Three numbers from last night’s Astros win

Look, the Astros are now 30-15 through their first 45 games. That’s the record of a team that should be taken seriously.

In case you missed the excitement last night, or live under a rock, the Astros bested the Detroit Tigers to the score of 1-0. Sure, the Tigers were a .500 team heading into the game, but hey, they had Michael Fulmer on the mound. That dude is good at throwing a baseball for a living.

As you can gather from the score, the game was a clinic of very good pitching. Of course, you should expect that kind of result from Fulmer. He wasn’t the AL Rookie of the Year for nothing. But the Astros at least presented the appearance of pitching just slightly better. You can thank the unlikely duo of Brad Peacock and Chris Devenski.

14 strikeouts

Like I said, yesterday was a clinic of very good pitching. The Astros happened to be the team that came out ahead at the end of this affair thanks to their pitching staff and their 14 strikeouts. Peacock had eight of those in his 4.1 innings pitched. Devenski, Will Harris and Ken Giles collected the remaining six strikeouts. What can I say, I like double-digit strikeout totals.

.732 WPA

Once again, I cannot stress how tremendous the pitching staff stepped up in Dallas Keuchel’s absence. The Tigers lineup isn’t a pushover and the Astros quartet of pitchers last night held them to one hit and two walks. Once you consider everything that they did, the Astros pitchers posted a .732 WPA, otherwise known as Win Probability Added. That’s impressive.

Next: Astros should keep Brad Peacock in the rotation now

12 groundouts

While this was a pitcher’s duel all evening long, Houston’s offense had their fair share of opportunities to open the game up. Nine hits is usually enough to drive in more than one run. Unfortunately, the Astros lineup hit 12 ground balls, which doesn’t necessarily translate into runs. This was also the combined amount of the offense’s total fly balls and line drives.

**Statistics courtesy of Fangraphs**