Most teams play the AAA shuttle game to cover up for stuff like that rather than carry 3 long men. If they are that worried about the rotation, they probably should pay up for Quintana and solidify one spot. I know there are real durability questions but that's basically planning for 4-5 IP per start.
I've only heard in rare situations that a manager needs to get his bullpen work and in those situations, you just celebrate. Most of the time, a team has more opportunities for bullpen than fresh arms in the pen. That said, I wanted Hoyt and Gustave instead of one of them and Peacock. Keeping Peacock, to me means Astros are expecting to yank starters earlier more for one reason or another. Also, McHugh and Paulino both being down at moment may make Astros more leery of giving up a starter or a multi inning reliever ( Devenski and possibly Feliz are likely guys given spot start over Peacock depending on rest).
It would not surprise me if the Astros expect 2-3 starters not making it past five through a rotation on average early in the season. Again, I'd prefer others to Peacock and like you said...shuttle from AAA.
I think with Peacock having no options left, they don't want to give him up for nothing. If they do make a trade for a guy like Quintana at some point, it's possible it would cost a little of our pitching depth, making Peacock a guy with a more important role
Who are these "3 long men"? Devo is not anymore, as per their plan. Feliz maybe, he has the ability to do what Devo did last year (he also has the ability to go out there in short relief and strike out the side in any inning you put him in), but who knows? Peacock is the one guy who they can use as I said in the early innings to go 4ish and save some of the pen. And then not pitch for a week, or make a spot start (Feldman was great at this). But again, for the first month of the season they absolutely need that until they can figure things out. Hell, Martes may be in the rotation by May 1 for all we know. And like Beard just said above...let Martes get regular work in AAA, Peacock is the last man in the pen until....
Yea i'm not a big fan of Peacock, but we are talking about the last man in the pen. Certainly not a spot we want a legit prospect to be in, and not an important enough spot (yes it has some importance but...) to get overly worried about. If it means keeping an asset around a while, then i'm fine with Peacock starting the year as the long man. Won't hurt Gustave or Hoyt to spend a little time at AAA
Yeah; I would expect LMJ to be on a fairy strict pitch/start count; I think they'll be initially cautious with Kuechel, too - they need both to be healthy (and dealing) come September.
For LMJ, I think a more important injury prevention strategy is develop his ability to pitch off the fastball rather than the curveball. His curveball usage rate screams injury. If he gets hit early on but develops that ability, it'll pay huge dividends for both the playoffs and future seasons.
Caveat: Not a doctor, pitch guru, etc. Paraphrasing stuff I've read over last year or so, but make not representation that it is true or not as I have no idea. "Curveball usage by itself is not a bad thing regarding injuries. Mechanics is the key. Anecdotally, guys with high curveball usage don't typically have the best mechanics for whatever reason. Having guys with bad mechanics throw more fastballs doesn't fix the underlying problem." LMJ has been working to pitch in a manner that places less stress on his arm and he has been enthusiastic that doctor has not said he needs to throw less curveballs. Not sure if Astros coaches are working to minimize CBs, though as this was from an off-season interview.
On the one hand, fangraphs projected the stros rotation as the 3rd best in the AL behind the Red Sox and Indians. But it just doesn't look like an imposing or scary
Fangraphs Positional Rankings SP - 8 RP - 7 C - 5 1B - 16 2B - 1 SS - 1 3B - 10 LF - 23 CF - 5 RF - 7 DH - 9 (out of 15) Pretty damn good. Speaks to the job Jeff has done building a deep, strong roster.
Most rotations have holes. At the end of the day, that is a pretty solid 1-5 when healthy even without McHugh. Problem is, if 2 arms go down or at least one of Keuchel/LMJ doesn't bounce back to be that stabilizing force at the top, the rotation starts to look very shaky.
Kaplan looks like he's one of those guys that gets in arguments with every person that comments on his Twitter. There has already been a lot of the "I'm just the beat writer, I'm not a fan" kind of talk from him.
And while I doubt Fangraphs uses little emojis in their analysis - if they did, 3B would probably have a rocket next to it as Bregman obviously has a chance to push that much higher if he can build on what he did last year.
On paper, it's actually a *really* good rotation: Kuechel is just a year removed from winning the Cy Young; LMJ has one of the best young arms in baseball; McHugh is a consistently league-average pitcher; Morton has TOR stuff; Musgrove has MOR ceiling; Fiers is dependable depth... The question is health. If healthy, the Astros' rotation will be one of baseball's more elite groups.
Oddly, a few at Fangraphs are worried about Bregman based on exit velocity and launch angle data. Bregman was getting a lot more value out of balls in play than other players were with similarly hit balls based on those two stats. In other words, Bregman may have gotten a double out of ball hit at 90 MPH at a 25 degree angle when that is usually an out (just made up numbers and not sure what the result usually is for that EV and angle). I think they are using way too small a sample size to be worried, the data they used didn't incorporate horizontal angle and park configuration, and we don't know how repeatable this data is yet.
I think a takehome from the fangraphs data is that we shouldn't pencil him in for all-star level production, which is what he put up after that horrid start. He'll probably still be an above average 3 bagger.
Something look off about the announced starting rotation, and then I realized I completely missed the news that McHugh was starting the season on the DL.
