Today, I showed how the recent MLB Wild Card teams have allocated pitchers for their MLB Wild Crad round postseason staffs.
Now, let's discover who are the twelve most likely pitchers to be on the Astros AL Wild Card staff. Who is on the bubble? How would we project those 12 pitchers to perform?
Starters
Valdez
Kikuchi
Brown- depending on the opposing team and their platoon profile, the Astros COULD flip Brown to game 2.
Arrighetti- obviously NOT starting in a three-game series unless someone has an urgent medical issue. Spencer should be ready to go 4+ innings for any game.
Relievers
Hader
Pressly
Abreu
King
Neris
Ferguson
Blanco
Verlander
Verlander and Blanco would be available for 3+ innings if needed.
The final decision essentially comes down to Ort or Verlander. These are the two on the bubble.
Ort- has 2.55 ERA but a 5.23 FIP and a BABIP of only 0.161 (unsustainably low). Ort has been worse late this season.
Verlander might be considered redundant to Arrighetti and Blanco.
Here is a statistics snapshot of what I think the Astros Wild Card pitching staff will be.
First, I give you the 2024 season pitcher's FIP and FIP- (100 is average, adjusts for ballpark effects.)
I then give you the full season xwOBA platoon split for each pitcher. You can see how might deploy certain pitchers vs. LHH and RHH. Ort's 0.238 xwOBA vs. RHH is a selling point for him.
Next, is the FIP and FIP since 8/1/24. This will show who is doing well down the stretch and who has struggled. This is also key to understand the pitchers for whom the Astros traded- Kikuchi and Ferguson. Both have improved significantly in their time in Houston.
Notice the cells at the bottom. For the season, the Astros have pitched to a 4.04 FIP which is a 100 FIP-. They are a very average (LGM - C+ grade) pitching staff overall, for the season wrt to FIP because they were so bad early.
However, with only the 12 Postseason WC pitchers projected and using a weighted average (weighted by innings pitched) on the innings since August, this group has only a 3.27 FIP (80 FIP-) which is an A LarryTheGM grade. Folks, the pitching staff CAN dominate this postseason.
Watch the video for some more thoughts.
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