Pitch Movement Synergy Notes - Houston Astros

Do the 'Stros Care About Synergy?

I’m going to go through all 30 starting rotations, sorted by fewest runs allowed, within the lens of pitch movement synergy. Please read that article first, as these notes assume the reader has the context from that article.

Today, we look at the Houston Astros, whose rotation initially made me question my thesis, but restored it somewhat at the end.

Framber Valdez

Framber is primarily a two pitch pitcher who prioritizes generating groundballs. Unsurprisingly, these two pitches do not synergize well:

For a pitcher like Valdez, it’s not neccessarily about generating bad swing decisions, but getting groundballs on whatever swings he induces. If I were Framber, I wouldn’t change anything.

Cristian Javier

When we look at Javier as a whole, he does a poor job of generating bad swing decisions. Looking at the above chart, he was better in July, then much better (borderline elite) in Aug-Oct at generating bad decisions. Let’s look at him early in the season:

And late in the season:

The only difference I can spot is that the rarely thrown changeup looks like it synergizes better, but on the whole, I’ll admit that I can’t really point to a reason why he was better in the second half than he was in the first, other than a conjecture that his command improved.

I can’t help but wonder if he were to aim a tad lower with the slider and match the early vertical flight of the fastball, if he would be even better, or if that would ruin some other aspect of the pitch’s quality.

Cristian’s late season success is definitely something I want to dig into some more in the future.

Luis Garcia

Garcia’s fastball and cutter synergize quite well together, however, the fastball doesn’t synergize well with either the slider or the curve:

I didn’t catch a lot of Astros games last year, however, based on his movement profile, he should be generating worse decisions with his fastball-cutter combo. It’s possible that he’s tipping the pitch somewhat. The top 3 projected started for the Astros don’t really conform to the principles of movement synergy; for Framber and Cristian, it clearly doesn’t matter. For Luis Garcia, I think it does, and he might stand to benefit greatly if he synergizes his slider with his fastball.

Lance McCullers Jr.

I’m mixing things up a little and showing you the chart before the results. Lance has 3 pitches that are all pretty difficult to distinguish from a vertical movement perspective. He also throws his slider, curve and sinker with equal aplomb. Sample sizes are really small, and not all too sure what to make of it. Overall, he generates approximately average swing decisions, so there may be room for growth if he synergizes better, or increases his vertical separation.

José Urquidy

At last, an Astros pitcher who restores my faith in pitch movement synergy.

Let’s start by looking at the FF/CH/SL combination. All 3 pitches share nearly identical horizontal movement through the first 0.14 seconds, while the slider diverges vertically, the FF/CH pair synergize exceptionally well on both planes.

Following my narrative, he generates very poor swing decisions on all his pitches, except the cutter. This is perhaps why he stopped throwing the cutter after June. As noted in the Dodgers notes, curveballs don’t need to rely on synergy to create bad decisions.

Indeed, Urquidy was the second best at generating poor swing decisions in the Astros’ rotation last year:

I’ll discuss Verlander more when we look at the Mets, but this chart should explain why he grades well by this metric:

Concluding Thoughts

Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier are really succesful despite limited movement synergy. Initially, this made me question everything. Luckily, Urquidy and Verlander restored my faith, and have me thinking that there may be another level to Cristian Javier and perhaps Framber Valdez, with a couple of tweaks.

Next up the New York Baseball Yankees!