February 28, 2024 • 11 mins
Chandler Rome of The Athletic joins The A-Team for his weekly visit. He talks about the real chance that Yordan Alvarez is batting second this year for the Astros. Chandler talks about the thought process behind them going this route. Plus, he talks about how the Astros pitching staff could be stacking up for the season.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Chandler rom of the Athletic covers theAstros in Major League Baseball and is with
the team down in FLA as they'reabout to push through Week one of games
played earlier today. Handful of playersthat likely have an impact to make with
the twenty twenty four Astros were involved, and obviously from him, we also
need an update on the injured armsof the Astros, those who've had hiccups
(00:22):
and otherwise. But yeah, let'sstart with the super important month out from
his opening day lineup being set.Chandler, what do you think about jo
Aspotta's thoughts about how he might lineup one, two, three, and
four with Jordan Alvarez at two.I think it's pretty fascinating. I think
(00:43):
it's certainly a more modern twist onkind of how modern baseball views a batting
order. Now you look across theleague, Corey Seeger hits second for the
Rangers, Mike Trout normally hits secondfor the Angels, Aaron Judge normally hits
second for the Yankees. I thinkFreddie Freeman hit second for a good bit
of last year with the Dodgers.I don't know what they're gonna do with
(01:03):
a Tony now. But you getthe point, like the best hitter often
hits second. I mean, analyticshave determined that if you hit second,
you can get the most plate appearancesthat you can net so many more plate
appearances hitting second. I do thinkthat there is a there's a healthy debate
to be had just given given theprofile of both Alvarez and Tucker. Maybe
(01:27):
hitting Tucker second wouldn't be a badidea either, just because he does provide
you a little bit more on thebasis he can steal, basis he's a
I'm not saying you're on slow byany stretch of the imagination. I think
he's more athletic than maybe we getto see on a on a regular basis,
just because he's normally the hing andhe's normally hitting home runs. But
(01:49):
I think he's more athletic than maybemeets the eye. And I don't think
he's a liability on the basis.But I just think Tucker's probably a better
base runner, just more heads up, can steel bases go first, third
easier. But I don't think there'sa wrong answer. I think they're both
very good. But I mean,I think it boils down to, you
know, basically what I just described. You know, you go on,
Alvarez is one of the three orfour best hitters in baseball, and you
(02:12):
look where the other best hitters inbaseball hit in batting orders. They're usually
hitting second. And that's kind ofthe place where in the modern game you
put your best hitter. And Joespot is going to go ahead and put
his best hitter hitting second. Isit just as simple as he gets more
at bats, just tear everything elseaway. I mean, I think that
that's the that's the root of it. Yeah, I think, you know,
(02:34):
I'm I'm of the I'm of thecontroversial opinion here that you give your
best hitters the most at bats whatAnd I think it's crazy certainly when when
you put when you put Alvarez fourth, I mean, look in the cleanup
spot, he would have more opportunitiesto drive in runs, he would have
more opportunities to clear the bases.There's opportunities to come up with more men
(02:54):
on base than just one and youknow, do more damage. But I
think the I think getting him inthe box more outweighs that sort of outweighs
that that concern. And you know, you look if if Joe lines the
lineup up like he wants to withAltuve, Alvarez, Bregman and Tucker.
(03:15):
Again, it's not like Kyle Tucker'ssome slouch. Kyle Tucker's just I mean,
he's he's a little bit just thenumbers, He's a little bit worse
than your do and I use worsein the in the most in the nicest
way possible. It's not like KyleTucker is some slouch. I mean they
They've got a very good cleanup hitterin Tucker. So I was we were
debating this a couple of us downhere, a couple of the reporters were
(03:37):
debating this. I kind of justsaid, it's kind of difficult to f
this up with with these four guys. When you have these four guys,
it's kind of difficult to screw thisup. And you know, whatever order
that they they end up going,you know, those four guys are going
to be the catalyst to this offense, and it should be their pre it
should be their priority to get theirbest hitters the most games. And that's
(04:01):
I think there's one added element toit potentially in that you know, there
were fifty six games last year whereKyle Tucker batted fifth, well, there
might not be any games where hebats below fourth, certainly if this initial
lineup construction has him fourth, andlike you said, you obviously could toy
with the idea of flipping the twoof them two and four, so it
(04:21):
could likely also mean additional at batsoverall long term for Kyle Tucker. Let's
talk about the pitching side of things. The guys who've been giving the ball
first in each of their spring traininggames have obviously fared very very well.
Obviously they must feel pretty good abouttheir stuff. Renelle Blanco is going to
be the first to go for asecond time when he gets the ball tomorrow.
(04:44):
Did anything other than the results standout about how Orkidi threw, or
Hunter Brown through or Renel Blanco forthat matter, who pretty clearly is there?
I guess, first guy in lineto fill a starting role should he
be needed early in the season.I think a more intrigue was kind of
what are Keaty said after his outingthat you know a couple of things.
One that they kind of figured outhe was tipping pitches last year with his
(05:06):
glove, where he was squeezing hisglove or he was holding his glove a
certain way when he was gonna throwa pitch, and to the point where
they were I don't think paranoid's theright word, to the point where they
were concerned that when they played inthe Alds that Carlos Korea and Christian Vasquez
had picked up on it, becausethose are two guys that are really,
really good at that, that arereally good at picking up tells, at
(05:27):
picking up tips. And that's why. I don't know if you remember when
he pitched in Game four at targetField, but he was manipulating the pitch
clock a lot like he was quickpitching. He was varying his times,
and it was to distract them.It was basically to not let them.
It was to throw them off becausehe thought that Correa and Basquez had tipped
the Twins off to what he does. So he worked this offseason on getting
(05:51):
that, on getting that rectified.They did work on it during the season
last year. But there's only somuch you can do in the middle of
the season. But were Kety,It's always going to be about, you
know, can he be deceptive enough. He's always going to throw strikes,
but he's throwing the good change up. You know, he's got the sinker
now to help him against Righty's righthe's have really given him trouble the last
(06:11):
couple of years. The fact thathe added that sinker that he can you
know, throw inside the right handedhitters. Just get more weak contact,
get more ground ball outs, getmore early contact outs. I think that's
going to help. And then youknow, you look what Hunter Brown did.
Hunter Brown just filled up his zone, which he liked to see from
him. You know, it's kindof the lingering concern with him is how
(06:32):
much is he going to be aroundthe strike zone. He was around the
strike zone a ton of his debut. So again it's only one outing.
He's gonna he won't make a traditionalstart in his next down, and he's
going to piggyback fromber Beldez on Friday, and that's for no other reason than
you know, they just want tokeep everyone on turn. They want to
keep Hunter Brown on a every fifthday schedule, and that's his day to
(06:53):
pitch, and they want, youknow, Fromber's got the seniority a little
bit and he's going to get theactual start. The Hunter will come in
out of the bull and kind ofpick him up. So and Ronel Block
has thrown well too, So yeah, they have to be encouraged a little
bit early on with what they've seen. But I think again, you know,
I wrote this last week and it'skind of its kind of obvious that
I really think the keys of thisrotation and maybe the keys to like the
(07:15):
overall success of this season really hingeon fromber Belt as in Christian Hobber.
If they can have bounce backs,if they can pitch to the level that
I think the Astros anticipated them pitchingto last year, I think that makes
this rotation all all that much moredeep and all this on all that much
more imposing to get through. Youknow, it's interesting because I mean fromber
(07:38):
was on the mound for Game sixwhen the Astros beat the Phillies. Now,
they obviously had outrageously fantastic performance fromthe bullpen after him, but that
was the guy that couldn't find himselfin the ALCS this year against the Rangers,
and you just win one home game, you back in the World Series
against an eighty four win Diamondbacks team. What is the one thing for him
(08:01):
and the one thing for Christian JavierWhen you say that that they need to
find that they need to rediscover orwhatever it is Fromerveldez has to go back
to getting ground balls, like weknow, like the Aschers nov Canon.
I mean, look, you stilllook at him, he led, he
led the American League and ground ballrate last year, but you look at
his sinker specifically, and the groundball rate has steadily declined on that pitch
(08:24):
specifically the last two or three years. They think they found something with his
release point, kind of how hereleases the ball and how he manipulates the
ball where it comes out, becausethat, like the sinker, is such
a movement based pitch and if itmoves down and if it has the sink,
then it's going to get ground ballouts. I think what kind of
(08:46):
goes hand in hand with it ishim throwing harder. You know, he
averaged I think ninety five miles anhour with his sinker last year. It's
better when he's around ninety three becauseit has that true movement and you know,
talking to the pitching coach, talkingto people that have worked with from
or they don't want to ascribe itall to the velocity. They're more concerned
(09:07):
about him finding his release point becausethey do think when he tries to throw
hard and when he gets that velocity, it's because the release point is off.
So they think if they can gethim, they can get the release
point and the delivery and the mechanicswhere that needs to be, the sinker
will be fixed. And I thinkthat is the key for him, just
getting that pitch back, because youknow, we know he's got the curve
(09:28):
ball, we know he's got thecutter that he's added. It's been a
good pitch for him, But Imean, the sinker's his. That's what
he bases his whole arsenal around.And if he doesn't have that to get
groundball outs, if that pitch isbeing elevated or lined or hit for line
drives, and that's not a goodsign. So he's got to get a
sinker back. And I think ChristianHobber just has to. I mean,
(09:48):
he acknowledged that he was a littlebit heavier last year than he would have
liked, and he thinks that impactedhis mechanics a little bit. I think
it's mechanical with both of these guys. But I think Javier, you know,
he's come in the he said helost fifteen pounds this offseason, came
into camp noticeably center. You know, maybe that he did say that the
(10:09):
weight may have gone hand in handwith the with the whacked out mechanics.
So maybe now that he's dropped theweight a little bit, the mechanics can
can kind of can kind of comeback, you know. Assistant Pitchy coach
Phil Murphy said that, you know, Hobviers tended to overthrow some last year.
He was just you know, justtrying too hard, to be honest,
and I think that was because themechanics were off. He was trying
(10:30):
to compensate a little bit. Sothey need they need both of them to
be good because you know, Iwould never doubt Justin Berlander doing anything.
But he's still forty one years old, and you do kind of wonder,
I mean, he's got the shoulderthing right now, you wonder kind of
that's a question mark because he's aforty one year old pitcher. And you
know, behind Valdez and Jabber,it's Hunter Brown, it's JP Frantz,
(10:54):
it's his a Erkidi, It's guysthat have been good but not great.
And you know, I think thinkif Fromber and Hobbier can elevate their game,
this rotation becomes one of the bestin the American League, Whereas right
now I think you have to saythat their rotation is probably the biggest question
mark on the team, certainly amongfew. But yes, that side of
it is at this point, onemonth out, an unknown because of all
(11:18):
those things you just mentioned. Wecertainly appreciate it, as we always do
as we dip into almost week twoof spring training baseball game Chandler always appreciate
the input. All right, thanksguys, Chandler Rome of the Athletic joining
us here as he does on aweekly basis over the course of the baseball
season. To the Astros again,one month away from us, joining you
(11:39):
guys out at Minute May Park forthe season opener against the Yankees March twenty
eighth. Starting pitching assignments, Well, they're TBD, but it's probably gonna
be Garrett Cole and Framber Valdez
Chandler rom of the Athletic covers theAstros in Major League Baseball and is with
the team down in FLA as they'reabout to push through Week one of games
played earlier today. Handful of playersthat likely have an impact to make with
the twenty twenty four Astros were involved, and obviously from him, we also
need an update on the injured armsof the Astros, those who've had hiccups
(00:22):
and otherwise. But yeah, let'sstart with the super important month out from
his opening day lineup being set.Chandler, what do you think about jo
Aspotta's thoughts about how he might lineup one, two, three, and
four with Jordan Alvarez at two.I think it's pretty fascinating. I think
(00:43):
it's certainly a more modern twist onkind of how modern baseball views a batting
order. Now you look across theleague, Corey Seeger hits second for the
Rangers, Mike Trout normally hits secondfor the Angels, Aaron Judge normally hits
second for the Yankees. I thinkFreddie Freeman hit second for a good bit
of last year with the Dodgers.I don't know what they're gonna do with
(01:03):
a Tony now. But you getthe point, like the best hitter often
hits second. I mean, analyticshave determined that if you hit second,
you can get the most plate appearancesthat you can net so many more plate
appearances hitting second. I do thinkthat there is a there's a healthy debate
to be had just given given theprofile of both Alvarez and Tucker. Maybe
(01:27):
hitting Tucker second wouldn't be a badidea either, just because he does provide
you a little bit more on thebasis he can steal, basis he's a
I'm not saying you're on slow byany stretch of the imagination. I think
he's more athletic than maybe we getto see on a on a regular basis,
just because he's normally the hing andhe's normally hitting home runs. But
(01:49):
I think he's more athletic than maybemeets the eye. And I don't think
he's a liability on the basis.But I just think Tucker's probably a better
base runner, just more heads up, can steel bases go first, third
easier. But I don't think there'sa wrong answer. I think they're both
very good. But I mean,I think it boils down to, you
know, basically what I just described. You know, you go on,
Alvarez is one of the three orfour best hitters in baseball, and you
(02:12):
look where the other best hitters inbaseball hit in batting orders. They're usually
hitting second. And that's kind ofthe place where in the modern game you
put your best hitter. And Joespot is going to go ahead and put
his best hitter hitting second. Isit just as simple as he gets more
at bats, just tear everything elseaway. I mean, I think that
that's the that's the root of it. Yeah, I think, you know,
(02:34):
I'm I'm of the I'm of thecontroversial opinion here that you give your
best hitters the most at bats whatAnd I think it's crazy certainly when when
you put when you put Alvarez fourth, I mean, look in the cleanup
spot, he would have more opportunitiesto drive in runs, he would have
more opportunities to clear the bases.There's opportunities to come up with more men
(02:54):
on base than just one and youknow, do more damage. But I
think the I think getting him inthe box more outweighs that sort of outweighs
that that concern. And you know, you look if if Joe lines the
lineup up like he wants to withAltuve, Alvarez, Bregman and Tucker.
(03:15):
Again, it's not like Kyle Tucker'ssome slouch. Kyle Tucker's just I mean,
he's he's a little bit just thenumbers, He's a little bit worse
than your do and I use worsein the in the most in the nicest
way possible. It's not like KyleTucker is some slouch. I mean they
They've got a very good cleanup hitterin Tucker. So I was we were
debating this a couple of us downhere, a couple of the reporters were
(03:37):
debating this. I kind of justsaid, it's kind of difficult to f
this up with with these four guys. When you have these four guys,
it's kind of difficult to screw thisup. And you know, whatever order
that they they end up going,you know, those four guys are going
to be the catalyst to this offense, and it should be their pre it
should be their priority to get theirbest hitters the most games. And that's
(04:01):
I think there's one added element toit potentially in that you know, there
were fifty six games last year whereKyle Tucker batted fifth, well, there
might not be any games where hebats below fourth, certainly if this initial
lineup construction has him fourth, andlike you said, you obviously could toy
with the idea of flipping the twoof them two and four, so it
(04:21):
could likely also mean additional at batsoverall long term for Kyle Tucker. Let's
talk about the pitching side of things. The guys who've been giving the ball
first in each of their spring traininggames have obviously fared very very well.
Obviously they must feel pretty good abouttheir stuff. Renelle Blanco is going to
be the first to go for asecond time when he gets the ball tomorrow.
(04:44):
Did anything other than the results standout about how Orkidi threw, or
Hunter Brown through or Renel Blanco forthat matter, who pretty clearly is there?
I guess, first guy in lineto fill a starting role should he
be needed early in the season.I think a more intrigue was kind of
what are Keaty said after his outingthat you know a couple of things.
One that they kind of figured outhe was tipping pitches last year with his
(05:06):
glove, where he was squeezing hisglove or he was holding his glove a
certain way when he was gonna throwa pitch, and to the point where
they were I don't think paranoid's theright word, to the point where they
were concerned that when they played inthe Alds that Carlos Korea and Christian Vasquez
had picked up on it, becausethose are two guys that are really,
really good at that, that arereally good at picking up tells, at
(05:27):
picking up tips. And that's why. I don't know if you remember when
he pitched in Game four at targetField, but he was manipulating the pitch
clock a lot like he was quickpitching. He was varying his times,
and it was to distract them.It was basically to not let them.
It was to throw them off becausehe thought that Correa and Basquez had tipped
the Twins off to what he does. So he worked this offseason on getting
(05:51):
that, on getting that rectified.They did work on it during the season
last year. But there's only somuch you can do in the middle of
the season. But were Kety,It's always going to be about, you
know, can he be deceptive enough. He's always going to throw strikes,
but he's throwing the good change up. You know, he's got the sinker
now to help him against Righty's righthe's have really given him trouble the last
(06:11):
couple of years. The fact thathe added that sinker that he can you
know, throw inside the right handedhitters. Just get more weak contact,
get more ground ball outs, getmore early contact outs. I think that's
going to help. And then youknow, you look what Hunter Brown did.
Hunter Brown just filled up his zone, which he liked to see from
him. You know, it's kindof the lingering concern with him is how
(06:32):
much is he going to be aroundthe strike zone. He was around the
strike zone a ton of his debut. So again it's only one outing.
He's gonna he won't make a traditionalstart in his next down, and he's
going to piggyback fromber Beldez on Friday, and that's for no other reason than
you know, they just want tokeep everyone on turn. They want to
keep Hunter Brown on a every fifthday schedule, and that's his day to
(06:53):
pitch, and they want, youknow, Fromber's got the seniority a little
bit and he's going to get theactual start. The Hunter will come in
out of the bull and kind ofpick him up. So and Ronel Block
has thrown well too, So yeah, they have to be encouraged a little
bit early on with what they've seen. But I think again, you know,
I wrote this last week and it'skind of its kind of obvious that
I really think the keys of thisrotation and maybe the keys to like the
(07:15):
overall success of this season really hingeon fromber Belt as in Christian Hobber.
If they can have bounce backs,if they can pitch to the level that
I think the Astros anticipated them pitchingto last year, I think that makes
this rotation all all that much moredeep and all this on all that much
more imposing to get through. Youknow, it's interesting because I mean fromber
(07:38):
was on the mound for Game sixwhen the Astros beat the Phillies. Now,
they obviously had outrageously fantastic performance fromthe bullpen after him, but that
was the guy that couldn't find himselfin the ALCS this year against the Rangers,
and you just win one home game, you back in the World Series
against an eighty four win Diamondbacks team. What is the one thing for him
(08:01):
and the one thing for Christian JavierWhen you say that that they need to
find that they need to rediscover orwhatever it is Fromerveldez has to go back
to getting ground balls, like weknow, like the Aschers nov Canon.
I mean, look, you stilllook at him, he led, he
led the American League and ground ballrate last year, but you look at
his sinker specifically, and the groundball rate has steadily declined on that pitch
(08:24):
specifically the last two or three years. They think they found something with his
release point, kind of how hereleases the ball and how he manipulates the
ball where it comes out, becausethat, like the sinker, is such
a movement based pitch and if itmoves down and if it has the sink,
then it's going to get ground ballouts. I think what kind of
(08:46):
goes hand in hand with it ishim throwing harder. You know, he
averaged I think ninety five miles anhour with his sinker last year. It's
better when he's around ninety three becauseit has that true movement and you know,
talking to the pitching coach, talkingto people that have worked with from
or they don't want to ascribe itall to the velocity. They're more concerned
(09:07):
about him finding his release point becausethey do think when he tries to throw
hard and when he gets that velocity, it's because the release point is off.
So they think if they can gethim, they can get the release
point and the delivery and the mechanicswhere that needs to be, the sinker
will be fixed. And I thinkthat is the key for him, just
getting that pitch back, because youknow, we know he's got the curve
(09:28):
ball, we know he's got thecutter that he's added. It's been a
good pitch for him, But Imean, the sinker's his. That's what
he bases his whole arsenal around.And if he doesn't have that to get
groundball outs, if that pitch isbeing elevated or lined or hit for line
drives, and that's not a goodsign. So he's got to get a
sinker back. And I think ChristianHobber just has to. I mean,
(09:48):
he acknowledged that he was a littlebit heavier last year than he would have
liked, and he thinks that impactedhis mechanics a little bit. I think
it's mechanical with both of these guys. But I think Javier, you know,
he's come in the he said helost fifteen pounds this offseason, came
into camp noticeably center. You know, maybe that he did say that the
(10:09):
weight may have gone hand in handwith the with the whacked out mechanics.
So maybe now that he's dropped theweight a little bit, the mechanics can
can kind of can kind of comeback, you know. Assistant Pitchy coach
Phil Murphy said that, you know, Hobviers tended to overthrow some last year.
He was just you know, justtrying too hard, to be honest,
and I think that was because themechanics were off. He was trying
(10:30):
to compensate a little bit. Sothey need they need both of them to
be good because you know, Iwould never doubt Justin Berlander doing anything.
But he's still forty one years old, and you do kind of wonder,
I mean, he's got the shoulderthing right now, you wonder kind of
that's a question mark because he's aforty one year old pitcher. And you
know, behind Valdez and Jabber,it's Hunter Brown, it's JP Frantz,
(10:54):
it's his a Erkidi, It's guysthat have been good but not great.
And you know, I think thinkif Fromber and Hobbier can elevate their game,
this rotation becomes one of the bestin the American League, Whereas right
now I think you have to saythat their rotation is probably the biggest question
mark on the team, certainly amongfew. But yes, that side of
it is at this point, onemonth out, an unknown because of all
(11:18):
those things you just mentioned. Wecertainly appreciate it, as we always do
as we dip into almost week twoof spring training baseball game Chandler always appreciate
the input. All right, thanksguys, Chandler Rome of the Athletic joining
us here as he does on aweekly basis over the course of the baseball
season. To the Astros again,one month away from us, joining you
(11:39):
guys out at Minute May Park forthe season opener against the Yankees March twenty
eighth. Starting pitching assignments, Well, they're TBD, but it's probably gonna
be Garrett Cole and Framber Valdez
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