Astros Stats Returns

The cares and troubles of life have prevented me from doing an Astros Stats post, or any post for that matter, over the last several weeks. In that time, the Astros have been decidedly mediocre. It has been glorious. And now, Astros Stats returns, to bring you useless factual tidbits you might already know.

-  When Chris Carter came to the Astros, there was lot of talk about how his swing was ideal for MMP and how he would just punish the Crawford Boxes. So far, it hasn't happened. In fact, he has been absolutely pitiful at home. At MMP, he is hitting only .165/.230/.331 for a wRC+ of 63. On the other hand, on the road, he has hit .297/.377/.594. At home, he hits like a defense-first shortstop. On the road, he hits like a MVP first baseman. Unfortunately, both places, he fields like a DH. A large chunk of the difference can be attributed to BABIP. At home, its a fairly low .250, while on the road its an unsustainably high.392. But whats really interesting in the batted ball profile producing these numbers. At home, Carter is hitting 40% grounders, compared with only 27% on the road. Clearly, Carter's game is not built on beating out infield singles. His career groundball rate splits the difference between the two at 32%. With some regression on groundball rate and BABIP from both ends, expect to see Carter's home and road stats to normalize a bit.

- Hector Ambriz has not been good. What he has been is, however, is important. Using Win Probability Added, Fangraphs keeps track of reliever Shutdowns and Meltdown. Anytime a reliever increases his teams' probability of winning a game by over 6% he gets a Shutdown. A 6% decrease earns you a Meltdown. Surprisingly, Ambriz has earned 12 SD, second on the team to Veras' 17. Less surprisingly, he also had 8 MD, by far the most on the team. In fact, the 8 MD is the 6th most in the league. SD and MD can also tell you a lot about bullpen usage as well. In April and May, Jose Cisnero earned 1 SD and 2 MD. He pitched well, but was not used in very many high leverage spots. Since June 1, however, Cisnero has earned 6 SD, including 5 in consecutive appearances over the last two weeks. That is a perfect illustration of the creation of an effective set up man.

- On Thursday, August 7, 2003, the Detroit Tigers won their 30th game, improving their record to 30-82. They would go on to win 13 more, including 5 in the last week of the season, for a final record of 43-119. On Wednesday, August 8, 1962, the NY Mets won their 30th game, improving their record to 30-82. They would win 10 more games, and finish with a final record of 40-120. On June 26, 2013, the Astros defeated the Cardinals and improved to 30-49. Which one of these things is not like the other, which one of these things just doesn't belong?