Astros Performance Ranking Board At The Break

We haven't had one of these in a while and there's a perfectly good reason for that. As we get a bigger sample size there was less movement on the board. Meaning there's fewer interesting observations to make -- not that they were playing well enough to make any interesting comments to begin with.

Anyways, I think we'll be doing this exercise less and less as we near the end of the season. This may become a monthly feature or this may only be done once more at the end of the season.

Onto the pretty charts:

Observations:

• Jason Castro had a good month and shot up the hitters board.
• Chris Snyder, Matt Downs, Brian Bogusevic are still struggling; Jordan Schafer has joined them, but unlike those three he has a BABIP well over the league average.
• Striking out and not balancing that with hitting the ball out of the park is proving to be Schafer's downfall.
• With a .360 BABIP and a .319 wOBA this may be a make or break second half for Chris Johnson.
• Carlos Lee was the third best regular hitter on this team. Could Justin Maxwell's return make up for lost production from trading Lee?

Hit the jump for more player rankings.

Observations:

• Not much change here, in a while. That's not a bad thing though as the pitchers had pretty good outings leading into the break.
• The one change of note is that Lucas Harrell surpassed J.A. Happ in average Game Score.
• Not shown above: In four starts Dallas Keuchel has posted an average Game Score of 55.5.

Observations:

• Not much change here either. Unlike the rotation the bullpen has gone in the other direction with just about everyone struggling.
• Brett Myers, Wilton Lopez and Brandon Lyon still lead the bullpen. The only other reliever with more shutdowns than melt downs is recently called up Enerio Del Rosario. Everyone else is at zero or negative.
• Fernando Rodriguez has plummeted to the bottom of the pitching staff with10 meltdowns.
• Rodriguez and Lyon are tied for most shutdowns with seven.

Observations:

• For those wondering why Brian Bogusevic's name is still regularly appearing in the lineup, all one needs to do is look at this chart. Bogusevic is easily the best defender on this team according to DRS and UZR. He also passes the eyeball test for me.
• The only other players with a positive UZR/DRS are all bench players.
• We can consider Lowrie largely average so no worries there.
• With these defensive numbers and his struggling offensive numbers, it's hard to identify a reason for playing Schafer regularly.
  
• Jose Altuve being below J.D. Martinez and Chris Johnson could be concerning, but players just breaking into the leagues usually have bad defensive numbers and typically improve with more time in the leagues.