league hitters have batting averages under .200. No qualified hitters ended last season under .200.
“We shut guys down in their house for months. We can’t go to the training facilities. Then we don’t have a timeline for the season. I think that’s natural across the league,” Snitker said. “I think we’re seeing that with a lot of different hitters in baseball.”
Failure to launch
Much of the Astros’ problem comes down to power.
Strikeouts are still rare — just 426 in the first 57 games. Only one lineup has struck out fewer times. And the Astros are putting the ball in play at their usual rate.
Their average exit velocity on balls in play is 88.2 mph. It was 88.4 last season. A 27.1 percent chase rate is slightly elevated from a 26.4 percent clip last season, but nothing to cause much alarm.
One advanced statistic does seem like cause for concern.
The Astros rank 27th out of 30 teams with a 5.7 percent barrel rate. They barrelled balls in 6.8 percent of at-bats last season.
Statcast describes a “barrel” as “batted-ball events whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage.”
In short, barrelled balls are almost assured to become extrabase hits — big hits the Astros desperately need, but aren’t getting. Instead, Houston’s become something of a singles-driven lineup.
The Astros entered Saturday’s game with a .408 slugging percentage, down 87 points from last season’s MLB record mark, and only 66 home runs.
Correa’s .362 slugging percentage is down more than 200 points from last year and 100 points below his career average. Thirtyeight of his 51 hits are singles.
Altuve has eight extra-base hits in his past 34 games.
Small sample size?
Earlier this month, third baseman Alex Bregman pointed to the shortened season in arguing that the Astros’ woes have been exaggerated. Players often accrue around 500 plate appearances in a 162-game season. No Astros regular will finish this truncated regular season with more than 240.
“It was a 60-game season, so you don’t get that much time to be able to have those two or three good months and finish with great numbers,” Correa said. “I’m not too concerned with how my own numbers are going to end up this year, because it was only two months.”
The beauty of baseball lies in a season’s longevity, offering hope for players to recover from a bad stretch. Gurriel slashed .252/.283/ .382 in the first 60 games of the 2019 season. He ended it with a career-best .884 OPS and .541 slugging percentage.
This season offers Gurriel and others no time to rebound, with two or three terrible weeks wrecking a batting average or OPS.
Gurriel is only 13-for-85 in September, shrinking his OPS to an unsightly .667 — in a contract year, no less. A hand injury from early September still seems to be bothering the normally consistent first baseman.
Bregman is a notoriously slow starter, too. He had a .684 OPS after the first 30 games in 2017 and posted a .717 clip in the same timeframe in 2018. Through 36 games this year, Bregman had only four home runs and a .238 batting average. A strained right hamstring interrupted his rhythm.
Bregman still blamed a mechanical flaw more than anything. He found himself flying open in his swing and “blowing out” his front side throughout the first month of the season.
“When I cut the baseball and I spin, my front side blows open and my hands drop to the back side, which creates high right, low left, which in turn equals fly balls to right field and ground balls to the left side,” Bregman said. “I’m trying to do the exact opposite. I’m trying to hit line drives to right field and hit the ball in the air to the pull side.”
On Thursday, Bregman hammered a home run to his pull side against Rangers ace Lance Lynn. Springer and Altuve homered off the burly righthander, too.
Flashes of normalcy sometimes appear for the Astros, be it for an inning against Kenley Jansen in Dodger Stadium or six against Lynn at Globe Life Field. Five players finished Houston’s 12-4 win with multiple hits.
After the onslaught, Bregman softened any excitement.
“We’ve had a few games this year where I’ve thought we swung the bat well, but we didn’t really repeat it,” Bregman said. “So now it’s time to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and keep doing that.”
Bregman’s pleas went unheard. A day later, a Rangers rookie named Kyle Cody controlled the club for five innings. The Astros went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and stranded nine baserunners.
“I can’t be frustrated with guys who are trying,” Snitker said. “They’re working. They’re making adjustments. They’re putting in the time in the video and advance work. They’re willing to do stuff in the (batting) cage to try and right the ship.
“I think if that wasn’t the case, it’d be more frustrating, but our guys are grinding away. They’re doing what they can to try to stay locked in and put performances together.”