1. Welcome! Please take a few seconds to create your free account to post threads, make some friends, remove a few ads while surfing and much more. ClutchFans has been bringing fans together to talk Houston Sports since 1996. Join us!

Astros 2021 Season General Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Houston Astros' started by Snake Diggit, Apr 15, 2021.

  1. Joe Joe

    Joe Joe Go Stros!
    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    May 3, 1999
    Messages:
    23,839
    Likes Received:
    13,895
    The same. He's basically got the same stuff as Garcia minus the cutter, but peppers the zone.

    Hopefully, the PRP injections helped.
     
  2. J.R.

    J.R. Member

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2008
    Messages:
    106,788
    Likes Received:
    154,648


    Gammons: Astros’ Brent Strom, ‘the best pitching coach, bar none,’ hasn’t stopped teaching, or learning

    Watch Gerrit Cole one game, then Luis Garcia or Cristian Javier the next, and then think back to how many roads diverged and how Brent Strom took the one less traveled, and all the difference that made. Walk back 53 years to June 1968, when Strom was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Southern California who came out of the bullpen to win two games in the College World Series.

    That CWS ended five days after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. The Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres, Montreal Expos and Seattle Pilots — and, hence, the Milwaukee Brewers — didn’t exist. But it was a time when an 18-year-old freshman left-handed pitcher, son of a Worcester, Ma., florist who moved his family to San Diego, was empowered by the great Rod Dedeaux on college baseball’s greatest stage.

    Tom House, who went on to change how we thought about pitching mechanics, was a USC teammate of Strom’s, drafted the previous June. Bill Lee, who was in his final season with the Trojans, shagged fly balls in the rain with Strom on a road trip to the University of Hawaii and shared many rambling discussions on ideas both salient and otherwise. All these years later, Ace Adams, whose coaching career was redirected by Strom when they met 30 years later, thinks there is no coincidence involved in the relationships among the USC lefties, and the varied successes they all had. (After all, Lee always said lefties’ brains are on the right side of the head.)

    “They are very different people,” says Adams, who knew Lee from his time working with the Red Sox. “But they each always challenged conventional thought. Some may have thought they challenged authority, but those people were insecure. Brent Strom and Bill Lee never were afraid of someone challenging them, and when they realized they might be wrong, admitting so.”

    Strom cared about pitching, its science, its vagaries. He debuted for the Mets in 1972, and his last major league pitch was thrown for the Padres in 1977. The next year, he became the second pitcher ever to have elbow ligament replacement surgery. “If I’d have been first, instead of Tommy John Surgery, they’d call it B.S. Surgery,” he says.

    He kept pitching in the minor leagues for parts of three years, calling it quits in 1982. Thirty-nine years later, he is in his eighth season as pitching coach for the Astros. “When you don’t know when it’s the first or the 15th of the month,” he says, “you probably chose the right profession.”

    Adams pitched at the University of Michigan in the 1970s — where he struck out Dave Winfield four times in one game — and later was the pitching coach at his alma mater under the late Bill Freehan, who made him Derek Jeter’s primary recruiter. In 1998, Adams was a short-season coach in the Expos system, when he met Strom, who was Montreal’s Double-A coach.

    “He taught me more about pitching than I’d learned in all my time as a player and coach,” says Adams. “Things I’d never thought of.”

    Things Strom had been thinking for decades. Such as when he was in the Dodger organization, where he’d sit around listening to Johnny Roseboro, Joe Black and Ralph Branca. Roseboro talked about Sandy Koufax’s historic 2-0 Game 7 win over Jim Kaat and the Twins in 1965, when, on two days rest and without his curveball, Koufax threw nothing but fastballs. Roseboro talked about a game-changing at-bat against Minnesota’s Bob Allison, when Koufax employed a two-finger grip and struck out the outfielder. Years later, Strom studied that Game 7 performance, and with this chart originally done by Paul Davis — now a coordinator in the Braves organization — it helped him further understand the brilliantly scientific mind of Koufax.

    [​IMG]

    Adams was in his 40s when he met Strom. He understood the Spaceman Lee comparisons. He had no idea that a few years later Strom would be a minor league pitching coach in the Cardinals system, where all the coaches were indoctrinated on the organizational sinker-slider methodology. A few years later, he sat through a presentation in which it was asserted that the batting average on groundballs was .213, while the batting average on fly balls was far higher. Strom found that dubious, researched, and found the fly-ball average was actually .233 — validating his belief in high fastballs, curveballs, the use of all four quadrants. That lines up with what Charlie Morton said he learned from Strom in their time together in Houston: the emphasis on “creating room.” Morton today explains “you create room by elevating above the zone and expanding east and west.”

    A Cardinals development executive named Jeff Luhnow caught on to Strom. And when Luhnow moved on to Houston, Strom and the four-seamer went with him — as did Ace Adams — and, well, the game changed. In the back of Strom’s mind he always remembered that when he was a rookie with the 1972 Mets, manager Joe Frazier warned him that, when it came to pitching, if he experimented with something contrary to what the team preached, “your ass will be outta here.”

    There was, he believed, another way.

    From the very start of their professional relationship, back in 1998 in Montreal, Adams understood “that Brent was on to things I’d never heard of. I thought right away, ‘this guy is the greatest teaching pitching mind,’ and I realize it even more today. He started talking about long toss, back-to-back bullpens (which the Braves were already employing with two ’pens between starts for command and control), the use of the pitching rubber. The relationship between legs and velocity, the creation of angles, how to increase extension, and hence deception, the thinking that goes into pitching. I was blown away.”

    That initial meeting led to Adams working in the Houston organization and now to their remaining in constant contact. This spring, when the Astros were playing in Boston, Strom drove out to Northborough, Ma., where Adams coaches in a program for teens called The New England Ruffnecks, gave a two-hour talk to the pitchers, and then got back to Boston in time to put the Astros pitchers through their afternoon pregame programs.
     
  3. J.R.

    J.R. Member

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2008
    Messages:
    106,788
    Likes Received:
    154,648
    Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snyder met Strom after Snyder was the Royals’ first pick in the 1999 draft and Strom was their pitching coach. When Snyder considered a post-playing career in professional baseball, he traveled to attend clinics and lectures by Strom and Ron Wolforth of the Texas Baseball Ranch.

    “Brent Strom is the best pitching coach, bar none,” says Snyder, whose name is often thrown into that discussion, as well. “He paved the way for today’s young pitching coaches. He embraced ideas, analytics, with a changing mind, a constantly inquiring mind, understanding how quickly the game is always changing. Tom House was an important pitching savant who changed the business. Brent is the modern savant.

    “He has such great respect for the game, and he has unending respect for the pitchers with whom he works. He focuses on the person, not the treatment. He is always honest. He understands all levels of strength and conditioning, and how it applies to each individual. In some ways, he’s a chameleon in his own way, because the evolution of the game and the individual nature of all pitchers requires that. He also respects everyone with whom he works.”

    Strom was brought to Houston by Luhnow and worked with A.J. Hinch as manager; the manager and his pitching coach developed a strong relationship. Hinch left after the 2019 season and was replaced by Dusty Baker, who is a few months younger than Strom. “In terms of credibility and trust, no one brings more than Dusty Baker and Brent Strom,” says James Click, who replaced Luhnow as GM after arriving from Tampa Bay. “Given the circumstances in which Dusty came here, it has worked out really well. They’re two very respectful people.”

    Strom and Baker always credit the conditioning and medical staffs. They appreciate what their analytics staff are trying to do. Strom always thanks Joshua Miller, the assistant pitching coach. Or Javier Bracamonte, the bullpen catcher.

    When Strom arrived in Houston in 2014, there were several people in the organization who were not high on Dallas Keuchel, who had been drafted by Bobby Heck. Keuchel eventually won a Cy Young. Strom has worked with two other Cy Young Award winners, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke, as well as helping Cole develop into one of the game’s best starters.

    “They all had that drive to be great,” says Strom. “They are all strongly motivated, all constantly want to learn and get better. Gerrit Cole constantly worked at his prep work, his pitching mind, his body, his mix — like his changeup that is getting so good. Verlander wants to get better every day he picks up a baseball, and he thrives on walking up onto the mound in the biggest games against the best opponents. Greinke is always creating and thinking.”

    Adams recalls telling Strom about the experience he had working with the Red Sox in 1986 and watching two great pitchers, Roger Clemens and Tom Seaver, go out and play power catch, then go to the bullpen and try to outdo one another. Bracamonte told Strom about how Clemens’ between-starts routine with the Astros was so intense that when his game day came around, Clemens was more relaxed before 52,000 than he was on a prep work day. Strom listened to and studied Koufax. He understands the mindset that drives some to greatness.

    For all the sign-stealing ignominy that hangs over those 2017 and 2018 Astros teams, Strom is justifiably proud of the fact that in the 2017 ALCS the Astros pitchers allowed three runs in 36 innings to the Yankees at Minute Maid. Cole left for the Yankees after the 2019 World Series. Verlander has thrown six innings since the 2019 World Series. Yet in the 2018-21 span, the only team with a better staff ERA is the Dodgers.

    Through Aug. 22, the Astros’ 3.64 ERA was second in the American League behind the Yankees’ 3.63 mark. The bullpen struggled early in the year before Click made three reliever trades, but Baker and Strom had used their starters so effectively Houston was second to Oakland in quality starts (63-52) and innings pitched per start (5.7-5.5).

    And they’re doing it not with Cole and Verlander, but with the 37-year-old Greinke, with Lance McCullers coming off Tommy John surgery, with Jake Odorizzi — who was signed as a free agent going off a season in which he made four starts for the Twins with an 0-1, 6.59 ERA record — and four minimum-salary kids. Beyond Greinke, the rotation has had six pitchers making a combined $15 million. Framber Valdez, considered their second-best starter in spring training, suffered a fractured ring finger in March, and while some thought he might be out for the season, has made it back, albeit for a mere 15 starts through last weekend.

    What is especially fascinating about the success of the current Astros staff is that those four minimum-salary kids — Valdez, Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy and Cristian Javier — were on few top prospect lists.

    Baker points out that Strom goes out of his way to relate to pitchers, all pitchers. Strom is bilingual, and has residency in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. Those who have known Strom over his career believe that his understanding of different cultures enables him to be able to help young Hispanic pitchers make cross-cultural adjustments. It was Luhnow who, in discussing his belief in Strom, once said, “I think he is always seeking the truth and doesn’t stop until he finds it, in the game or in the people who play the game.” Which runs parallel to Snyder’s description of Strom focusing “on the person, not the treatment.”

    As Labor Day approaches, the Astros appear to be headed back to the postseason for the sixth time in Strom’s tenure as pitching coach, a run he calls “the fourth quarter” of his career. It will be Baker’s eighth time managing in the postseason, with the Giants, Cubs, Reds and Astros.

    The “fourth quarter” takes Strom back to his father’s roots in Worcester, Ma. When the games are played in October, Strom wears his favorite Celtics socks. “My father was a Boston fan in every sport,” Strom says. “But when I was a kid, I looked at the scoring leaders in the NBA and saw the top 10 all played for different teams, but the Celtics had four of the players who were 11th to 19th in scoring, so I became a fan of the Celtics.

    “We moved to San Diego, so it was always Ted Williams in baseball. I remember being a teenager living there and being a big fan of the American Football League, and I remember all my friends were rooting for the Chargers when they played the Patriots in the AFL championship (Jan. 5, 1964). I was a big fan of Gino Cappelletti. The Chargers beat them 51-10, but it didn’t change how I felt about the Patriots.”

    They were then, of course, the Boston Patriots.

    In a superb Jake Kaplan piece in The Athletic in spring training 2020, Strom told of reading Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four,” and recalled Bouton writing, “you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

    In the fourth quarter, 53 years after that first College World Series championship, Brent Strom doesn’t know when it’s the first or the 15th of the month. He has never slowed to accept the status quo, he has never stopped learning, he is still challenging conventional thinking, he still looks at all pitchers through empathetic eyes, and thus he has never lost his unique grip on others.
     
  4. HeyBudLetsParty

    Joined:
    May 8, 2010
    Messages:
    1,111
    Likes Received:
    1,957
    Very nice read on Strom, like the tidbit about how he’s bilingual and is working well with the young arms. I think the Astros have made themselves an exceptional organization for talent to develop, situation really matters early on in careers.
     
  5. Marshall Bryant

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2018
    Messages:
    8,764
    Likes Received:
    4,704
    If Urquidy is on track to pitch on September 3, we can go with a six man rotation and give every pitcher 5-6 more starts to prove who deserves to be Post Season Starters and who changes roles for the team..
     
    rocks_fan likes this.
  6. Screaming Fist

    Joined:
    Jul 1, 2018
    Messages:
    2,484
    Likes Received:
    2,792
    Wild that someone at his age and experience is anything but set in his ways and is always looking for ways to learn more about his craft. Must be a very intelligent person.
     
  7. Marshall Bryant

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2018
    Messages:
    8,764
    Likes Received:
    4,704
    SP by ERA+

    Javier 148
    Valdez 146
    Garcia 133
    McCullers 129
    Urquidy 126
    Greinke 125
    Oderizzi 95

    SP by WHIP

    Urquidy 0.957
    Garcia 1.095
    Greinke 1.111
    Javier 1.126
    McCullers 1.249
    Odorizzi 1.255
    Valdez 1.265

    SP by IP

    Greinke 155.2
    McCullers 127.1
    Garcia 123.1
    Valdez 98
    Javier 87
    Odorizzi 79.2
    Urquidy 77.1

    Garcia looks like our ACE. 3 2 3 = 8
    Greinke 6 3 1 = 10
    Javier 1 4 5 = 10
    McCullers 4 5 2 = 11
    Valdez 2 6 4 = 12
    Urquidy 5 1 7 = 13
    Oderizzi 7 6 6 = 19
     
  8. the shark

    the shark Member

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2010
    Messages:
    4,687
    Likes Received:
    3,951
    Garcia splits:

    Home (11 starts)
    era 1.83

    Away (11 starts)
    era 4.87
     
  9. J.R.

    J.R. Member

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2008
    Messages:
    106,788
    Likes Received:
    154,648
  10. awc713

    awc713 Member

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2012
    Messages:
    6,394
    Likes Received:
    5,991
  11. Snake Diggit

    Snake Diggit Member

    Joined:
    Mar 12, 2012
    Messages:
    10,956
    Likes Received:
    14,704
    Houston’s lineup is just so sick right now. 1-8 all hitting over .270.
     
    snowconeman22 likes this.
  12. Wulaw Horn

    Wulaw Horn Member

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2018
    Messages:
    4,426
    Likes Received:
    4,495
    Sure. But that’s no insult to this years team. 2019 might have been the 2nd or 3rd best roster/group I’ve seen in 37 years following baseball. Absolutely amazing team. Very bummed they didn’t fly a flag.
     
    BMoney, desihooper and Snake Diggit like this.
  13. zeeshan2

    zeeshan2 Member

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2013
    Messages:
    48,037
    Likes Received:
    51,257
  14. Marshall Bryant

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2018
    Messages:
    8,764
    Likes Received:
    4,704
    I was a little surprised by my SP rankings after my newest spreadsheet. While I believe the qualifiers on baseball reference are fine for post season awards, they are too limiting for the purposes of ranking. In fact, there are only 48 pitchers total that "qualify' under the 1 IP per team game played criteria. It's totally inadequate for ranking a team staff of at least 5 Starting Pitchers.

    So I Chose 8 GS (Games Started) and managed to "qualify enough pitchers to rank the staffs (min 150 pitchers.) I excludes the 60 Day DL and Administrative leave as well as one player back in the minors.

    Here is my result for the Astros. It's about one level better than I expected.
    #1
    Rnk 21 Cristian Javier 148 ERA+ 9 GS 87.0 IP
    Rnk 22 Framber Valdez 147 ERA+ 17 GS 105.0 IP
    Rnk 30 Luis Garcia 133 ERA+ 22 GS 123.1 IP
    #2
    Rnk 34 Lance McCullers, Jr. 129 ERA+ 22 GS 127.1 IP
    Rnk 39 Jose Urquidy 127 ERA+ 14 GS 77.1 IP
    Rnk 56 Zack Greinke 117 ERA+ 27 GS 159.2 IP (Only Astro Qualifier on Baseball Reference)
    #4
    Rnk 91 Jake Odorizzi 91 ERA+ 18 GS 84.2 IP
     
    #1094 Marshall Bryant, Aug 30, 2021
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2021
  15. Marshall Bryant

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2018
    Messages:
    8,764
    Likes Received:
    4,704
  16. Hemingway

    Hemingway Member

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2016
    Messages:
    6,039
    Likes Received:
    7,993
    So Dusty will probably only start him on the road in the playoffs.
     
  17. Hemingway

    Hemingway Member

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2016
    Messages:
    6,039
    Likes Received:
    7,993
    I don’t understand this. Can you explain this a little better? Does this say that Javier was the 21st ranked no. 1 starter? Sorry if I am being stupid here, but am interested in your rankings.
     
  18. desihooper

    desihooper Contributing Member
    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    May 19, 2000
    Messages:
    5,364
    Likes Received:
    2,556
    With the splits/records this year, I'd almost go with Lance and Zack on the road and the duo of Framber and Luis at home. Would be ballsy to save the vets for later in the series assuming home field advantage.
     
  19. Buck Turgidson

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2002
    Messages:
    84,954
    Likes Received:
    83,138
    Also strange in that Javier hasn't started a game since May 23 and has thrown 3X as many innings out of the pen as he did as a starter.
     
  20. Marshall Bryant

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2018
    Messages:
    8,764
    Likes Received:
    4,704
    Yes. The Rnk is the order in ERA+ for all MLB pitchers with at least 8 GS (games started.)

    Javier qualified based on the first two months and a week. My last number is simply a calculation of the pitcher rotation order if evenly distributed among the thirty teams. ie 1-30 are number one pitchers, 31-60 are number two pitchers, 61-90 are number three pitchers, 91-120 are number four pitchers and 121-150 are number five pitchers. Using 8 GS, I qualified 182 pitchers.
     

Share This Page

  • About ClutchFans

    Since 1996, ClutchFans has been loud and proud covering the Houston Rockets, helping set an industry standard for team fan sites. The forums have been a home for Houston sports fans as well as basketball fanatics around the globe.

  • Support ClutchFans!

    If you find that ClutchFans is a valuable resource for you, please consider becoming a Supporting Member. Supporting Members can upload photos and attachments directly to their posts, customize their user title and more. Gold Supporters see zero ads!


    Upgrade Now