3-2-1 Contact
Not a lot has gone right for the Astros this season. With their poor record, and other similarly underperforming teams, such as the Red Sox and Phillies, firing their managers, there is speculation as to whether Astros manager Joe Espada could be next.
Also taking heat is general manager Dana Brown, and whether his front office moves have led the team to this position. Specifically, many fans have been looking at Brice Matthews, Brown’s first 1st round draft pick, as a referendum on his tenure as a general manager.
When he was brought up last year, there was a lot concern as to whether he was ready. Specific attention was put on his Contact% in AAA, at 66.6%, well below the major league average, even though he was facing AAA pitching. Matthews 2025 didn’t go particularly well. While posting a 55.1 Contact%, he batted .167 with a .675 OPS and 83 wRC+
This year the numbers haven’t been much better. He’s batting .211, with a .682 OPS and 88 wRC+. Sometimes this season, though, it seems like he’s been better. His plate appearances are longer. That bears out in the numbers: he’s seeing 4.4 pitches per PA this year compared to 3.8 last year.
So is he getting better? Is his Contact% improving? Let’s take a look at the Contact% of all the Astros with at least 40 PA through 5/4/26.
| Contact% | |
|---|---|
| Christian Vazquez | 84.3 |
| Isaac Paredes | 83.5 |
| Yordan Alvarez | 82.8 |
| Jeremy Pena | 80.4 |
| Carlos Correa | 79.0 |
| Jose Altuve | 78.8 |
| Yainer Diaz | 78.2 |
| Jake Meyers | 77.9 |
| Christian Walker | 74.9 |
| Cam Smith | 71.0 |
| Joey Loperfido | 67.7 |
| Brice Matthews | 63.3 |
Matthews is last on the team for Contact%. Just as a pitcher’s high Whiff% is instrumental to their success, a batter’s low Contact% is equally detrimental to theirs.
Matthews is well behind his teammates. Only Loperfido and Smith, who are also young, are even kind of close. But Smith’s and Loperfido’s numbers represent a dip from 2025 when they had marks of 73.8 and 71.4, so it may be attributable to the smaller sample size of 2026.
Matthews’ team low 63.3 is actually an improvement from his 55.1 mark in 2025.
For reference, the major league average so far in 2026 is 76.8 for Contact%. Only 3 qualified MLB hitters have as low a Contact% as Brice Matthews: Munetaka Murakami (CWS, 59.6), Matt Wallner (MIN, 61.3), and Oneil Cruz (PIT, 63.3). Murakami and Cruz have uncommon power, their low Contact% is offset by mammoth shots when their contact does line up. Matthews has power, but he’s not on the level of Murakami or Cruz for power.
63.3 is an improvement, however, from 55.1. Digging a little deeper, we can see where that improvement came from.
| O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 31.8 | 67.0 | 39.3 | 62.3 |
| 2026 | 22.8 | 64.6 | 31.7 | 74.4 |
- Matthews isn’t swinging at pitches outside the zone as much anymore. In fact, his O-Swing% has dropped by almost a third. His O-Contact% also dropped, but his increased selectivity in swinging, the reduction in O-Swing%, makes a bigger difference. So much of a difference in fact that his chase rate went from being lower quartile in percentile in 2025 to 80th percentile in 2026.
- When pitches are in the zone, Matthews is making contact more often. His Z-Contact% improved from 62.3 which is abysmal to 74.4, which is substantially better. Better for Matthews, that is. It’s still well below the 2026 MLB average Z-Contact% of 86.3%, though. So he was bottom of the barrel for Whiff% in 2025 and despite the improvement, he’s still 2nd percentile in Whiff% in 2026.
So is Matthews better? Yes. Is it good enough? No, not yet. Will it be good enough? That depends on whether his improvement continues, and where his ceiling is.
It’s probably not fair to use Matthews as a referendum on Dana Brown as a general manager, at least not at this point. He was a 28th overall pick, not a first overall pick, and he still only has 128 plate appearances under his belt at the major league level.
With Dustin Harris and Daniel Johnson DFA’d, until Jake Meyers, Joey Loperfido and Taylor Trammell come back, Matthews will have plenty more opportunities to bat at the major league level. Only he and Zach Cole have any MLB center field experience: 10 starts for Matthews, 4 for Cole. With news of a potential long term injury for third baseman and shortstop Carlos Correa, Matthews could see some infield time as well, although he’s performed better in the outfield defensively.
Dodgers @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details
The rubber match of the 3 game series between the Astros and Dodger takes place this afternoon between Lance McCullers, Jr. and Tyler Glasnow. Lance is coming of a respectable start on April 30 against the Orioles, turning in a quality start by definition, with 3 runs in 6 innings of work. It was his second quality start of the season; he also had a quality start in his season debut. Unfortunately, his 4 starts between the 2 quality ones were not good, leaving Astros fans to wonder which Lance will show up today.
Glasnow, like much of the Dodgers rotation, has had a strong 2026, with a 2.56 ERA and .828 WHIP in 6 starts. He is 3-0, with 47 K and 13 BB in 38.2 innings of work.
Starting lineups are as follows:
The game will be broadcast at 1:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
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To me the question is whether Brice Matthews can make the same kind of improvments Springer made after he came up as a rookie. Springer was the No. 1 hitting prospect in baseball when he was called up. But at the time, Fangraphs articles deemed him an experiment in how low a contract rate can go and still be successful as a hitter. Springer in the minors had the lowest in-zone contact rate of any batter and lower than the lowest the majors. That first partial season for Springer, the in zone contact rate looked like he would never succeed. If you can remember, Springer would come out of his shoes with huge swings (kinda like we have seen with Z. Cole). But by the next season, the swings seemed more under control and Springer, of course, did succeed as a batter. Murakami raised the same issue (an in-zone NPB contact rate lower than anybody in MLB), and that was the same question asked about him.
Springer is a good comparison. Looking at his numbers now. He seems to have been a ~66-67% contact% guy in AAA, and his 2014 rookie season he was 61% in the bigs, a couple of giant leaps in the next couple years, 2015 69.5%, 2016 73.9%, 2017 78.7% and then he’s kind of live around there the rest of his career. His improvement seems less to have even about improving selectivity and all about just getting better at hitting balls in the zone as you said. Z-contact% went from 66.8% in 2014 to 84.9% in 2017. So let’s just hope Brice’s improvement continues like George’s continued.