HOUSTON – With Lance McCullers Jr. saying he’ll miss the start of the year with elbow soreness, Houston’s starting pitcher depth should be examined.
Yes, even without McCullers, the Astros have five solid-to-great options in the starting rotation, but there’s an old adage in baseball -- you can never have too much pitching.
The 2022 Astros were luckily very healthy at starting pitcher, only using eight pitchers to start a game -- one of them, Hunter Brown got two starts to show his stuff more than anything in terms of depth need. In 2022, 140 of 162 Astros games were started by the same five pitchers. That type of health is extremely uncommon with any baseball team.
Assuming, best case scenario, the Astros will need eight starting pitchers to get through 162 games, let’s find the depth options for No. 7 and No. 8, assuming your top six are Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, McCullers, Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy and Hunter Brown.
BRANDON BIELAK
2022 Stats: 3.65 ERA in 12.1 innings for the Astros. 0 starts. 3.15 ERA in 88.2 IP in Triple-A, 14 starts.
PROS: Bielak has the most starting experience of the depth group, making eight major-league starts in 2020 and 2021. He also pitched well in Triple-A in 2022.
CONS: Bielak has never had success starting at the major-league level, and his stuff isn’t particularly impressive. He has a league average fastball with nice spin. In his eight career starts, he’s had one quality start.
SHAWN DUBIN
2022 Stats: 4.78 ERA in 58.1 IP in Triple-A, 12 starts.
PROS: Dubin has great pure stuff, throwing a fastball that touches 101. His minor league strikeout numbers are insane - 12 K/9.
CONS: No major league experience and limited innings the past few seasons due to minor lingering injuries.
FORREST WHITLEY
2022 Stats: 7.09 ERA in 33.0 IP in Triple-A, eight starts.
PROS: Whitley was once the top pitching prospect in baseball and throws enough different pitches as a starter to go deep into games. He has a fastball that runs up to 99 MPH and prospect pedigree.
CONS: Whitley has never reached that pedigree, and has totally dropped off MLB’s Top 100 prospects the past two seasons as he’s battled injuries and ineffectiveness. His ceiling is high, but he’s simply one of the biggest prospect enigmas in Astros history and possibly in all of recent baseball.
FREE AGENTS
The only MLB-level starting pitcher free agents left are Dylan Bundy, Chris Archer and Anibal Sanchez.
Bundy made 29 starts for the Minnesota Twins in 2022, pitching to a 4.89 ERA. He could probably land a one-year, $3 to $4 million deal somewhere eventually.
Chris Archer had a 4.56 ERA in 25 starts for the Minnesota Twins in 2022. Both were bought out of their contracts by Minnesota, paying both a total of $1.75 million to not pitch for the Twins. Archer could probably be had for around $2 million for the season.
My favorite choice -- 38-year-old Anibal Sanchez. The Venezuelan had a 4.28 ERA in 11 starts for the Washington Nationals in 2022. He had a $2 million contract in 2022, and could probably sign for something close to that.
All three pitchers had relatively troubling underlying metrics, but we’re looking for a seventh starter here to make *maybe* 10 starts, meaning the Astros are -- at the moment -- in a fairly advantageous position.
