Astros ‘swing too much,’ search for balance with aggressive bats

HOUSTON — Conversations between Troy Snitker and Alex Cintrón have become confounding. The Houston Astros’ two hitting coaches oversee an offense that boasts baseball’s highest batting average and has amassed more hits than any American League team. No lineup in the sport strikes out less often and only three have a higher slugging percentage.

“Troy and I talk about this: It seems like we’re one of the worst hitting teams in the big leagues because of the record we have and how we’ve been playing,” Cintrón said Sunday.

The offense is not why the Astros are two games under .500. Pitching injuries and poor roster construction are of far greater concern. Masking both weaknesses feels impossible, but the Astros’ lineup must attempt it.

Houston’s pitching problems aren’t going away any time soon, magnifying the production of an offense that has grown impatient. Changing personnel should’ve portended a slight shift in swing decisions and plate discipline, but the first 78 games of this season demonstrate something more drastic.

“Our whole offense needs to take more pitches,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “We swing too much.”

Four other lineups do swing more than Houston’s, but none sees fewer pitches per plate appearance, an aggressive approach that has become a trademark across the Astros’ golden era. The 2022 World Series champions also saw the fewest pitches per plate appearance of any lineup in the sport. Last season, only two offenses saw fewer than the Astros.

Aggressiveness is acceptable when pitch selection is precise and plate discipline is maintained. Across most of the last six seasons, the Astros accomplished that. The seventh has featured more inconsistencies, straying from some of the hallmarks for which Houston’s lineup has long been lauded.

A day after Chicago White Sox rookie starter Jonathan Cannon collected 26 outs on 106 pitches against Houston’s lineup, general manager Dana Brown bemoaned to the team’s flagship radio station about his club’s inability to “take more pitches.” This week, Snitker and Cintrón acknowledged patience has become more of a focus in hitters’ meetings.

“We have this perfect storm, almost, of each hitter being similar,” center fielder Jake Meyers said. “I’m not saying every hitter is the same. But in terms of how we approach hitting, we all seem to be pretty aggressive.”

Twenty-seven qualified hitters have a swing rate of at least 52 percent. Three of them are everyday players in the Astros’ lineup: Jose Altuve, Yainer Diaz and Jeremy Peña. Mauricio Dubón, who has started Houston’s last 14 games, swings 60.9 percent of the time.

Neither Dubón nor Diaz was an everyday player last season. Inserting them into more prominent roles has produced obvious results. Relying on Peña to hit higher in the batting order has magnified some of his aggressiveness. Michael Brantley’s retirement robbed the lineup of a master in pitch selection and plate discipline.

“We would love to have guys be more passive and walk more,” Cintrón said.

Four lineups walk less than the Astros, whose 7.3 percent walk rate would be their lowest in any full season since 2013.

Only two teams chase outside the strike zone more frequently, perhaps the most disturbing number of some downward trends. Reliance on more unproven hitters has inflated the number, but uncharacteristic zone expansion from Altuve and Yordan Alvarez is exacerbating the problem.

Jose Altuve has struck out at a higher rate this season. (Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Altuve has already struck out 65 times in 342 plate appearances. Two years ago, in his last complete season, Altuve punched out 87 times in 604 plate appearances.

Altuve’s chase rate has risen to 38.8 percent — seven points higher than his career average — but more concerning is his diminishing ability to make contact with pitches outside the zone. Altuve, one of baseball’s best bad ball hitters, is only touching 62.6 percent of the pitches he chases. His career average is 71.5 percent.

“Approach-wise and mechanically, we had some guys kind of lost up and down (the lineup), and that gets you to chase a lot,” Cintrón said. “We’re trying to be aggressive to avoid two strikes. We’re trying to put the ball in play.

“A lot of our hitters, when they’re in trouble, they go out front on offspeed with a lot of groundballs, a lot of swing-and-miss. Late on the heater because they’re not in a good position and they don’t want to be late, disconnected, hands can’t go to the ball and they can’t get around.”

Alvarez, Peña, Diaz and Bregman have all endured subpar stretches and strayed from their mechanics during Houston’s uneven start. Coaches noticed Alvarez being far more aggressive in 0-0 counts. His chase rate ballooned because of it. So did Bregman’s swing rate, all the way to 45 percent. Five of his six 162-game seasons have ended with a swing rate under 40 percent.

“When I am seeing the ball well, I only swing at pitches I want to swing at. Early in the year, I feel like I was putting a lot of pitches in play that I wouldn’t normally swing at that were borderline,” Bregman said.

“For the most part, everything looks good when the mechanics aren’t good, so you swing at everything, while in the past, when the mechanics didn’t feel good, I was super selective. I like where I’m at right now for the last month or so. But before that, I swung at too many pitches and I need to lower my swing rate.”

Peña and Diaz have demonstrated they’re free swingers and aggressive on early-count fastballs. They can be fooled by pitches that look straight out of a pitcher’s hand, prompting Cintrón to implore one approach.

“We have to start telling them every day, ‘Try to hit a groundball to first base, between first and second,’ so they can let the ball get deeper because they want to hit the fastball out front,” Cintrón said.

“That’s how they’ve been taught in the past — be aggressive to the fastball down the middle, which is true. Which is why they’ve been really, really aggressive. … We have to let them know to use the first or second base hole, so if you get a slider or curveball, you still have a chance to put the ball in play.”

Houston’s lineup does put 30.9 percent of the strikes it sees in play. No other offense does it more. Only three lineups in the sport have a higher overall contact rate. The Astros remain the most difficult team in the league to strike out, but rarely ever put themselves in situations to do so.

No lineup in baseball has seen fewer two-strike counts this season than Houston’s, perhaps because only two swing at the first pitch more frequently. Meyers, for example, has a 44.7 percent first-pitch swing rate. Only eight qualified hitters have a higher one.

Meyers is amid the best season of his brief big-league career. He’s one of six qualified Astros with an OPS+ higher than 100 and one of eight hitting higher than .250.

Meyers has swung at the first pitch during 98 of his 219 plate appearances. He has a .910 OPS when he does and a .580 clip when he doesn’t. When Meyers puts the first pitch in play, he is 23-for-50 with nine extra-base hits. Disrupting that success by asking for patience seems dangerous, but it’s a balance Meyers and his teammates must discover.

“Honestly, if the first pitch of every at-bat for 27 straight at-bats is right down the middle, then I hope everyone swings at all 27 of those pitches, but it’s just not realistic,” Bregman said. “We strike out the least (of any lineup), so I feel that we should know that and not swing as much.”

(Top photo of Jeremy Peña after a strikeout this season: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)