Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: Houston Astros
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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Houston Astros Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 96.5
— World Series Odds: 6/1
— Key Additions: Robinson Chirinos, Michael Brantley, Wade Miley, Aledmys Diaz
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: Max Stassi, Aledmys Diaz, Tony Kemp, Jake Marisnick
— Outlook: The rich get richer in 2019. The addition of Michael Brantley and Robinson Chirinos will only make their starting nine even scarier. Altuve, Bregman, Altuve, Brantley, and Correa are bonafide all-star players. The PlateIQ contact quality scores for Gurriel, White, Chirinos, and Reddick are well above league average. It’s quite possible this roster outperforms their impressive 110 wRC+ from 2018, and is without a doubt one of the very best lineups in baseball.
Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole are veteran aces that headline a staff that should get even better as the year progresses. All Josh James did in AA last year was flash a 40.9% strikeout rate that led to a 35.2% rate in AAA and a 31.9% rate in his limited big league action. He’s got big time heat (97.4 MPH fastball velo) and looks to have swing and miss capability (14.3% SwStr). Top prospect Forest Whitley has a multi-pitch arsenal and was “un-hittable” in his spring debut. He figures to make his MLB debut at some point this season and should be a boost to the staff. If these two youngsters can even come close to their hype, it’s going to be a very special season for the Astros.
— DFS Ownership Trends: Houston was the fifth-most popular team in 2018 and featured two of the top 20 most popular hitters on DraftKings (Jose Altuve, George Springer). If you are looking for a low owned Astros hitter, Tyler White was rarely a popular choice (Rank 336). Their pitching staff was rather unpopular to target, with hitters against Gerrit Cole averaging 1.64% ownership and hitters against Justin Verlander averaging just 1.5% ownership. Both marks were bottom 11 among regular starters.
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— Prior to 2018, Gerrit Cole’s career-high mark for strikeouts in a season was 202; last year, he notched his 202nd strikeout in a start on August 5th. He would go on to make nine more starts, totaling 276 punchouts in just over 200 innings. The 11.4% jump in strikeout rate from 2017 (when he posted a 23.1% mark) to 2018 (34.5%) was not only the largest jump in K rate last year; it was the largest jump since 1986, when another Astros arm, Mike Scott, improved his K rate by 13.9% (14.9% strikeouts in 1985; 28.7% in 1986).
— Alex Bregman is a remarkably complete hitter at the age of 24. Last season, he hit 30 homers while walking more than he struck out. The last time a player, aged 24 or younger, accomplished that in a season? Albert Pujols in 2004. In fact, it’s only been done 37 times in MLB history, and the company Bregman keeps on that list – Ted Williams, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays (and it goes on) – should have Astros doing backflips about Bregman’s upside.