,

Astros’ offseason: Home cooking is poisoned?

There was a lot of talk this season about how much better the Astros hit on the road than at home. Supposedly, teams are supposed to perform better in their home park due to familiarity and perhaps because they were built to take advantage of the friendly confines, along with the positive vibes of 3 million home fans behind them.

The talk included discussions about how the hitting eye/ backdrop, which now included more people and less backdrop in certain areas might have been distracting the hometown heroes.

First, was it really a problem? Here are some Astros stats – home and away from 2023 and 2022.

2022  Team Hitting Home Away
Runs 368 – 3rd in the AL 369 – 5th in the AL
BA .257 – 4th in the AL .239 – 7th in the AL
OBP .330 – 2nd in the AL .310 – 7th in the AL
OPS .779 – 1st in the AL .711 – 4th in the AL
HR 116 – 2nd in the AL 98 – 3rd in the AL
2023  Team Hitting Home Away
Runs 365 / 6th in AL 462 / 1st in AL
BA .249 / 6th in AL .268 / 1st in AL
OBP .324 / 6th in AL .337 / 1st in AL
OPS .735 / 7th in AL .797 / 1st in AL
HR 92 / 7th in AL 130 / 1st in AL

In 2022, the Astros somehow scored the same amount of runs (one off) on the road as at home, but in general they were a solidly better team hitting at home, than on the road and showed better power. Move over to 2023 and frankly, this has flipped. They are far and away the best hitting team in the AL on the road in every category, while sinking a bit towards the middle in all categories at home in 2023.

Note: Some folks may point out that the Astros scored only 3 less runs in 2023 than 2022, so they really did not fall off. However, keep in mind that the AL teams on the average scored 54 more runs (more than ½ a run more) per game at home in 2023 than 2022.

Let’s take a look at each of the players who played significant time for the Astros in 2023 and how their numbers compared home and away. For the non-rookies we will also take a look at how their home and away for their careers looked.

Jose Abreu AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 247 .227 .301 .645 .272 6 35
2023 Road 293 .246 .293 .709 .281 12 55
Career Home 2640 .287 .355 .850 .322 127 441
Career Road 2854 .286 .342 .835 .322 134 512

Abreu, the veteran first baseman, was a good bit better on the road in 2023. For his career his slash numbers are remarkably the same home and away.

Jose Altuve AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 168 .268 .380 .779 .320 4 19
2023 Road 192 .349 .405 1.035 .372 13 32
Career Home 3268 .304 .367 .837 .327 109 348
Career Road 3397 .310 .361 .832 .330 100 399

The mighty might, Altuve, was much better on the road in 2023 and like Abreu his career home and away numbers were pretty darned close.

Jeremy Pena AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 285 .242 .314 .679 .280 5 26
2023 Road 292 .284 .333 .731 .371 5 26
Career Home 548 .252 .303 .710 .287 19 61
Career Road 550 .266 .311 .710 .338 13 54

Shortstop Pena, again, had much better slash numbers on the road than at home in 2023, though remarkably his HR and RBI numbers were identical. In his two seasons in the majors his home and away numbers run very close to the same.

Alex Bregman AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 296 .250 .358 .764 .252 11 42
2023 Road 326 .273 .368 .840 .286 14 56
Career Home 1744 .275 .378 .855 .284 78 290
Career Road 1832 .274 .368 .866 .281 87 298

For Breggy, the OPS and RBI numbers hold the biggest difference and they favor his time on the road. For his career, his home and away numbers are eerily close to each other.

Kyle Tucker AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 279 .251 .330 .785 .259 10 48
2023 Road 295 .315 .404 .980 .320 19 64
Career Home 962 .268 .335 .820 .285 42 168
Career Road 1002 .276 .355 .882 .283 60 200

In 2023, Tucker was like Yordan Alvarez on the road and like a slightly above average OF at home. His career numbers lean a bit towards his road numbers, though if you subtract his 2023 numbers his career numbers before 2023 are very similar home and road.

Chas McCormick AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 193 .285 .354 .887 .344 12 38
2023 Road 210 .262 .353 .800 .319 10 32
Career Home 481 .260 .344 .814 .320 26 86
Career Road 565 .258 .330 .762 .330 24 78

Working my way through the list, Chas is the first Astro who had a better 2023 at home than on the road, though it is not a huge difference and if he had had a more even BAbip (batting average on balls in play) he might be close to even.

Yordan Alvarez AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 205 .278 .390 .877 .318 10 41
2023 Road 205 .307 .425 1.103 .294 21 56
Career Home 904 .298 .384 .958 .337 60 186
Career Road 834 .293 .395 .998 .309 69 194

Yordan hit very well at home, but he was transcendent on the road in 2023. Similar to Tucker, if you took away his 2023 season, his numbers would be very even between home and road the rest of his career.

Mauricio Dubon AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 213 .263 .297 .649 .292 2 12
2023 Road 254 .291 .320 .780 .320 8 34
Career Home 566 .258 .298 .693 .284 13 53
Career Road 582 .258 .294 .677 .290 15 67

Dubon had the biggest percentage differential between home HRs and RBIs and those on the road of any Astro. He loved it away from MMP. For his career his numbers are much more even road vs. home.

Martin Maldonado AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 195 .215 .272 .645 .298 7 16
2023 Road 212 .168 .245 .569 .221 8 20
Career Home 1636 .212 .291 .651 .266 57 178
Career Road 1678 .201 .274 .611 .252 54 183

Maldy had crappy numbers at home and double crappy on the road. But it did not result in better HR or RBI numbers at home. For his career he was a bit better at home than on the road.

Yainer Diaz AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 186 .328 .349 .972 .343 14 35
2023 Road 169 .231 .264 .708 .236 9 25

Of all the players with significant at bats, the rookie Diaz was the only one who was much better at home than on the road. The exception that proves the rule?

Jake Meyers AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 153 .209 .284 .611 .275 4 11
2023 Road 156 .244 .308 .744 .291 6 22
Career Home 323 .226 .283 .634 .298 8 37
Career Road 341 .243 .309 .713 .328 9 39

If Meyers had hit overall like he did on the road, he might have earned more playing time. He was below average at home and a little above average on the road. For his career he has been better on the road, but subtracting 2023, his career numbers would have been very even.

Corey Julks AB BA OBP OPS BAbip HR RBI
2023 Home 136 .221 .260 .606 .273 3 14
2023 Road 162 .265 .328 .686 .333 3 19

Like most of his buddies, Julks was a road warrior, putting up significantly better numbers on the road.

There have been some folks who want to just write off-the-road advantage over home as being due to being a purely psychological thing. One or more of the players mentioned feeling that it was a batting eye problem, and it became contagious.

This takes me back to my early days of engineering when I had been given quite a bit of root cause analysis training. I remember reading about a problem a major airline was having. A bunch of their flight attendants were coming down with rashes on their necks and/or faces. Not all of them, but a significant subset. The airline wanted to say it was a kind of hysteria causing it. The ladies were verbally spreading the word about this, and the suggestion of it was causing the problem.

When they did a true root cause investigation into the problem, asking questions like “When did this start?” “Who did it affect?” “Who did it not affect?” and “What had changed?” They figured out that it was only happening to flight attendants on overseas or overwater flights. They also figured out that at some point they had changed out the floatation vests that were used by the flight attendants to demonstrate how to wear them to the passengers. Testing the vests showed there was some type of chemical on them that was causing the rashes for those flight attendants.

The problem here is that I don’t have enough information here or the ability to ask enough questions to pinpoint what is happening.

  • We know as a team the Astros were a much stronger offensive team on the road than at home in 2023.
  • We know this was not true in 2022 when the team was better at home.  
  • We know that, individually, the vast majority of the offensive players listed above were better on the road than at home in 2023.
  • We also know that the veteran players either had very similar career numbers at home as on the road or were better at home.
  • We don’t know exactly what changed, but have been told the hitting background changed before 2023.

This points to this background change as being a possible cause for the gap between home and road offensive stats for the team.

The biggest drawback to that assumption is the following:

2023  Team Pitching Home Away
ERA 4.24 – 7th in AL 3.62 – 1st in AL
WHIP 1.31 – 10th in AL 1.24 – 4th in AL
HRs allowed 102 – 5th worst in AL 99 – T – 7th in AL
K’s 770 – 7th most in AL 690 – 7th most in AL
BBs 261 – 8th most in AL 276 – 4th most in AL

If the hitting background is the answer, why weren’t the Astros’ pitchers benefitting from that at home. It would be expected that they would thrive at home, rather than the reality that the Astros pitchers were also worse at home in 2023 than on the road.

Dan P’s purely speculative explanation. The Astros noticed the changes in the background that the visiting teams did not notice since they were barely exposed to it. This got into the Astros’ heads. I know they are professionals, but it’s like in the movie Roxanne when they tell the new firefighter to ignore Steve Martin’s enormous nose. Once it is in your head, you can’t ignore it. Your eyes go right to it.

Oh well, a lot of work for an unsatisfying end. What do you think?

←
→

29 responses to “Astros’ offseason: Home cooking is poisoned?”

  1. This is an excellent in-depth post Dan. And I don’t have any answers beyond your summary. But during my one visit to MM in 2023, I certainly noted all of the activity out in center. It’s a club zone. Lot’s of signage. And there is the very significant staircase that people are hanging out on. In the winter of 2022, I think a lot of that area was redesigned to squeeze in more fan amenities and expanded food and beverage outlets. But I agree with you. Maybe initial discussion about the redesign by the players turned into annoyance and then turned into a belief the batters eye had been compromised which turned into all those Bregman pop ups!

    One thing for certain, Chas and Yainer were delighted to be on the field and were not going to be held back by the batters eye.

    As for the pitchers having an off year in their house, we know right field is short. And the Crawford Boxes. Visiting teams took better advantage of our park than we did! And we don’t have guys throwing a whole lot of ground balls either, even Framber had a problem keeping the ball out of the air.

    Going forward, I’m sure there will be further tweaks to the eye, even if they just make the hitters feel like improvements have been made. But we need more pitchers to throw more ground balls too. That’s our game.

    Like

    Reply

  2. What do we get from Maurico Dubon in 2024? If we’re going to give him 492 plate appearances again, he’s going to need to improve his plate discipline. His .308 OBP has got to grow. One of the bright spots from Jeremy Pena is that he went from .289 in 2022 to .324 in 2023. I have hopes for an improved Pena in 2024. And remember Yuli from 2021 when he won the batting title. It was all about selectively. His .383 OPS demonstrated that.

    Hearing that Jake is possibly on the trade block (no real surprise) it seems Frenchie would benefit. We really want him out there creating havoc running around the bases, but we need him to do it more frequently, using the base on balls to his advantage. If he can adjust, he’ll also see a lot more pitches to hit.

    Like

    Reply

    • Daveb
      – To your point – Dubon’s best month was August .339 BA/.394 OBP/ .919 OPS when he drew his most walks. He was better the second half of the season than the first even though he was playing all over the place after being on 2nd base so much early. With Brantley gone and Meyers may be gone you would think it would help him
      – Yeah maybe Diaz and Chas were in “what backdrop problem – just give me at bats” mode
      – The Astros gave up 10 more homers at home than they hit – but it sure seemed like more and possibly more clutch homers

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. It was such a problem for me in 2023 that I made up my mind to neither attend a game at Minute Maid or waste my time watching one on TV. Every time I attended a game at MMP, they not only lost, but got totally humiliated. Pitchers did not pitch well, hitters looked lost. Even the defense was lackluster. Why would the FO expect people to keep spending money on – or investing time in – such a clearly defective product? Whatever the problem is, they need to fix it – or MMP will become Oakland-Almeda County Coliseum East.

    Like

    Reply

    • OMG – not Oakland. I’m hoping as Dr. Bill says below that Mr. Espada figures out a way to get a bit more inspiration out of the troops all the way around but especially at home.

      Like

      Reply

  5. I’m much more inclined to blame psychological issues on this than anything. It’s anecdotal and I’m not sure how to quantify it but for me I perceived a lot more going through the motions at home than away. It also seemed like we played more poorly defensively at home with more mental faux pas. I don’t recall which season it was but the team was horrible when they came home from a road trip and had a day off before the first game of the subsequent home stand. If I recall correctly they were something like 2-10 and outscored something like a bazillion to one. Often times it was before a big Friday night crowd. My impression was that the team ought to be ashamed of themselves for the effort they showed at home and seemed to take the fans for granted. I felt that way this year, especially when we got smoked by the A’s and Royals. I hope Espada can find the magic and reject excuses.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Hey Dr, Bill – good to hear from you. One thing we don’t know but wish we knew – did the players notice that a kid like Diaz, who was hitting Yordan-ish at home (.328 BA/ .349 OBP/ .972 OPS) was sitting most of the time? Did they say, if the manager doesn’t care to give his best I won’t either?
      Well, time to move on.

      Like

      Reply

      • I’m dying to write several paragraphs, but I’ll simply say that the Astro players wanted the best team on the field. For goodness sakes, they wanted to play in the World Series! I think much of that clubhouse leadership and mentorship was a bunch of horseship. I said this once before. Does anyone ever recall Diaz and Maldy sitting next to each other in the dugout, maybe discussing an in game situation? I don’t.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. Today is the day a number of reasonably affordable major league players hit the open market. It is decision day for teams to tender arbitration eligible players.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. One of the reasons the Astros might be talking to teams interested in Jake Meyers is that they still have Corey Julks. Julks could fill Meyers role, whatever that might be. I still think the Astros might look for a LH hitting outfielder to fill a void until one of their prospects comes in and claims that job, hopefully by 2025.
    Bob Nightengale thinks the Astros are going to make Altuve a lifetime member. But he suggests that would be at the expense of not being able to do the same with Bregman.

    Like

    Reply

  9. I don’t really know anything about a Michael Schwab, on “X”. However, he is reporting on a Burt Steele “X” posting, again someone I don’t know anything about, but the gist is Steele is

    “Hearing that Brown, McCormick, Leon, Urquidy, Bryce Matthews might need buy winter jackets because it’s cold in the Windy City of Chicago.”

    If so, perhaps Luis Robert, Jr, whom a certain Yordan Alvarez has been chatting with, could be coming to the Astros????????

    Like

    Reply

    • That would be a bad move in my opinion. Robert is going to be more expensive than Chas when that time comes (I believe they become free agents the same year), and while I am not gonna say Chas is better he has a better OBP, and that matters. You throw in Brown and Urquidy and I can’t support this deal for a guy with a .318 OBP, homeruns or not.

      Like

      Reply

    • Deal would be for Cease and Robert. Cease has two years of arbitration remaining. Robert is signed for two years (12.5M and 15M) and has two more years of team options at 20M. I would make the trade.

      Like

      Reply

      • Well that would be a trade to consider more seriously than what Schwab contended. Still gives me pause on a couple of fronts. We’ll find out soon enough if this rumor has any legs.

        Like

      • I would not. This team is already tapping the cap. They would be trading 3 key contributors for 2 vastly more expensive players that have their own holes in their games. Are Cease and Robert better than Chas, Urquidy and Hunter? Absolutely. But you condemn your bullpen to internal options after they chew up the rest of your space, and both underperform. Robert has a lower career OBP than Chas, and strikeouts at very high rates, and has quite an injury history. Athlete, most certainly. Upgrade, most certainly. Fit for THIS team, I don’t know. And Cease, great fastball, not great results.

        Of course it won’t matter what I think. Dana is gonna do Dana. But I would file it under oopsy daisy, I mean, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Urquidy actually has a better season next year than Cease had this year.

        Like

  10. I don’t like that guy Schwab. He likes to fan flames. Negative quotes from him numerous times about the Rangers. They just happened to beat us convincingly. Earlier in the week he insisted an Astros must have is Dylon Cease, he of the lifetime 1.305 WHIP. Burt Steele is allegedly a former NFL exec.

    Robert certainly would give us one of the best defensive CF’s in the game. The 128 OPS+ is impressive too. So is the 12.5 million in 2024, the 15 million in 2025 and the 20 million in 2026.

    Chas posted his own 130 OPS+ for 753K in 2023. No, he’s not the same defensive player, but Brown and Urquidy and Matthews too? Pedro Leon is not a worry, but I’m not adding all those other guys to a deal that would further inflate the payroll and further dilute our pitching staff.

    I’ll wait on Hyman or another “established” expert to rumor this deal.

    Like

    Reply

    • This is a compliment to the Astros who always have low picks in the draft and smaller pools of money to allot to signees. Pin a medal on him and his boss and start searching for his lucky replacement.

      Like

      Reply

  12. The Astros were hot after Robert when he was an international free agent.
    The Astros tried to work a deal this past July for Robert and Cease before the deadline. Are they taking another shot at it?

    Like

    Reply

  13. I’m probably getting ahead of myself.

    Robert for Chas. It’s 27.5 million for the next two years for Robert. Chas might be 7.5. But Robert is an anchor for centerfield. And in years 3 and 4, the club option at 20 million a year might be cheap ultimately. But as Steven already noted, he can be a whiff machine too, so he’ll frustrate for stretches. And he sure won’t take a walk.

    Cease has had one big year and he still led the league in walks. Brown had a rough rookie season. Cease was far worse as a rookie. Would we be giving up on Hunter prematurely for two years of a guy that remains a question mark?

    Brice Mathews. He intrigues me. Not much to go by yet, but in 33 A ball games he showed a mature eye and posted a .373 OBP with a reasonable OPS of .740. And Urquidy, I don’t think he should be considered a throw in yet.

    I know I’m a homer, but I’m not sure about this hypothetical deal.

    Like

    Reply

  14. Robert had 446 PA as the three hole hitter last year and drove in 80 runs off 38HR. 27 of those were solo shots. Overall he hit .212/.296/.407 with RISP. Here are his splits for halves:
    first: 89G .271/.330/.569 26HR 51RBI 8SB 21BB 107K
    second: 56G .251/.291/.498 12HR 29RBI 12SB 9BB 65K

    It just feels like another Carlos Gomez trade waiting to happen. Personally, I like the idea of moving Brown to the 7th inning and trying to find more bullpen depth this offseason.

    Like

    Reply

    • Good post Devin. Hypothetically of course, I’ve been leery of giving up on Hunter so quickly for the 2 year rental Cease would be. Which Cease do we get?

      Robert looked more attractive, but I had not looked at splits as you have. And our man Chas did put up the 130 OPS+ against the much more expensive guy with a 128 OPS+.

      Bottom line, if there are serious talks, I don’t see a clear win here for the Astros. It would also mean we’re not as high on Hunter as we were a year ago and the club is probably thinking Chas has given us a career year.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment