Taking a step back in the middle of the pennant race
It seems like an odd time to bring these questions up, but I have always subscribed to the adage that you shouldn’t ignore in victory the things you wouldn’t ignore in defeat. A three game winning streak seems like an ideal time to bring these things up because we can at least partially remove the emotional baggage of failure.
That’s a three dollar phrase that essentially describes the desire to Monday morning quarterback. Your team gets shut out so you complain about the offense. Your closer blows a game so you complain about the bullpen. You get the idea. Before we talk about a single player on the roster or off, we should look at three things in order of importance. Consider these questions that ownership and management should be asking themselves.
What about long range planning?
This is tough and has so many layers. The Astros have approximately 50 million 2025 dollars tied up in three players that either haven’t played or are no longer on the roster. I am old enough to remember when that sum seemed outrageous to spend on the entire 26 man roster. So, this is not the same thing as long-term contracts. Those can be a part of long-range planning or not depending on who is doing the planning.
It’s that last point that’s at issue here. Who is in charge of this team? It seems like Dana Brown and Joe Espada would be the obvious answers, but I think most plugged in fans know it is far more complicated than that. How many decisions are made by someone other than Brown and Espada? I suppose we can never really know for sure and that seems to be by design. If the org chart is muddy then the blame game becomes purposefully complicated and difficult.
Every offseason feels like election season. “This is the most important offseason yet for the Astros.” How many times have we heard those exact words or something similar? This is because the tact has largely been to kick the can down the road. Decisions are put off. Negotiations are delayed or not done at all. Maybe there is a plan and that is part of the plan, but the idea of letting the likes of George Springer, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman walk without getting anything tangible in return doesn’t feel like a plan. It certainly doesn’t feel like a good one.
Granted, your team is constantly in the hunt and selling veterans while you are competing for championships seems like a no go. That is all fine and dandy during the season, but every offseason you know these decisions are looming. You know Kyle Tucker and Framber Valdez are next. I’m not even so interested in what the decision on them will be as to who is making those decisions. The idea of Jeff Bagwell, Reggie Jackson, and Jim Crane getting together for a four martini lunch and hashing that out frightens me. I don’t know if Dana Brown is up to the task because I don’t know if he has ever been allowed to make these big boy decisions. To be perfectly clear, that is not an indictment of Brown. This goes back to the org structure and who is in charge.
How do we deal with injuries?
I think everyone would agree this has all come to a head this season. Kyle Tucker has missed nearly three months (by the time they say he will come back) for what THEY described as a bone bruise. We have all had bruises. It doesn’t take three months for those suckers to heal. Justin Verlander has missed two months with a sore neck. Cristian Javier supposedly slept on his neck wrong, missed time, and then had to have Tommy John surgery after a couple of abbreviated starts.
Then, you have the whole Lance McCullers Jr. situation. This is a guy that has made only a handful of starts in three years. We still aren’t quite sure what is wrong with him. There are three distinctive possibilities here. First, maybe the Astros just have a collection of older and injury prone guys. JV is 41 years old. Older pitchers break down and take longer to recover. Maybe LMJ and Tucker are just slow healers. That’s not on them. The human body doesn’t always respond to treatment.
The organization has to grapple with the other two possibilities. It is easy to just get healthy players (or think you are) but what happens if it is an issue systemic to the organization? The second possibility is an inability to diagnose and treat injuries. Maybe their medical staff missed the problems with LMJ, Javier, Garcia, Urquidy, JV, and Tucker. Maybe they diagnosed them correctly but did not use the proper treatment techniques. That would be independent of who plays on the field and has to be addressed in the offseason.
The third possibility is that their explanations to the fans and media aren’t truthful. The Astros seemingly have tried a middle ground that is difficult to navigate. You can tell fans, “well Player A is hurt and we don’t know when he will come back.” That involves minimal explanation and can seem evasive, but no one could accuse you of lying. The more extreme alternative is to tell fans everything, but you could be accused of violating a player’s privacy rights.
The Astros have chosen a middle ground that involves telling them some things, but those things turn out not to be true. Clearly Cristian Javier didn’t just have a sore neck. Clearly, there is more going on with Tucker than a simple bruise. Clearly, something more sinister is going on with LMJ. I certainly can’t blame Tucker for reacting slowly to an injury that has clearly been misidentified or poorly described. Whether they are purposefully lying or not becomes immaterial. You cannot trust the Astros organization right now when it comes to injuries and it is high time they come together and determine exactly why that is.
Is it time for new hitting coaches?
I put this one last because it is the least pressing. The Astros offense is a feast or famine offense and always has been. They play what I lovingly call “bully ball.” The opener of the Red Sox series is a perfect example. They had four runs going into the ninth inning and played add on. We were all happy they did and it is fun to watch, but it makes the aggregate tough to swallow.
For instance, overall numbers will show the Astros are actually better in terms of OPS with runners on base and in scoring position than they are with the bases empty. Yet, the eyeball test doesn’t say that. This is partially because eye witness accounting is usually faulty. However, this is also because those blow out games skew the numbers. When it is close or they are behind they seem to be a lot less successful in those moments.
Self-scouting is the most important scouting of all. The numbers crunchers need to determine whether our perceptions have merit. How do the Astros compare with the rest of the league in these situations? How does our offense differ from other good offenses? Is the roster as good structurally as it could be or do we need more diversity in the types of hitters we have?
Clearly, we can see that the pitching coaches are having an effect. Young pitchers are pitching better now than when they came up. Spencer Arighetti and Hunter Brown were shaky before, but are hitting their stride. Yusei Kukuchi seems to have seen his performance suddenly improve. Those are signs that someone over there knows what they are doing and knows how to get the best out of guys.
Think of the hitters. Is there a single one that is better now than when they started the season? I suppose Yainer Diaz might be the only hitter measurably getting better as the season goes along. The rest are either the same or worse. There isn’t a hitter whose development has surprised me. No one is outperforming their expectations. That seems peculiar to me.
Moreover, a team whose walk rate has dwindled to 28th in MLB has a lot to answer for. Is it just a collection of free swingers? Are the hitting coaches and coaching staff preaching free swinging? Are they trading a higher batting average (relative to the league) for a lower walk rate? If so, how has that impacted run production? I happen to adopt that Naughty by Nature tune with “I’m down with OBP (yeah you know me), I’m down with OBP (yeah you know me)” but maybe that’s just me. Maybe this free swinging is better, but I seriously doubt it. Maybe it’s time to see if someone else can make some of these guys better.