When a 3-3 road trip and a two–game road winning streak are two of your baseball club’s season highlights to date, you know you’re in the middle of a tough season.
Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope as the last place the Stros (18-31) return to Minute Maid Park on Memorial Day for a six game homestand against first the Reds (20-30) and then the Cards (32-17). Given that the Reds and the Cardinals are two of the best hitting teams in the National League in terms of runs created against average (“RCAA,” explained here), the Stros’ pitchers will have their work cut out for them in keeping the number of runs at the minimum level necessary to give the Stros a chance to win.
And, believe me, runs are a hard thing to come by for this Stros team. This is clearly one of the worst hitting Stros’ clubs of the past 25 years, maybe ever. With just 30% of the season played, the Stros have already scored an incredible 53 less runs than an average National League club would have scored during the same number of games. That’s easily the worst in the National League.
Only two regulars — Bidg (7 RCAA/.297 BA/.353 OBP/.537 SLG) and Morgan Ensberg (6/.284/.381/.535) — have positive RCAA’s, and really only one other regular player — Lance Berkman (-5/.212/.325/.288) — is a good bet to have a positive RCAA after the remainder of the season. Moreover, don’t buy into the common explanation in the mainstream media that the Stros’ hitting woes this season are the result of losing Jeff Kent (3/.261/.351/.483) and Carlos Beltran (3/.300/.349/.465) over this past off-season — even with those players, the Stros would still be tied for the worst team RCAA in the National League!
By the way, although I blew my pre-season prediction for the Stros, at least my prediction (here and here) that not signing Beltran was the right move is starting to look pretty good.
The Stros’ hitting problems have been apparent for quite some time; last season’s late-season surge and playoff run simply covered them up. Thus, the Stros are definitely a club that is in the market for a hitter, and it’s good to see that the mainstream media is now discussing proposed trades that were suggested here a month ago. As noted here, a trade for a slugger to two should be a real possibility so long as the Stros are willing to use a couple of their good, young pitching prospects as bait.
Meanwhile, the Stros’ pitching staff continues to hang in there despite the lousy hitting. After an earlier two-week span in May in which the pitching staff’s runs scored against average (“RSAA,” explained here) dipped a bit, the staff recovered over the past week with a string of strong performances. The staff is now 7th of the sixteen National League teams in RSAA with both the Rocket (24 RSAA-1st in NL/1.19 ERA) and Roy O (10 RSAA-9th in NL/3.23 ERA) performing at a particularly high level. In fact, if you exclude the absolutely abysmal performance of both Duckworth (-12/11.40) and Astacio (-14/10.98), the pitching staff’s RSAA performance would currently be the third best in the National League. Inasmuch as those two hopefully will not pitch much more this season, it is reasonable to expect (barring injury) that the Stros pitching staff’s RSAA will improve gradually over the balance of the season.
Clemens kicks off the upcoming homestand by pitching the Memorial Day matinee game to open the series against the Reds, which should be interesting for no other reason than it pits the worst hitting team in the National League (i.e., the Stros) against the worst pitching team in the National League (i.e., the Reds). After this homestand, the Stros go to New York for three games with the Mets (26-25), and then return home the following weekend for a three game series against the Blue Jays (27-23) before going back on the road for a six game road trip.