Tonight, our Astros are struggling to score tonight again against the atrocious Oakland Athletics pitching. I wanted to give you hope that this nightmare will soon end, or it COULD if we deploy the existing resources correctly. No trade HAS to be made. We only need for a couple of players to get healthy.
If Altuve and Alvarez come back, the Astros bats are going to stun even the most positive fans in this fan base. The Astros bats are not as bad as you think. I am going to show you how good it could actually be.
Here are the Astros xwOBA stats by month and for the season. I am choosing to use xwOBA here because, as we have discussed many times, it is more predictive to future success.
I have also included the Astros projected wOBA performance.
You should see essentially four buckets of performance so far this year and projected performance. The Average wOBA/ xwOBA in 2023 is 0.319.
Year to Date
Great- Alvarez and Tucker
Good- Diaz, Altuve, Bregman, McCormick
Below Average- Julks, Meyers, Pena, Dubon, Abreu
Terrible- Maldonado
Projected
Great- Alvarez and Tucker
Good- Bregman, Altuve, Abreu, McCormick, Diaz
Below Average- Julks, Pena, Meyers, Dubon
Terrible- Maldonado
You may be saying, "Ok that is not really telling me anything." I got you.
IF one projects a lineup that includes the six great and good players and add Abreu and Pena or Dubon, that lineup would hit a wOBA of 0.340. That would be the THIRD in the MLB. Call this the postseason lineup (if the Astros make the postseason.)
You should see that I excluded Maldy from that calculation. Sigh, Yes, I know we can't but let's go one step further and capture the season xwOBA vs. LHP and RHP.
For this look I propose two lineups for LHP and two for RHP. At the bottom you can see the average xwOBA of each lineup. Playing the platoons strategically can lead to very very good results even with Maldy in two of these lineups. I also added a lineup option with Brantley in it vs. RHP.
Yes, it would help for Maldy to play only against LHP. They are still not THIS bad.
Yes, it would help if they did set a smarter batting order. They are still not this bad.
Yes, it would help if Dusty PH for Maldy in close games. They are still not this bad.
Either way this lineup could be a top 3-5 lineup and be scoring 0.5+ more runs per game.
The short message is the bats may seem mediocre right now. The Astros bats will soon be not as bad as you think. It is coming folks - soon.
If the manager mismanages the lineup when Altuve and Alvarez return; then it will be on the owner to fix it.
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LOL are you watching the shit show in Oakland tonight? 8,9,1,2 in the lineup massive black hole.