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.

2. George Springer

The only person who is as notoriously streaky as George Springer is Kyle Tucker, but for Springer, he’s leveraged that streakiness into such superlatives as World Series MVP, World Series champion, and multiple-time all-star.

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Springer’s streakiness is far more often in the realm of dominance, and his dominance at the plate has not yet clicked this year, though we’re starting to see glimpses of it, if only he could stay healthy and off the injury list.

For Springer, we don’t need to compare him to anyone else, we just need to compare him to himself, and that’s where I get my optimism of a breakout from. He isn’t swinging at anything he wouldn’t ordinarily swing at. He isn’t reaching. He isn’t looking at strikes.

What looks to be the problem is that Springer is getting too pull happy. He is pulling the ball far more than ever before (54%) and going opposite field far less than ever before (just 13%). That, in turn, is leading to fewer line drives than ever before and more fly balls than ever before.

His exit velocity is down, his barrel percentage is down, and his launch angle is way up. This is the case of a line-drive hitter getting under the ball.

Give it time. He’ll sort it out. Speaking of which, on to No. 1.