Following a brief stint in the bullpen, Mike Burrows made his return to the starting rotation on Wednesday against the Blue Jays. The question is whether it would be a triumphant one. I think we can rule it as such, at least until his next start.
There is no debate that Burrows has been one of the worst starting pitchers in baseball through the mathematical first half of the season. He arguably has the worst-performing pitch with a four-seam fastball that opposing hitters…
Oh, wait, another home run. On a four-seam fastball. For the twelfth time this season, which leads baseball for any pitch type.
Yeah, that tracks.
I won’t lie to you, as I thought we were in for a looooong game when Nathan Lukes hit that dinger against Burrows. While the rest of his pitch arsenal is actually, dare I say, decent enough at times, that four-seam is mostly a giant meatball. Opposing hitters were slugging .744 against the pitch entering Wednesday. If Toronto were already teeing off only one batter into the game, well, you get my point.
But Burrows did something unexpected: he didn’t implode. For the first time in nearly a month. Six innings of one-run ball, limiting the Blue Jays to two hits and a walk while striking out three. The batted balls mostly didn’t harm him, with an average exit velocity of only 84.2 mph. Other than that one four-seam to Lukes, he largely avoided mistakes. While it probably wasn’t his best start in terms of stuff, it was arguably the most encouraging of the season for him.
But, to be clear, that fastball still wasn’t good. While Burrows’s other four pitches (slider, curveball, changeup, and sinker) all did fine, his four-seam fastball was hammered, with an average exit velocity of 98.9 mph. Only one whiff on 10 swings. That pitch is still a problem, and until it is fixed, it will be hard to fully trust Burrows in any start, given that he uses it nearly 30% of the time. With that said, I am curious to see what Statcast returns about his arm angle for Wednesday’s game. In recent weeks, we’ve seen his arm angle creep higher, closer to levels seen in past seasons. That alone won’t fix his four-seam issues, but it is an important piece of the puzzle.
Thankfully for the Astros, Burrows did throw the ball relatively well. I mean, the lineup didn’t exactly have a stellar night with actually hitting the ball, limited to three runs on four hits. But where they did excel was drawing walks; eight in total, to be exact. Two of Houston’s three runs were scored by a runner who got on base via a walk. Isaac Paredes drove in Jeremy Peña in the first inning, with Peña driving in Brice Matthews in the ninth. That second run scored when Jeff Hoffman messed up a pickoff attempt at third base with Joey Loperfido following the latter’s triple in the eighth inning.
And Cam Smith made an absolutely sensational catch in right field in the eighth inning that stopped a run from scoring and preserved a one-run lead.
For the first time all season, the Astros have now won four consecutive series. They also only trail the Mariners by 2.5 games for the AL West lead and sit only one game back of the Blue Jays for the last Wild Card spot. While we can mostly thank a lackluster AL for allowing a team with a 39-43 record and a -39 run differential to remain in the postseason mix, it is still encouraging to see Houston play well in recent weeks.
Feature photo from Astros on X
I view this as Josh Miller flex. Burrows was effectively painting slider away to rhb. As much as the 4sfb needs work (as shown above), he posted 6IP having thrown the 4sfb eight times total to lhb.
The Astros and their daunting -39 run differential sit only 1 game back from a wild card berth, and currently have the tiebreaker over the Blue Jays. Other than the Yankees, no other AL team has a run differential above +10. The AL is just a smorgasbord of mediocrity. The Astros will likely be buyers at the deadline but I’m still of the belief they’d be best served being sellers and reaping the benefits of one of the few sellers in MLB. This year is a golden opportunity to replenish the farm system with numerous top 100 picks in the draft, if they decided to sell at the deadline.
I think it’s going to end up being a situation where they don’t raise, but they also dont fold, they just pay to call because they have a flush or an open ended straight draw and they want to see if maybe they hit something on the river.
If Mcullers and Javier come back, we do have a theoretical surplus of cheap back-end starters with those two, Teng, Lambert, Burrows, and Arrighetti; you could even throw Blubaugh into that conversation. If a front office really fell in love with one or got desperate due to injuries, we might get an interesting prospect out of one of them without seriously damaging our chances this year.
I could see Lambert fetching a tidy return if he keeps this up. The Cubs gave up their #13 prospect to the Mets for Peterson who was over a 6 ERA.
But again, I don’t think the Astros will move anybody they see contributing in a theoretical October unless they’re getting someone back that would also be a contributor in the theoretical October
I mean, the 9 degree arm angle shift…. Is this truly the sauce??? He only struck out 3, but gave bad contact the rest of the evening. Hope is a dangerous thing.
If he gives up 1 ER and goes 6 for every start for the rest of the year, would you take it?
Robert Ford, who is so measured in what he says — to the point of understatement — bellowed “Is he INSANE?!?!” when Hoffman made the bad throw to third base. Might be time to put together a gallery of Ford Freak-Outs.
How many LHBs do the Blue Jays have? It seemed like the Blue Jays’ lineup had a few more RHBs than some of the other teams that Burrows faced.
Going into the game, I felt pretty good about Burrows improving in this game (though maybe not as good as it turned out). At some point, regression was going to lead to improvement. There currently is more than 1 run difference between his ERA and x-ERA, and almost 1 run difference between the x-FIP and ERA.
They started 4, 4 and 3 lefty/switch batters in the 3 games. Probably one of the more RHH heavy lineups the astros have seen rolled out against them this year
Just looked at fangraphs game graph for Burrows in this game. His 4 seam FB continues to be below average in “stuff” (movement & velocity), but the 4 seamer was above average based on Location+, giving the 4 seamer a slightly above average composite score. So, yes, better location is the key to improving his 4 seam FB results. Also, in this game, Burrows’ slider was very good, both in terms of stuff and location. His FB command was also very good.
Link
https://www.fangraphs.com/scores/game-graphs?date=2026-06-24&hometeamid=14&dh=0
I meant curve ball and not FB in that last sentence.