Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Houston Astros
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
After more than a month off of this series, I am back. Sorry about all of that, these got lost during my six weeks of paternity leave.
I’ve now finished my projections for 2023 as well as the ranks for each position, so I am going to somewhat breeze through these and get on to other things. But we’ll give a good idea of what to expect from each player from these final two teams, which are the Astros and the Dodgers.
Pitchers
Framber Valdez
He’s 29 now and came off of his best season in the Majors. He put up a 2.77 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP last season with a 23.5% K% and a 8.1% BB%.
Those were improvements from the 21.9% K% and 10.0% BB% in 2021 - and of course it always comes with a ridiculous walk rate (70% in 2021, 67% in 2022).
His SwStr% also came up to around the league average at 12.1% - which backs up the league average-ish 23% K%. We should project a league-average strikeout rate moving forward, and that’ll work amazingly well if he can keep the walk rate around league average and once again lead the league in ground-ball rate. I think he might even be a little bit too cheap this year in leagues where you don’t get penalized for lower strikeout rates. He’s pretty sturdy, so that helps the raw strikeout total (he struck out 194 in 2022 - a just fine number). The WHIP won’t be phenomenal, but he could probably repeat or even improve on the solid 1.15 mark from last year, but I suppose there’s some downside to that as well if the walks tick back up to what he had been doing for his whole career (10%+).
I think we pretty much know who Framber is, so we don’t have to get into the arsenal. He seems to be one of the safer SP’s on the board and he doesn’t cost a ton. He should rack up the quality starts and wins as well, which is a huge plus in plenty of leagues.
I will finish these with posting the projection comparison for each guy:
Cristian Javier
Javier is not like Framber. He gets a ton of strikeouts but it’s tough to know what we’ll get from him in 2023.
He finished the season extremely well and pitched gloriously in the playoffs, which is boosting up the price a little bit - which I don’t like! However, his K% for the year was insanely elite at 33.2%, but it did come with a bad walk rate of 8.9%. Put those together and you still have a great K-BB%. Guys who strike out 30%+ of hitters can afford some extra walks.
His SwStr% was 15%, one of the best marks in the league. If anything brings him down next year it might be home runs. He had one of the worst ground-ball rates in the league at 27% - this guy doesn’t do anything halfway! Despite the 27% GB%, the barrel rate was still okay at 7.2% - which is a little weird, I probably would expect that to come up a little bit next year.
His arsenal is limited:
He’s one of these young guys that is just sticking with his best pitches. The four-seamer and slider were both great, but yeah I don’t think he can repeat at 15% SwStr% and a .270 xwOBA on a four-seamer he throws 60% of the time. He could change his arsenal a little bit and counteract some of this, but I am probably going to be a little more hesitant on Javier than other people.
All of this said, it’s very hard to not be quite good with a 24% K-BB%. It’s pretty uncommon to see huge swings in K-BB% year-to-year, so we’re looking at a guy to expect a 20%+ mark from, and that’s going to result in plenty of goodness.
His price reflects all of this, of course - he’s no sleeper this year.
You’ll certainly get a really great strikeout rate from him, but as you can see in the projections there are some doubts about him throwing 180+ innings. I could see a high home run rate which hurts the ERA, but more often than not here we’re going to get a good season out of Javier. I’m not sure he should be drafted right alongside some of these other more reliable ace pitchers (he is going ahead of Gausman, Musgrove, and Fried at times).
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