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There's No Ace, but the Astros Rotation is Deep with Quality

  Who should the Astros start in Game 1 of a playoff series?  This question has come up a good bit recently. Jake Kaplan put that question as the lead to his mailbag column today. Radio talk show host Sean Pendergast asked the question in a weekend twitter poll. 

I have three reactions to this question 1.) It's too early in the season to answer this question, even if we are getting to back half of August; there's still a lot of season to go. 2.) I'm sure that Dusty will go with McCullers; playoff experience will matter to him, and 

3. This is a difficult question to answer because the Astros have a very unique starting rotation this season--one with lots of good pitchers but no ace.

Taking a look at all American League pitchers by Wins Above Replacement, it's clear that the Astros have no candidates to receive votes for the Cy Young Award. Their top pitcher by bWAR is Lance McCullers who ranks 22nd with 2.3.  It's a nice total, but not one of an All Star.

Lance McCullers leads the Astros in bWAR in 2021. 

But McCullers is quickly followed by Zack Greinke (24th) and Luis Garcia (29th). Not too far away is Jose Urquidy (41st) and Framber Valdez (43rd).  So while the Astros do not have a starting pitcher in the top 20 in the AL, their entire rotation is in the top 43.  

No other American League club has five starting pitchers ranked in the top 50 in WAR so far this season. The White Sox and the Yankees both have 4 starters in that group, and the Athletics and future Guardians have 3. But none of the rest of the starters on those teams has reached the top 50.

On Sunday, I tweeted the Astros team leader among starting pitchers in a number of different stats. And what is notable about the tweet is that you can see the name of all five of the team's top starting pitchers on the list (McCullers passed Greinke as leader in bWAR after his start yesterday). Valdez leads the team in ERA, but Garcia leads in FIP and K/9. Urquidy leads in stats like K/BB ratio, WHIP, and lowest hard contact percentage. McCullers leads in preventing home runs and base hits. Greinke may have lost his team lead in bWAR, but he is 2nd on the team, in large part because of his durability--he is 2nd in the AL in innings pitched. 

There is no clear ace to the Astros staff.  And this staff is not like the one in 2019 which featured the top two contenders for the Cy Young Award, a veteran trade deadline acquisition, and some guys who we hoped held the line while the bats bashed the opposing pitchers. 

The rotation this year is deep with quality starting pitchers, but not any that a sure fire aces. This makes it difficult to truly answer the question of who should start Game 1of a playoff series. Each of these five starters has had stretches where he looks locked in, and each has had stretches where you start considering whether he should be the guy moved to the bullpen when they go to a four man rotation in the playoffs. 

The top 50 American League pitchers by bWAR also includes a number of relievers. By this metric, the best reliever in the AL this year is Jonathan Loaisiga of the Yankees. But again, the Astros are well represented by this measure. They have three relievers in the top 50 in WAR--Cristian Javier, Kendall Graveman, and Ryan Pressly. Expect to see a lot of those three pitchers in late innings this October.

This is but one measure of the quality of American League pitchers. But it tells a story abour the Astros rotation this year:  it is good, but not great. And its feature is its depth. The Astros rotation has five quality pitchers who have a good job this season. They'll need their starters to continue their efforts, if not improve them, between now and October. 

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