http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/2013-houston-astros-already-making-history-002131190--mlb.html [rquoter]the Astros have set a record for most strikeouts in a three-game series to start a season. all three Rangers starting pitchers set career highs for strikeouts against the Astros. The entire NL East has 35 Ks coming in to Wednesday's games.[/rquoter]
Brett Wallace leads the majors in strikeout with 11 (15PAs). Rick Ankiel is tied for 2nd with 9 (11PAs) Carter is tied for 5th with 8 (15PAs) Pena is tied for 9th with 7 (14PAs) Combined they have walked once. That is a 35:1 K:BB ratio.
Ankiel,Pena, Wallace and Carter are the K demons right now. If they don't improve they won't be here much longer. Averages per 700 PA Corporan 182 Strikeouts Castro 141 Strikeouts Cedeno 138 Strikeouts Dominguez 106 Strikeouts (very low) Gonzalez 96 Strikeouts Altuve 84 Strikeouts ( also very low and he will have the most PA on the team) Other players F. Martinez 153 Strikeouts J.D. Martinez 153 Strikeouts 700 PA is about how many PA each position will get over the course of the season, given our bad offense, we will actually be much lower than that. Some positions will get more, some less, these are just rough numbers Adding Dominguez, Altuve, splitting the SS, and the catchers. That's about 450 K's. That means the other 5 positions would have to average 216 K's. Only 13 guys have ever gone over 190. Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, and Ryan Howard have combined for 10 of them, all of whom are big time sluggers. Considering 4 of our starters have decent or very low strikeout rates, unless we continue to run 5 historically bad, unproductive whiffers out there, which even the astros won't do, we aren't gonna come close to this. The AL record may be do-able though LOL.
Carter is 26 and in his first real shot at major league at bats hit 16 hr's last year, in 343 career major league at bats he has hit 19 HR . . .now i'm not saying this guy is going to be a great hitter, not even saying he is gonna scratch out a long average career . . .but he isn't going anywhere anytime soon
Three of those were off season acquisitions intended to fill gaps and provide leadership. Luhnow is looking less than stellar on these moves, abeit only 4 games have passed however.
Watching Freiman on the A's last night really pissed me off knowing we kept Wallace and Pena over him.
The thing is, how good would Pena and Wallace look right now if they were facing the likes of Cedeno, Ambriz or Veras?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>AP: All but one starting pitcher the Astros have faced in their first games has either set or tied a career high for strikeouts against them</p>— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/321047684402278400" data-datetime="2013-04-07T23:51:47+00:00">April 7, 2013</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Astros now have 74 strikeouts on the season compared to 9 walks. The 2010 D-Backs struck out 44 times and walked 21 times after 6 games.
We are in for a "special" season .... At least there is hope in a few years. Still THIS team is expansion bad.
