HOUSTON — Before the grind came a gift, a team so bad the Houston Astros could afford to slow play their cornerstone third baseman, sit their slugging designated hitter for a day and, Sunday, start something akin to a spring training split-squad lineup littered with rookies and reserves.
The Astros still shut out the sorry Chicago White Sox 2-0, surging to a season-high 11 games above .500 and four games ahead of the fading Seattle Mariners in the American League West.
Maintaining the lead is another matter. Houston’s next 14 games are against the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals, a gantlet that will test a short-handed lineup and a superb starting rotation awaiting Justin Verlander’s return Wednesday. Alex Bregman shouldn’t be far behind Verlander, but projecting Kyle Tucker’s return is a far more difficult assignment.
Here are three takeaways as the Astros enter their most difficult stretch of the season.
A different view of Justin Verlander
The Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks have a uniform problem. Their grays don’t match, meaning they’ll defer to the blue jersey catcher Ryan Wrobleski wore while warming up at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Fifteen minutes later, a team-wide text message sent him scrambling into the clubhouse. The Hooks’ starting pitcher wanted to wear gray, and what Justin Verlander wants, he gets. When Wrobleski rushed inside to change, the future Hall of Famer greeted him with a grin.
“I came back in and he started laughing,” Wrobleski said this weekend. “I’m like, ‘That’s fine by me.’ As long as you do what you need to do and get out of here healthy, I don’t care what you wear. You could wear pink for all we care.’”
Wrobleski is a 20th-round draft pick who signed for $30,000 in 2022. He’s never been in major-league spring training and has played just 43 games above High A. Thursday night in northwest Arkansas, the 24-year-old got the assignment of a lifetime: catching Verlander during his final minor-league rehab start.
Wrobleski had no nerves about actually catching Verlander but did acknowledge apprehension about adhering to the ace’s strict pre-start routine. For example, Verlander wanted to begin his throwing program at 6:35. The uniform text arrived at 6:15, throwing Wrobelski’s timing off.
Once the battery began working, Wrobleski witnessed a clinic in what makes Verlander a generational great. He sought confirmation from Wrobleski on pitch movement and shape, even though Wrobleski said “he knows the answer in his head.” Verlander’s velocity stayed in the low 90s for the first three innings before bumping 95 and 96 during his fourth and final inning.
Topping out at 96 MPH, Justin Verlander dispatched 10 of 11 to finish his night, striking out the side in a perfect 4th
JV’s line: 4.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 41 of 57 P for strikes pic.twitter.com/imCx467wFq
— Corpus Christi Hooks (@cchooks) August 16, 2024
“That was the coolest part for me,” Wrobleski said. “It was unbelievable just to see that ascension and I didn’t even know it was going to happen. The first fastball he threw was 95 and it was a bullet. It just kept getting harder and harder and harder, so I was like, ‘OK, this is what I grew up watching.’”
Wrobleski guided Verlander through four innings. In the seventh, Wrobleski’s season ended. An errant pitch fractured his wrist, completing an injury-plagued campaign in which he played just 43 games, the final of which featured something only a select few can ever claim and a lesson he’ll carry throughout his career.
“The intensity that he brought for a rehab start and the attention to detail for something that he could’ve just coasted through or just thrown his pitches to get healthy, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Wrobleski said.
“It’s kind of something I can relate to, no matter how many games you play or how long your career is, each at-bat or each day, you can manufacture the intensity of a playoff game.”
Three starts spanning 16 2/3 innings isn’t a sample worth drawing sweeping conclusions, but Yusei Kikuchi is in an atypical situation. He is a hired hand guaranteed just six more weeks in an Astros uniform, magnifying every start he makes while testing Houston’s time-honored tradition of turning around struggling pitchers.
“I heard from afar they’re top class, but coming here, I can see it firsthand,” Kikuchi said this weekend through an interpreter. “It’s quite nice.”
Monday night will be Kikuchi’s fourth start since his splashy acquisition last month. The three preceding it provided exactly what Houston envisioned: superb stuff, a slew of strikeouts and some adjustments to Kikuchi’s pitch usage.
Kikuchi sports a 2.70 ERA, 2.93 FIP and 0.96 WHIP after three starts with Houston, each of which featured a new wrinkle in his pitch mix. Upon Kikuchi’s arrival, the Astros’ two points of emphasis were “how to use my changeup” and “how to avoid giving up the long ball,” Kikuchi said.
Yusei Kikuchi’s 3Ks in the 4th.
6Ks thru 4. pic.twitter.com/4vWgR5RT0c
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 7, 2024
Kikuchi surrendered 17 home runs in 22 starts with the Toronto Blue Jays. He’s allowed two across his Astros tenure, a byproduct of better pitch selection when he falls behind in counts, changing the eye level of hitters, and less reliance on a four-seam fastball that opponents are hitting .291 against this season with 13 home runs.
“A lot of emphasis has been just to make sure the fastball is up,” said Kikuchi, who averages 7 feet of extension in his delivery. “If it’s up, regardless of the speed, it looks faster. If I miss low in the zone, it looks slower to the batter. They emphasized the fact that I should throw up in the zone.”
Kikuchi has already thrown his changeup 47 times in three starts as an Astro. He never threw more than 70 in any full month with Toronto this season. Asked why he shied away from the pitch as a Blue Jay, Kikuchi replied, in part, that “at the beginning, I was told if I throw like five of the changeups or so, just to throw off their balance, it would be good.”
“As soon as I came here, they were saying, ‘The changeup is a good pitch,’ and regardless whether it’s a ball or a strike, I should keep trusting it and throwing it,” Kikuchi continued. “I just listened to what they said and it’s been working out.”
Astros officials told Kikuchi his changeup mirrors his slider out of his hand, allowing both pitches to tunnel well and confuse right-handed hitters. Changeups fade away from them and sliders dart in.
Kikuchi’s slider has been his best pitch all season, and increasing the changeup usage has made it even better. Hitters are 2-for-23 with two singles against Kikuchi’s slider since he came to Houston. His changeup is generating a gargantuan 63.7 percent whiff rate, but throwing more of them isn’t a cure-all.
Each lineup dictates a different attack plan. After throwing 25 changeups in his Astros debut, Kikuchi threw 22 combined across his next two. His fastball usage has increased, too. The only constant might be the absence of his curveball, his second-most-used pitch in Toronto.
Kikuchi has aced his first Astros test, but far more difficult ones loom. Kikuchi twice faced a gutted Tampa Bay Rays lineup and a Texas Rangers offense that entered Sunday with a 95 OPS+.
The Boston Red Sox, whom Kikuchi will face Monday, boast the fifth-highest OPS+ of any lineup in the sport. After Boston, Kikuchi is on schedule to face the Baltimore Orioles, baseball’s best offense. That might better indicate whether Houston’s tweaks have turned Kikuchi around.
The Astros employ baseball’s most overworked reliever, a man on pace to pitch in more than half of Houston’s games and absorb the sort of workload that seems unsustainable.
Sunday, in the season’s 123rd game, Bryan Abreu made his 63rd appearance, firing a scoreless eighth inning after manager Joe Espada’s curious decision to lift workhorse starter Framber Valdez at 82 pitches.
“It looked like he probably could have completed the game, but there’s more than just going by the number of pitches, there’s more that goes into that decision,” said Espada, who didn’t elaborate further. Through an interpreter, Valdez said he didn’t feel fatigued and Espada deemed him fine physically.
Managers are privy to more information than the public, most of which they won’t divulge publicly. Removing Valdez after 82 pitches might be rooted in logic to those inside the clubhouse and them only.
Sending Abreu out in relief of Valdez — to face the sixth, seventh and eighth hitters on one of the worst teams in modern history — is the bigger concern.
The scoreboard dictated Espada’s decision — Houston led 1-0 when Valdez exited — but if the skipper can’t trust any other relievers to protect that advantage against a team this pitiful, in which situations will he trust them?
The next two weeks without setup man Ryan Pressly might provide an answer. Espada can’t turn to Abreu or closer Josh Hader every day and will have to expand his circle of trust. Giving Abreu off days — not just an off day — would seem beneficial, but the schedule is unrelenting.
Series against the Red Sox, Orioles, Phillies and Royals loom without any team off days, further magnifying Espada’s decision to use Abreu on Sunday against the woebegone White Sox. The scoreless outing lowered Abreu’s ERA to 2.71 with a 3.41 FIP and 1.22 WHIP.
It is worth remembering that similar chatter surrounded Abreu last year when he made a career-high 72 appearances. Only eight major-league relievers were used more.
Thirty-nine games remain in this season, putting Abreu on pace to shatter last season’s workload. Houston must hope it doesn’t diminish his effectiveness.
(Photo: Erik Williams / USA Today)
