If you haven’t gotten a chance to look at the lineup projections, I posted those on Friday. What I am doing is demonstrating over a more extended period of time of how I arrived at my season projection of 85-77. I noticed two things right off the bat. First, I had the worst record projection of any of the analysts on site. Does that make me a pessimist? Well, that wouldn’t be the case when compared to some of the commenters in that article. One commenter had them pegged at 72-90.
I have a method to
my madness. A team of replacement level (or AAA level) players would finish 48-114 on the season. So the default starting point is 48 wins. From there, I go through and add up the regular lineup, bench, rotation, and bullpen to see how many wins those players are likely to be worth. This is obviously an educated guess, but those guesses are based on a combination of past performance and likely future performance. We saw that I projected the regular lineup to likely be worth 20 wins.
I got there by looking at the player’s rate of WAR per 150 games. For the starting rotation we will do something similar, but it will be wins per 180 innings. Naturally, most pitchers don’t get there these days, so we throw in three multipliers. We have a 50 percent projection, 75 percent projection, and 90 percent projection. For each player we simply look at what is most likely and use that as our WAR estimate.
Hunter Brown: 3.3 WAR per 180 INN, 3.0: 90%, 2.5: 75%, 1.7: 50%
Jim Bowden rated the Astros pitching staff as the 18th best in baseball. I could levy a few choice insults here, but this is an analytical space and not a space for snark. The Astros finished 9th in runs allowed last season in MLB and lost Framber Valdez. They added Mike Burrows, Tatsuya Imai, and Ryan Weiss amongst others. A bet on 18th is a bet on serious regression for Brown. Keep in mind that the 3.3 includes that first full season when he was essentially trash. The 90 percent marker is the only one that makes sense.
Mike Burrows: 2.5 WAR per 180 INN, 2.2: 90%, 1.8: 75%, 1.3: 50%
Burrows is one of those players where we see the intersection between magical thinking and reasonable optimism. The Astros pitching brain trust has a way of getting the most out of certain guys. It is not a universal. There are probably two to three pitchers every year that overachieve. Will Burrows be one of those? It is a reasonable guess, but it is hard to base a projection on something that hasn’t happened yet. I will take the 90 percent mark by virtue of the fact that he should pitch 160ish innings on the season. A part of the projection of a playoff berth is based on the expectation that some guys will drastically outperform their projections. I cannot project that without evidence, but I acknowledge the possibility in this case.
Cristian Javier: 2.7 WAR per 180 INN, 2.4: 90%, 2.1: 75%, 1.4: 50%
Everyone that has been a Houston fan for more than 20 years remembers Shane Reynolds. He would not be in the Hall of Fame, but he would be in the Hall of Pretty Good. In 2003 he went to camp with the Astros and threw a bunch of zeroes. The Astros cut him. In my less than analytical days I wondered why. The answer was that he was getting by on lesser stuff and a ton of positive batted ball luck. Sure enough, he went to Atlanta and was 11-9 with a near 5.50 ERA. Javier’s spring reminds me of that Spring. If you look at just the box scores you are made to assume he is back to his old self. The eyeball test says differently. I am taking the 50 percent projection and hoping he gets to that level.
Tatsuya Imai: 2.0 WAR per 180 INN, 1.8: 90%, 1.5: 75%, 1.0: 50%
Those two wins represent the best Japan to English translation of those seasons in Japan. No one really has any way of knowing what is likely. Spring Training showed us a guy that is hard to hit, but may struggle to pitch deep into games. If he makes 30 starts he might be closer to 150 innings than 180 innings. Still, the 90 percent projection seems wiser at this point based on the potential that he has. Like Burrows, he has the possibility of surpassing that considerably.
Lance McCullers Jr.: 2.3 WAR per 180 INN, 2.1: 90%, 1.8: 75%, 1.2: 50%
I have to pick one of these, so the 50 percent is the only one that comes closest to what is reasonable. McCullers is the one likeliest to be replacement level at this point in his career. This is a heart and head kind of debate. Anyone rooting against Lance may not have a soul. He is a guy you can’t help but root for. This is why we talk about him being healthy for the first time in years and the first offseason he wasn’t rehabbing an injury. It is all in an effort to talk ourselves into expecting something that may not be likely. We want to believe great things can happen. If we silence our hearts and go just with our heads we have to admit the truth. A bounce back is not horribly likely.
Spencer Arrighetti: 0.5 WAR per 180 INN, 0.5: 90%, 0.4: 75%, 0.3: 50%
More than one thing can always be true at the same time. It is true that Arrighetti had a stretch in 2024 where he was considerably better than this. He also had a stretch that season and last season where he was worse. You are essentially the sum total of what you do. Managers can massage an extra win here and there by leaning into players when they are hot and pulling away when they aren’t. We will take the 90 percent because what is the actual difference anyway? Arrighetti has the feel of a traditional back end of the rotation arm. He will look really good some days and won’t on other days.
I should not that history shows that more than six guys will make starts this year. The beauty of the WAR model is that those extra starts are more or less negligible in terms of projecting a team’s wins. We will assume they are replacement level because they are currently pitching in AAA and that is what a replacement level player is. Like with Arrighetti, there will be some that look really good in short bursts (Jason Alexander) and others that don’t. The total sum is likely to be zero.
As for these starters, based on the numbers I crunched, these pitchers were worth a projected sum of 10.1 wins. We will round that to ten for simplicity sake. This means that the lineup and rotation are worth a combined 30 projected wins. If you were doing the math in your head, you’d realize that this gets the Astros to 78 wins. Of course, we haven’t factored in the bullpen or the bench. We will have eight relievers and the current four guys on the bench. The rule of thumb with extras is the same. We assume zero. So, let’s see how we get the Astros to 85 wins.
