For comparison: OPS .892 Eduardo Nunez .823 Rafael Devers .797 Mookie Betts .783 Andrew Benintendi .764 Dustin Pedroia .764 Mitch Moreland .749 Hanley Ramirez .745 Xander Bogaerts .731 Jackie Bradley Jr. Red Sox have no offensive advantage at any position. Also, I believe Carlos Correa has good range; he's just less consistent than you would optimally like. Altuve certainly has limited range.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/team/stats/batting/_/name/hou/houston-astros Looking over how all our guys did vs Boston, only two guys look in need of improvement. Marwin and McCann. While Correa and Bregman had low averages, they made key defensive plays and key hits. On the whole, well done! .333/.402/.571 as a team.
Didn't know where to put this but figured this thread was as good as any. Anyone check out the leaders in WAR for AL catchers lately? Was shocked to find Max Stassi at the top of the list
Crazy that the Astros are leading the league in runs scored when it seems like the offense hasn't clicked yet until this past series.
Yeah, I think that's because no one other than Springer (not including Stassi) has really matched their output from last year. Altuve has been great again but the power hasn't been the same.
Fangraphs MLB WAR Rankings for Astros (no minimum PA): C: Stassi 6th, McCann 24th 1B: Marwin 22nd, Gurriel 34th 2B: Altuve 1st SS: Correa 5th 3B: Bregman 10th RF: Springer 3rd, Reddick 21st CF: Springer 4th, Kemp 33rd, Marisnick 48th LF: Reddick 24th, Marwin 30th, Kemp 41st DH: Gattis 10th So the order of areas of improvement are LF, 1B, DH, RF/CF
fWAR Depth Chart Projections C 1.5 (7th) 1B 0.7 (17th) 2B 2.7 (1st) 3B 2.1 (8th) SS 3.3 (2nd) RF 1.7 (4th) CF 1.9 (5th) LF 0.7 (17th) DH 0.7 (7th) LF, 1B, DH still projected as nearly average as they were at start of seaon.
Marisnick and Fisher have 209 PA and posted exactly 0 fWAR (and it's only as high as zero because of Jake's defense in center), so yeah the production from LF looks pretty f**king terrible overall, and CF isn't as high as it should be. I still think Reddick will be solid if unspectacular, and Kemp has won me over. I'm not as concerned with that position at the moment. Yuli's complete lack of power thus far concerns me a little, and he still never walks. It's extremely hard to be a valuable 1B solely on your BA. I still think he will start to elevate some balls.
As bad as Fisher and Marisnick have been, Kemp and Marwin have been excellent when playing LF to make Astros production about average there. On Kemp going forward, I still have my doubts as a corner OF. Bat may regress some. He does not have top end speed. He makes a lot of acrobatic catches that Fisher could make on his feet taking a poor route. Bat would be good at 2B if someone wasn't occupying it already and he had glove for it. On Yuli, hopefully he regains power the further he gets away from injury.
I know by "power" you mean homeruns, but I feel like Yuli spanks the ball every time he is up. I'll take a hard ground ball through the infield or a gap-finding line drive for usually a double all day. Especially when he seems so keen on doing it with runners on base. Him batting 5th is perfect, you know at least 1-2 of the 4 guys before him are getting on base. He will knock them in. Granted, a little elevation I think a lot more leave the park, but he is hitting them hard.
He hits the ball hard constantly, and his .301 BA reflects that. But despite being a .300 hitter, his OPS is only .725. That is a very low number for 1B. Marwin has a higher OPS and more RBI's, and nobody thinks Marwin has been very good this season (although he is performing much better). Ultimately I still think some of these line drives will start to become HR's, but if it doesn't thats a position that the team will have to take a look at. At his age Yuli is highly unlikely to start walking, if you don't walk then you need to hit some HR's unless you are gonna hit .340.
George Springer is in a slump, right? OK. But did anyone realize that he has as many walks as strike-outs for June? That he leads the team in walks for June? Even more than Bregman? http://www.espn.com/mlb/team/stats/batting/_/name/hou/split/42
One thing I've never been able to quite rationalize... why/how is Jose Altuve 5th on the team in RBIs? He'd probably be 6th if Yuli weren't injured for a chunk of the season, too. He bats in what should be a premium RBI position, with 2 good on base guys in front of him. He's been healthy (knock on wood). He's batting a ridiculous .410 with RISP (only trailing Yuli and his even more ridiculous .464)... yet somehow that doesn't translate into RBIs. It's not a knock on Altuve, it's just more validation that RBI isn't a great stat...and sequencing matters.
3 things most likely playing into it. Our leadoff hitter tends to drive himself in a lot, and guys in front of him. (he has the same PA RISP as Springer, and less than Bregman) Our 9 spot save for Tony Kemp has been virtually useless He only has 7 HR, and those are typically your biggest source of RBI. The HR's are probably the biggest reason. Yuli has comical RISP numbers, and until that slam on Sunday he only had 32 RBI because he wasn't hitting HR.