[Wall Street Journal]The Astros Hit on a Winning Formula

Boom.

 

This is a far better formula than both leading the league in HR's AND strikeouts.... although that team still made it to the playoffs.

 

Love, love, love this article. Thanks for posting.

 

Think it's an accurate portrayal of what happened and what is happening. But I would also add that it appears to me that additionally our superstars like Altuve have increased pitch discipline this year and are being less aggressive outside of the strike zone. Springer too, but what is interesting to me about all of this, and I understand where we are going with it, is that Springer is a fascinating outlier as it seems to me he is the only guy who his still swinging for the fences ( and probably Gattis/Reed ), and yet George is having a career year. He did adjust his swing, and he's making more contact, but he remains an all or nothing type of plate appearance for the most part. Which makes me wonder if he still has another level in him when he dials it down, and that is scary, and yet, I don't want him to mess up a good thing right now, so I am torn on where he should be headed going into next year.

 

So much for the "strikeouts really don't matter" logic. On with the new! Who would have thought that putting the bat on the ball could lead to good things?

 

This is the MLB equivalent of what the Rockets are doing with 3 pointers. We are blessed to have two innovative franchises in the same city. The Texans however...

 

There isn't a person alive that would say striking out is better than not striking out.

The article is a bit of a misnomer. It isn't as if we just decided to start putting the ball in play at the cost of power. We've done it without sacrificing any power. That's not some revolutionary formula, literally every team would like to do that. Actually making it happen is the hard part.

 

I know many disagree with me, but the Astros put together the best team they could in 2015 on a limited budget without compromising future significantly. It is amazing how quickly Astros jettisoned the power, no contact guys after making playoffs as if the power, no contact guys were just a quick fix.

 

They accepted what they had and made the most of it. But they cared - I've told the story repeatedly on here about conversations with both Luhnow and Stearns before '13 (or '14 - whatever year it was) season where they told me point-blank Springer was being held down because of his strikeouts.

 

Ha, agreed. We found the secret! The trick is to have great pitching, great defense, and a great offense! That will end up winning more games than a team with bad pitching, bad defense, and bad offense!

It is impressive though, that we've made the balance work throughout the lineup. We've got 6 guys with double digit homers already, and the guy who lead our team in home runs last year is currently 11th on our team this year.

 

Absolutely...and they were way ahead of schedule. My comment wasn't meant to poke at that team.

I just remember hearing over and over again that year that they decided strikeouts didn't matter...they led the league in them but didn't care...at least that was how it was portrayed. Now they're saying something very different. Honestly, I don't care that much...just think it's funny.

For the record, I think strikeouts matter a lot. I prefer putting the ball in play.

 

Was it that quickly though? The team they fielded last year still featured much of the same.... and the guys they "jettisoned quickly" (Rasmus, Carter, Castro) all had ample opportunity to play, even after payroll had started to go up and winning commenced.

All along, the mantra was that strikeouts are less damaging when you can supplement with power. Power was a rarer commodity.

I know you want to deny that the organization/front office did try to optimize that approach... which did work better than anybody would have expected... and this was done solely due to payroll restraints.

Like most things, truth somewhere in the middle. They did have a decreased payroll.... but they did end up preferring the power guys (at the expense of contact) over just contact guys.

 

They went from worst-to-first in K's in 2 years without sacrificing power. I think that's pretty fast.

I thought it was the exact opposite - power was absurdly cheap, and thus they were able to get those kinds of all-or-nothing hitters at relatively low cost. (see what Chris Carter signed with after hitting 40 HRs last year) It created a lot of inconsistency, but did the job relatively well compared to cost (the moneyball philosophy of identifying undervalued commodities).

 

They preferred the power guys they could acquire to the contact guys they could have acquired at that time within the framework of the constraints they were given. It was brilliant and lead to a playoff run on a cheaper budget than any other team in 2015. I don't think it is a coincidence that teams that had guys that were balanced or contact guys had higher payrolls. Knowing they had a team that looked good towards the future, they promptly let Carter go before 2016 season by not offering him arbitration and offered Rasmus an offer they expected him to decline to get a pick.

First "big" contract Luhnow offered to a position player was Gurriel...which was worth more than Astros paid for Gattis, Gomez, Castro, Valbuena, and Rasmus combined in 2016. It would take a monumental shift in value systems to go from strikeouts are meaningless to making hugest financial investment in his tenure on an unproven international guy with mediocre power and all contact.

Luhnow's actions before Gurriel's deal and after are all consistent with a guy that values players on a WAR basis. It is possible that he's shifted his value slightly from power to more contact, but it is obvious he still values power...he just likes it with contact.

 

Agree.

 

The Astros are doing very well.

If they keep this up, then they can win the World Series.