Astros: 3 struggling batters on the verge of a breakouts

The Houston Astros need some bats to wake up, so here are three guys on the brink of snapping into an offensive breakout.

Give the injury to Justin Verlander, you’d have thought that it’d be the bats that would carry the Houston Astros to success this year, but it just hasn’t been the case.

Despite some generally positive numbers from guys like Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Correa, as well as the recent awakening of Alex Bregman, the rest of the lineup is still half-asleep. Yordan Alvarez came back just long enough to remind us how potent he can be both on his own and in terms of unlocking this offense.

But he’s back on the IL, Kyle Tucker continues to whiff, and the need for another bat to wake up has never been more obvious. This pitching staff needs a little help, they need some run support, so here are three guys that are destined to breakout soon according the numbers.

The Houston Astros should see hot bats from these three soon

We start with No. 3.

Note: This was written before the breakout against Colorado.

3. Abraham Toro

I dove into Toro’s numbers yesterday, but I want to hit on some of the highlights here. For starters, only Alex Bregman hits the ball harder more often than Abraham Toro. Which is crazy to think about, seeing as how Toro is currently boasting the lowest batting average of the bunch.

He also hits the ball softly less than any other man save Myles Straw.

Nobody—and I mean nobody—hits more line drives than Toro and when it comes to squaring up the ball, both in terms of barrel percentage and exit velocity, he ranks sixth and seventh, respectively. Meaning that he is nestled comfortably into the big bats with his ability to hit the ball hard.

It’s his BABIP that is incorrigible. Just .143, the lowest on the team by quite some distance. History shows that BABIP, on average, should be around .300. In tandem with how hard he’s hitting the ball, that would lead us to believe that Toro is not far from clicking. You can’t keep hitting the ball as hard as he’s hitting it without reward for long.

Moving on to No. 2.