Thursday, February 21, 2013

Houston Astros 2013 Team Breakdown


Well it’s that time.  Football is done.  Pitchers and catchers have reported.  Everyone is heading out to purchase their fantasy baseball magazines.  And you are wondering what your team is looking like heading into the new season.  Well I’m here to start breaking down teams and see what they are looking like for this year.  I waited for most of the free agents to sign.  Others may sign after I talk about a team, and when that happens I’ll update the team breakdown as necessary.  Last year I started with the NL East.  This year I’ll start with the AL West.  And while I ranked teams alphabetically last year, this year I’ll rank them based on last season’s standings.  I’ll finish the AL West today with the Houston Astros, who actually weren’t last in this division last year.  They were last in the NL Central last year.  However they would have been last had they played in this division, and, frankly, they would have finished last in every other division too.

Projected 2013 Roster

C-              Jason Castro
1B-            Carlos Pena
2B-            Jose Altuve
SS-            Jimmy Paredes
3B-            Matt Dominguez
LF-            Fernando Martinez
CF-            Justin Maxwell
RF-            J.D. Martinez
DH-           Brett Wallace

Starting Rotation:            
Bud Norris, Lucas Harrell, Jordan Lyles, Phillip Humber, Alex White

Bullpen:  
Jose Veras (closer), Wesley Wright Fernando Rodriguez, Rhiner Cruz, Xavier Cedeno, Sam Demel, Hector Ambriz

Projected Batting Order

2B-            Jose Altuve
SS-            Jimmy Paredes
DH-           Brett Wallace
1B-            Carlos Pena
RF-            J.D. Martinez
CF-            Justin Maxwell
3B-            Matt Dominguez
LF-            Fernando Martinez
C-              Jason Castro


Spring Training is coming.  One of the most exciting times in baseball.  Every team has hope.  Every team could play a role in the playoffs.  Every team has an excited fan base.  Well, every team but the Houston Astros.  They were bad last year.  They were bad the year before.  They will be bad this year.  They will likely be bad next year.  Something has to be said for their consistency.  Well, not really.  That’s just something people say.  The Astros have to make some serious changes.  And they are the last people that need to be made aware of that fact. 

After another season with the worst record in baseball, the Astros were moved from the NL Central to the AL West.  How cruel the world is.  Now instead of finishing in the basement of a mediocre division, the Astros will finish in the sub-basement of a much better division.  The good news is, the Astros really only have 2 issues, they can’t hit and they can’t pitch.  If they can solve those issues, they may compete in this decade.

The leading hitter on this club was Jose Altuve, who hit 290.  Altuve also led the team in ABs and games, as the rest of his team spent time on another club, or being shuttled back and forth from the minors.  And Altuve was their lone All Star representative leading the Astros in R and SB for good measure.  He’s good.  The rest of it?  Bad bad bad.  Justin Maxwell led the team with 18 HR.  He paired that with a paltry 229 AVG and 53 RBI.  J.D. Martinez led the team with 55 RBI.  That came with 11 HR and a 241 AVG.  He was one of their better hitters.  But that’s about it.  There’s not a ton of speed, very limited power and a lot of low averages.  Altuve should be decent, but he could struggle in his second full year.  He’s young and, frankly, one of the few guys pitchers have to be wary of on this team.  He’ll score some R, but it’ll be as limited as his team.  The Astros will lose a lot of games.  And they won’t score a lot of R doing it.

Well at least they can pitch.  Or….not so much.  Only one pitcher started 30+ games for this team.  It was Lucas Harrell, and he had a team high 11 Wins (to go with 11 Losses) and also a team best 3.76 ERA.  Those are fine numbers, but not for an ace.  Especially when he only had 1 CG and SHO, 192 IP and a mere 140 Ks.  He stranded runners, but put them on with a 1.36 WHIP (below average….because it’s above average….for what the average pitcher does….kind of like saying someone is subpar for not being below par….that’s a golf analogy) and hitters hit 253 against him.  That’s better than 1 out of every 4 hitters faced getting a hit, assuming they don’t draw a walk.  Harrell isn’t the problem, so I feel bad pointing out all his flaws.  The point is, this guy is not an ace, but for the Astros, is an ace (I wanted to make this paragraph as confusing as possible).  Who else is in this rotation?  Well, we’ve got their actual (on paper) ace, Bud Norris.  Norris led the team with 165 Ks (that’s not a lot for a team leader….are you seeing a trend?) while going 7-13 with a 4.65 ERA.  None of that is even average.  Next?  Jordan Lyles started 25 games for Houston, third most on this team behind the aforementioned starters.  He went 5-12 with a 5.09 ERA.  Ouch.  Staying with that trend, Alex White started 20 painful games for Colorado, going 2-9 with a 5.51 ERA.  And last, we have Mr. Perfect, Phillip Humber.  I don’t mean to disparage (that may not be believable at this point), but only to remind everyone that this is the Phillip Humber of the perfect game for the White Sox last year.  How was the rest of his season?  Well including the perfect game, he was 5-5 with a 6.44 ERA in 26 starts.  Now I know I didn’t dig as deep in these pitching stats, but with these numbers the superficial stats are sufficient.  These guys were bad.  How’s the bullpen?  Well it’s missing Saves leader Brett Meyers, who wasn’t that good of a closer anyway.  This bullpen is also without number two and three on the team Saves list.  The only player with a Save from last year that is on this team this year is Wesley Wright who was 1 for 2 in Save attempts but had a respectable 19 Holds to go with a 3.27 ERA and 226 BAA.  He’ll set up again.  The new closer will likely be Jose Veras, who has 5 career Saves and a sub-4 ERA for the last 3 years.  That may not seem like much to us, but it’s a big deal in Houston.  That’s the group of pitchers that Houston plans to trot out against Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Yoenis Cespedes, Adrian Beltre, Ian Kinsler, Elvis Andrus, Michael Morse and the rest of the AL West sluggers.  This is also the evidence that will be used by a group of lawyers when discussing a mercy rule in the baseball supreme court (I jest).

2013 Prediction

Destruction and despair.  Just kidding.  But seriously.  The Astros are in a lot of trouble.  I don’t mean to pick on the Astros, but if you can’t laugh at them then what are you going to laugh at in this game (dang it, I keep doing it!)?  Seriously, while a lot of this hyperbole is designed to make my readers laugh (both of you) it’s also to underline the fact that the Astros don’t have the talent to compete in their new division.  This same group couldn’t do better than last in their old division, which is not nearly as talented as their new home.  The Astros can’t control where, or who they play.  That is controlled by the commissioner, who probably moved the wrong team to the AL.

(Seriously, it should have been the Brewers.  The club began as an American league team when they joined the major leagues as an expansion club in 1969.  They had a place in the AL and rivals and history there, albeit a relatively short one.  But Bud Selig, who bought the Brewers in 1969 and owned them until he became the Commissioner, longs to think of this club as his long lost Milwaukee Braves, who were members of the National League.  So when the chance came, he moved the Brewers in to the Senior Circuit to take their place.  He did this despite the fact that the Braves are still alive and kicking [frankly with more success and recognition than the current Milwaukee team] in Atlanta, where they won a record number of consecutive divisional titles and a World Series.  In contrast, the Brewers have only 4 playoff appearances, with one pennant to their name.  In 1982.  As members of the AL.  By comparison, the Astros have spent their entire history in the NL.  They were established in 1962, 7 years BEFORE the Brewers joined the league [the other league to be precise].  But since 1997, the Brewers and Astros clogged the NL Central, which was the only division with 6 teams.  It also lead to the NL having one more team than the AL for a long time, though the ostensible reason the Brewers moved was to keep the leagues even.  However once the numbers became 16 and 14, they realized they needed to make a change.  So they moved a team.  Selig chose the Astros in order to keep his hometown Brewers in the NL, to replace the Braves.  It makes little sense.  This is the kind of wisdom that lets an All Star game end in a tie, and then the following year decides to award home field based of the winner of the same All Star game.  Does it matter or not?  Just depends on the year.  Now it does matter, much more than it should for an exhibition, to help erase the distaste of that tie.  The thought in this being that this shouldn’t have happened, so I will do the wrong thing to make it better.  Kind of like having an uneven number of teams in the AL and NL, and fixing it by moving an established NL member to the AL, despite the fact that there was a former AL member that started out in the AL sitting in the same division.  Okay, rant over).

For those of you still with me, the Astros have a lot of issues on both sides of the ball.  They are young, unproven and now have to face tougher competition.  This breakdown outlines what to expect from each team, and the 2013 Astros are likely going to finish in last in the AL West.  I also fully expect them to have the worst record in baseball.  But there is a light at the end of this tunnel.  The Astros have a new owner and a new GM who are both committed to re-building.  It’s pretty much their only option, but at least they’ve accepted it.  They have no money on the books for the 2015 season and beyond.  That’s financial freedom.  And they also have one other thing going for them.  A looming TV deal in one of the biggest markets in the country that promises to bring a lot of cash.  Nothing helps teams win more than money, and the Astros are about to be making some.  They will re-build.  It will take a while.  But the Astros will be relevant again.  Just not this year.

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