The Launch Angle

This afternoon, the Houston Astros will play the third game of a 3-game series with the Detroit Tigers, and have an off-day tomorrow. Beginning on Friday, they’ll host the Cleveland Guardians for the first of 13 games in 13 days with no off-days.

Per Brian McTaggart, the Astros are expected to move to a 6-man rotation during that stretch. The idea behind that is that usually in a 5-man rotation an off-day would come up once or twice every 2 turns through the rotation, so most times pitchers are pitching on 5 days rest, rather than just 4. Using a 6-man rotation during this stretch of 13 days without an off-day would allow starters to keep having their starts on 5 days rest.

That sounds great, except that the Astros aren’t getting a 27th man for their roster. They’re still just limited to 26, and only 13 of them can be pitchers. So if you’re expanding your rotation to 6 starters, they need to be good starters, because you’re shortening your bullpen from 8 arms to 7 arms, and those 7 arms also have no built in off-days.

So, yes, you could use a 6-man rotation when you had guys like Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy and Jake Odorizzi in 2022. You had 2 workhorses in there and at least 3 more that could give you reliable length. That’s not what the 2026 Astros have to work with though.

The 2026 Astros have:

• Hunter Brown, who’s just come back from injury
• Spencer Arrighetti, whose AL pitcher of the month May is disippating before our eyes in June
• Tatsuya Imai, who couldn’t even get out of the first inning his last time out
• Kai-Wei Teng, who has progressively lasted fewer and fewer innings in his last 5 starts
• Mike Burrows, owner of the worst ERA (5.86) in MLB among qualified pitchers. (And by a lot. Zac Gallen is 2nd with a 5.35)
• Peter Lambert, the flyer free agent signing, who has surprisingly been the most reliable of all these guys
• Cristian Javier, also coming back from injury, and who wasn’t particularly effective before injury either.

6 innings is not automatic for any of these guys. A lot of them, you’re lucky to get 5. This bullpen has been gassed and taxed trying to support this rotation when they had 8 arms. Going down to 7 will only make things worse.

Having 5 days rest between games is nice, but this team can’t afford it. They shouldn’t have to afford it either. Even when there were off-days mixed into the schedule, there were still points where in a stretch of 6 games in a row (not uncommon, if a team has two Thursdays off in a row, for example), a starter would pitch on 4 days rest.

Burrows, Arrighetti, and Lambert are the 3 pitchers who have been in the rotation the most this season, and they’ve each pitched on 4 days rest 2, 2 and 3 times respectively this season. Staying on a 5-man rotation, just asks them to do it 1 or 2 more times.

I would love it if the Astros had a stable of reliable starters, the way the Mariners have Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, Bryan Woo, Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Emerson Hancock. They average the most innings in the AL per start (5.7 IP/start). If that’s what we were dealing with, sign me up for a 6-man rotation (and even the Mariners starters aren’t thrilled about it). The Astros, in contrast, average the 3rd fewest innings per start in the AL (4.8 IP/Start). That’s a difference of nearly a full inning per game, which is going to add up quickly over 13 days.

The Astros need the extra arm in the pen more than they need their starters to have 5th days of rest.

Tigers @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details

Peter Lambert starts for the Astros. As mentioned earlier, he’s surprisingly been one of the more reliable rotation pieces for the Astros this year. His last start, he went 6.1 innings against the Angels allowing just 2 solo home runs, and striking out 6. Most notably though, he did not allow any walks. Lambert is 5-4 on the season in 10 starts with a 3.47 ERA and 1.21 WHIP. His K/9 is 8.4, and his last outing reduced his BB/9 to 3.9

The 2018 first overall pick, right hander Casey Mize, starts for the Tigers. Mize 2-3 in 9 starts, with a 2.27 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 9.3 K/9 and 2.3 BB/9. This is his first start since coming off a short IL stint for a right adductor strain. His last start before then was on May 27.

Mize made 1 A-ball rehab start with the Lakeland Flying Tigers on June 9, and threw 5 innings, allowing 1 solo home run, striking out 5 and walking 1.

This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.

The game will be broadcast at 1:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

We hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game! The turnout has been amazing on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads.

Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .

For more detailed instructions, please see the Guide to the Launch Angle.

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Feature photo courtesy of Pixel Pete.