The Launch Angle

We’re now one turn through the rotation since Hunter Brown and Yainer Diaz have come back from the IL. In Diaz’s absence, Christian Vazquez took over as the #1 catcher, and the pitching seemed to improve. Now that Diaz is back, the question became how will the two catcher split the duties?

Coming into the season, Yainer Diaz was the established #1 catcher for the team. Vazquez was signed to be the secondary catcher. I’m hesitant to use the term “backup” because for a position like catcher, the person second on the depth chart is still used a fair amount in most organizations.

From the start of the season until May 3 (Diaz’ last game before he went on the IL), Diaz handled close to 2/3 of the team’s starts, just under a 2:1 ratio.

While Diaz was on the IL, from May 4 to June 15, Vazquez handled nearly 3/4 of the team’s starts. Cesar Salazar, was called up from AAA to give him the occasional breather, and when it was felt that they could no longer afford to slot in below replacement level value at the catcher position while the team was trying to stay relevant in the standings, they designated Salazar to give rookie Collin Price a brief shot at the organization’s depth catcher position.

Before Diaz went on the IL, the Astros pitching was terrible, last in the league, last in the majors in numerous categories. With Vazquez was handling the lion’s share of catching duties in Diaz’ absence, most every pitching category saw improvement.

It’s hard to parse out how much of that is attributable to the change in catcher, and how much of it was just the Astros figuring out what was working and what was not in the new era of ABS, and more specifically which pitchers were working and which weren’t. 12 starting pitchers were used during these time periods.

Still, it seemed that the veteran Vasquez was a stabilizing presence for a pitching staff without a whole lot of veteran leadership, and Yainer, a bat-first catcher, hadn’t been doing much with his bat before his IL stint: a 62 wRC+ and -5.7 Off.

So has Vazquez had earned more playing time? Does Diaz merit less?

Vazquez is 2 months shy of turning 36. He hasn’t played in 100 games since 2023. While Diaz was on the IL, he caught 75% of the game out of necessity, since Salazar was less than and Price was barely replacement level value. That’s a lot of catching. It’s not reasonable to ask him to continue that kind of workload, nor should he have to, with Diaz back.

Maybe continuing to ask Vazquez to start 3 of every 4 games is excessive, but should Vazquez get 50% of the playing time now instead of the 35% he had earlier in the season? Or even 3 out of every 5 starts each turn through the rotation?

Alternatively, do you simply thank Vazquez for stepping up in Diaz’ absence but return the bulk of catching duties to the younger, 27 year-old Diaz?

After 1 turn through the rotation, here’s how the workload distribution has played out:

Last night, Diaz caught Brown again. Today is a day game after a night game, so I would expect Vazquez in at catcher, catching Lambert again.

The Athletic’s Chandler Rome conjectured that on Diaz’ return, he would handle Hunter Brown’s start, as Diaz caught Brown for most of 2025, when he finished a Cy Young finalist. Brown and Diaz returned from the IL on the same date, and two starts into Brown’s return, that seems to be the case.

He also thought that Arrighetti would likely be kept with Vazquez. Vazquez caught 4 of Arrighetti’s 5 May starts that earned him AL Pitcher of the Month honors. That hasn’t happened. Arrighetti’s last 3 starts, he’s been caught by Price twice and Diaz once. Much of his June struggles have been regression, but at some point, Joe Espada will need to consider reuniting Vazquez and Arrighetti.

Rome also suggested that Imai might stay paired with Vazquez, as Espada seemed to make Vazquez the personal catcher for Imai, who was struggling to acclimate to American baseball. Vazquez caught every Imai start since Imai came off his own IL stint, until this past Friday when Diaz caught Imai in his first opportunity to do so. In Imai’s previous start with Vazquez, he couldn’t get out of the first inning, so I wonder if that changed anything.

So one turn through the rotation, it looks like Yainer Diaz has resumed his status as the #1 catcher, but now he is ceding 2 games of 5 to Vazquez each time through the rotation. This may be a temporary lessening Vazquez’ workload (he’s caught a lot over the past 6 weeks) before bringing him back up to more of a 50/50 split, but there’s a lot of other factors at play. Will Diaz’ bat regain effectiveness? In his first games back, he’s hit the ball pretty well (his GIDP and groundout last night not withstanding). Can the pitching sustain their improvement even with Diaz catching instead of Vazquez?

While many Astros fans hope that Vazquez sees more time than Diaz going forward, I hope Diaz starts making a case that it should still be him. Diaz can be frustrating to watch at the plate, but his offensive ceiling is higher than Vazquez, and if the Astros are going to “chase the fight”, they need Diaz’ offensive threat in the 6 hole.

If the Astros can use Diaz in most of the games, they’ll do it. All Diaz has to do is show them a little something. It won’t take much.

Astros @ Blue Jays Game Information and Gamethread Details

Peter Lambert starts for the Astros today. He’s become the most reliable pitcher in the rotation this season, and Astros fans are noticing. I doubt most fans knew he existed a few months ago. Last night he came within a hair of tying fan favorite Jeremy Pena in SCHN’s StroPoll for “Astros Player of June not named Yordan”.

Lambert turned in another great performance his last time out, pitching 7 innings of 1-run ball in a win over Detroit. He struck out 5 and walked none. It was the second start in a row where Lambert did not allow a free pass. If there were any criticism of Lambert’s season, it was that he was suspectible to the walk, like much of the Astros pitching staff. Before those last 2 starts, he carried a 4.4 BB/9 rate on the season, which has now dropped to 3.5

Lambert is 6-4 on the season over 11 starts, with a 3.23 ERA and 1.11 WHIP. He has a career high 8.2 K/9.

Shane Bieber, RHP, makes his 2026 season debut today for the Jays. Bieber missed the first half of the season due to inflammation related to Tommy John surgery that cost him nearly all of his 2024 season and most of his 2025 season. Bieber was traded to Toronto from Cleveland in 2025 while making rehab starts, and became a major part of the Jays’ pennant run in October.

In the 40.1 2025 regular season innings since he returned from Tommy John surgery, Bieber had a 3.57 ERA, a 1.02 WHIP, 1.6 BB/9 and 8.3 K/9.

In 18.2 IP in the postseason across 4 starts and 1 relief appearance, Bieber allowed 9 runs for a 4.34 ERA, struck out 18 and walked 6.

Bieber, the former 2020 Cy Young winner, has five pitches in his arsenal. His 4-seamers averaged 92.6 mph and he primarily pairs it with a slider to right handers. Against lefties, he complements his fastball more with his curveball, changeup and cutter.

This being his first start of the season, Bieber may be on a shorter leash than usual.

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

The game will be broadcast at 3:07 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.

If you’ve participated in game threads on other Astros sites in the past, you will probably see a lot of familiar names. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.

Feature photo from  @astros on X,  Source Link.