I haven’t read the BTB piece, but I’ve been looking at the stats at Bill James’ website. A few things:

1. Bill James’ system essentially just tracks the number of outs given up on the basepaths and assigns a triple penalty to failures. Unlike his defensive stats, these basically just track the number of extra bases the Astros gained (or lost) on the basepaths.
2. At -42, the Astros are by far the worst team in the league. And only the Orioles are worse in the majors.
3. According to James’ system, Pence really isn’t that bad. He’s a net 0, his meager losses in stealing being balanced out by meager contributions on advances.
4. Lance has been kind of bad, but not terrible. (-5)
5. Miggy has been genuinely bad (-17)
6. Carlos Lee is awful (-25)
7. Michael Bourn is 2nd in the Major Leagues in baserunning (30), behind only childhood friend Carl Crawford (31). Yay! Positive contributions!

So, yeah, there’s a good argument to be made that the discrepancy between the Astros’ wOBA, OPS, etc. and their actual run totals is explained entirely by their propensity for double plays and horrible baserunning. As has been said before, the first problem just isn’t going to change (well, not much), and the second isn’t going to change without a coaching change.

1. I am skeptical of the line drive rates for the Astros, based on that Fangraphs article last year which showed that both home and road teams had anomalous line drive rates at MMP.

2. I agree somewhat with your diagnosis of batting issues, but I’m not sure of the extent it can be improved. I think this is something which is caused by the type of players which the Astros seem to like/attract: high contact, low strike out, high batting average, low walk hitters. (Wade said he wanted to model the team’s construction on the Angels, and that is a good description of the Angels’ hitters). Some of these players have been hitting with this style their whole career. Guys like Tejada and Pudge are notorious bad ball hitters. Dave Clark called Hunter Pence “the next Vlad Guerrero” when Clark had him in Corpus. How much can these guys change their styles at this point in their career? Individually, these are good hitters, but when you put them all on the same team…uh, oh.

3. I briefly looked at some of the individual hitter’s O Swing% and O contact% compared to their history. This may tell us something about what to expect in the second half.

4.The high O Swing% ratio for the team is mostly caused by Pudge and Tejada, who have percentages in the 30’s. Pudge’s O Swing% and O Contact % are pretty much in line with his overall career. Tejada has had a high O Swing rate most of his career, but it took a significant bump upward when he came to the Astros. Tejada also makes significantly more contact outside the zone in recent years. (My guess is that he swinging for HRs less often.) Pence almost joins Pudge and Tejada in O Swing , but he has improved his percent from the 31 of 08. Pence is in the second tier causing the high team O Swing %.

5. Four players appear to have improved their plate discipline over past years (Berkman, Bourn, Pence, and Lee). All of these players have decreased their O Swing % but increased their O Swing Contact rate. I consider that an improvement in plate discipline because my assumption is that they have become more selective at swinging outside the zone and therefore make better contact on the outside zone pitches they swing at. I could be wrong about that, and maybe we would prefer that they swing and miss more, but I doubt it. With the exception of Pence, these guys are not significant contributors to the high team O Swing %.

6. Kaz Matsui’s O swing % and O contact rate have both deteriorated, which matches his bad offensive season so far.

and, as long as we’re talking about the Astros at the All Star Break, I’d like to point out that:

1. Hunter Pence would have caught Granderson’s triple last night, or at the very least not woefully misplayed it like Upton did.
2. He also would have gunned down Granderson at the plate.