The 2025 Houston Astros season ended with both hitting coaches being fired. The approach at the plate appeared undisciplined and overly aggressive. Hitters were swinging too freely and not seeing enough pitches. The team wasn’t driving up pitch counts on opposing starting pitchers, and as a result, they weren’t getting into the bullpen until much later.
This bore out in the data. The 2025 Houston Astros swung at 36.6% of first pitches, the highest rate in the majors.
Out went Alex Cintron and Troy Snitker. In came new hitting coach Victor Rodriguez. At points this season, the team seemed more patient at the plate. Even Jose Altuve was drawing walks at career high rate. But sometimes, the team seemed to lapse into their old ways, first pitch swinging.
A look at the 2026 numbers shows that the Astros have cut down on their first pitch swing percentage, now 33.4%. They no longer have the highest 1st pitch Swing%, but they’re still one of the freer swinging clubs in baseball, with the 7th highest swing rate.
| TEAM | 2026 1st pitch Swing% |
|---|---|
| COL | 39.51% |
| ATH | 36.85% |
| CWS | 34.41% |
| MIN | 33.93% |
| WSH | 33.78% |
| TOR | 33.52% |
| HOU | 33.40% |
| SEA | 33.25% |
| ATL | 33.25% |
| PIT | 33.16% |
| TEX | 32.79% |
| NYM | 32.78% |
| SD | 32.58% |
| LAA | 32.58% |
| STL | 32.50% |
| PHI | 31.46% |
| SF | 31.22% |
| NYY | 30.67% |
| CIN | 30.46% |
| BAL | 30.09% |
| KC | 29.89% |
| TB | 29.88% |
| MIA | 29.51% |
| BOS | 29.46% |
| LAD | 29.28% |
| CHC | 28.94% |
| CLE | 28.30% |
| DET | 27.75% |
| MIL | 26.81% |
| AZ | 24.92% |
First pitch swing rate only tells part of the story. Not all first pitches are equal. If a pitcher throws you a center-cut fastball or a hanging breaking ball on an 0-0 count, by all means, you should swing at it. You might never see as good a pitch to hit in the rest of the at-bat.
We can break up pitches by attack zones, as delineated on Baseball Savant: the Heart, Shadow, Chase, and Waste zones.
The Heart zone is the center of the strike zone, straight down the pipe. A hitter can’t be blamed for swinging at pitches in the heart; in fact, they should swing at them.
The Shadow zone is the area just at the edges of the strike zone: just inside or just outside. These are pitches that, on a 2-strike count, a hitter needs to swing at to protect and foul off, rather than leave it to the umpire’s ball/strike call. On an 0-0 count, you might leave these alone. They’re often either balls or strikes you wouldn’t be able to do anything with anyways.
The Chase zone are balls out of the zone. The pitcher either missed or is trying to get the batter to fish at a pitch they have no chance of hitting.
The Waste zone is well outside. These pitches elicit swings so rarely, it’s not even worth analyzing the Swing% on them.
Here are the Swing% numbers in 2025 and 2026 thus far for the Astros for all first pitches, and broken up by attack zone:
| Houston Astros | Swing % | Rank (1=most, 30=least) |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 1st pitch Swing % | 36.6% | 1 |
| 2025 1st pitch Swing % (heart) | 55.8% | 3 |
| 2025 1st pitch Swing % (shadow) | 37.0% | 1 |
| 2025 1st pitch Swing % (chase) | 16.8% | 1 |
| 2026 1st pitch Swing % | 33.4% | 7 |
| 2026 1st pitch Swing % (heart) | 49.8% | 18 |
| 2026 1st pitch Swing % (shadow) | 35.5% | 7 |
| 2026 1st pitch Swing % (chase) | 18.8% | 1 |
The 2025 Astros swung early and often no matter what. They swung at Heart zone pitches at the 3rd highest rate, and for both Shadow and Chase zones, they swung more often than any other team in the majors.
The 2026 Astros have cut down on their first pitch swings but not in the way you would want. For Heart zone pitches, they’ve dropped their swing percentage to under 50%; they rank 18th in this category. Unfortunately, these are the first pitches they should be offering at.
They’ve dropped their Swing% for Shadow zone pitches slightly, such that they swing at the 7th highest rate in the majors. For Chase zone pitches, they still lead the majors at swinging at first pitches they should absolutely not be swinging at.
The drop in first pitch swing rate is because the Astros aren’t swinging at first pitch strikes. They’re still swinging at first pitch balls. There may be reason why a hitter would not swing a first pitch in the Heart zone. Maybe they made the decision ahead of time to take so they can see one first or force the pitch count up. Maybe they were looking for a specific type of pitch, and that wasn’t it. Nonetheless, dropping your first pitch swing rate by offering at first pitch strikes less is not ideal.
The Astros are being a little bit more patient. They now rank 15th in MLB seeing 3.87 pitches/PA. In 2025, they ranked 28th, seeing 3.77 pitches/PA. Part of that may be because in attempting to lengthen plate appearances, they’re actually lengthening the ones that shouldn’t be lengthened.
Because of a hot April at the plate, the impression is that the 2026 Astros are much improved offensively compared to the 2025 Astros. They were, but that’s tailed off. After a 119 wRC+ March/April, their May/June wRC+ has been just 89. On the season (104 wRC+), they’re now just a little better than the 100 wRC+ they had in 2025.
104 is still better than 100, but they can still be better, because their approach to first pitches is far from fixed.
All-Star Voting By My 7 year-old
All-Star Voting is now open for fans. You can vote online, up to five times per day. You have to be 13 years old to vote, which I don’t get. I figure this out the last year when I made an MLB account for my the 10 year-old (then 9), answered the birthdate question honestly (maybe that was the mistake) and it wouldn’t let him vote.
So I just engage in a little election fraud and I let my kids vote on my MLB account. Kids love the All-Star Game and the superstars of the game the most. Why shut them out?
Here’s my 7-year old’s ballot this year:
It’s not bad! He knows who he likes. He loves Byron Buxton, Corbin Carroll and Bobby Witt, Jr. Those were easy picks for him. Superstars like Judge, Trout, and Acuna were quick selects for him too.
AL First Base was a struggle. He wanted Alonso, Vladdy, Pasquantino and Walker, but could only pick one. Watching him move the mouse cursor back and forth until he decided on Vladdy was more exciting than the Astros game last night.
The 3rd NL outfielder also gave him pause, but he settled on PCA.
Altuve and Yordan got his votes too, but I was surprised he didn’t auto-click them. As they’re both at the top alphabetically, it would have been easy to, but he looked at all the names first before circling back up to the top to click on the two Astros. Hey, voting is a important responsibility, props to him for taking it seriously.
The shocker of the ballot was Schwarber at NL DH, when Ohtani was on the ballot. There was no hemming or hawing either; he wanted Schwarber.
Weigh in on the comments on my kid’s ballot or how bad a parent I am for encouraging election fraud, or worse yet for raising a child who voted for 3 Dodgers! Who’s on your ballot?
Athletics @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details
Peter Lambert, a surprising steady presence in the Astros rotation, takes the mound for Houston. He is 4-4 in 8 starts, with a 3.77 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 8.5 K/9 and 4.2 BB/9. His last time out, he went 5 innings, allowing 2 runs with 3 strikeouts and 3 walks, which was enough to get the win against the Brewers.
Jack Perkins, second year righty for the A’s, will start opposite Lambert. Last year he made 4 starts in his 12 games, but this year he’s been used out of the bullpen exclusively. Today he will make his first start of the season as the A’s transition him to the rotation. It likely will be a shorter outing as they try to get him stretched out.
Perkins has a 5.46 ERA in 28 innings over 17 relief appearances this year, but he’s pitched a lot better than the ERA would suggest, with a 10.6 K/9 and 2.3 BB/9. His xERA (3.14), FIP (2.60), xFIP (3.82) and SIERA (2.90) are all well below his ERA.
This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.
Update: Guess who’s back? Back again! Tuve’s back! Tell a friend!
The game will be broadcast at 7:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
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Wonder how much those 2026 numbers really reflect the fact that Yordan is in the lineup compared to last season (who really wasn’t there at all last season).
Yordan is just a different breed of animal that all those numbers seem to be nothing to him. He sees the pitches he likes (and more often than not, they’re the right pitch to swing at REGARDLESS of where it ends up or if it ISN’T a good pitch to swing at) and does something with it or also simultaneously spits on trash pitches because he’s just a psycho.
So I just ran the numbers. Yordan has been more aggressive on first pitches this year. If it’s in the heart of the zone, he’s swinging at 57.6%
So in other words, Yordan just continues to show us all why he is him….lol
yordan like michael scott
This approach is significantly better than the 2023-2025 approach. We are a top heavy team that is constantly struggling to find a set of decent 6-9 hitters, cycling through platoons, etc.
That kind of team benefits heavily from a collective strategy of patience. The fact that we’ve technically lost offensive talent this year given the trade of Sanchez and the raft of constant injuries, yet have maintained league average offense after the initial outburst, speaks to Yordan as well as the improved approach at the plate.
IMO, short version, you can let Yordan and a couple of other veteran hitters call their own shots. Everyone else is better off with the 2026 strategy. It’s better to wear an opposing starter down and force them to throw elevated pitch counts than it is to have a 20% better chance of getting a hit on a first pitch FB, but most of the time lead to 9 pitch innings that lets an opposing starter go 8 innings over and over again.
We also shouldn’t ignore the cascading effects the aggressive approach produces. It forces your starters back into the game after short innings. It forces your bullpen to come out earlier than the opponent’s. There is the occasional start where you bomb a pitcher early and gain significant advantage in a series, but more often than not, it leads to quick outs for your bats, and laborious, slow outings for your pitchers. It is bad for the team as a whole unless you can manufacture runs with it almost every single game.
The super aggressive approach is terrible. It is functional when you have 5+ all star level hitters, or occasionally when facing a TOR strike throwing pitcher like Kirby or DeGrom. Otherwise the downsides far outweigh the upsides over the course of a long season. Particularly with the new ABS zone encouraging more walks.
I would be willing to bet that a relatively healthy lineup over the course of a full season would’ve maintained that 110+ wrc+ all year and our lineup still very well could by the end of the year (assuming we don’t trade everyone).
Altuve, the medical marvel, is back for today’s game.
I am a little worried given the track history of the Astros sometimes rushing players back before they’re ready. Jake comes to mind most but I think there were a couple other instances.
Dezenzo optioned to AAA, I assume to make room for Altuve.