40-Man Roster Review: Collin McHugh

Collin McHugh quietly enjoyed a very strong campaign in 2015. On the heels of a breakout campaign in which he finished 4th in the American League Rookie of the Year voting, McHugh delivered. The grass certainly could have been greener. Sustaining good health in MLB is very difficult; a lingering blister plagued his pitching in the months of May and June.

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In those months, McHugh pitched to 5.08 and 4.97 ERAs, respectively. But despite those months, McHugh finished with 203 2/3 innings pitched, a 3.89 ERA and a 19-7 win-loss record. He even finished 8th in the American League Cy Young vote.

Jeff Luhnow punched a winning ticket with Collin McHugh, Selected off waivers in December 2013, McHugh had succeeded in the minor leagues, but that could not be sustained in MLB. The Astros convinced him to utilize his breaking pitches more. Note that after debuting with Houston, McHugh utilizes his curveball at least 20% of the time.

I am excited to see what the 2016 season has in store for McHugh. In two years with the Astros, he is 30-16 with a 3.39 ERA. 

If you are interested in learning more about Collin, please visit his personal blog http://www.adayolderadaywiser.com/. 

Follow him on Twitter @Collin_McHugh 

40-Man Roster Review: Lance McCullers

Lance McCullers is more than a pitcher on the Houston Astros 40-man roster. He is more than the number on his back and he is certainly a professional beyond his age. Lance McCullers is a true student of the game of baseball. 

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Ted Berg, a writer for FTW! MLB, wrote a brilliant piece discussing spin rates and the Houston Astros. Berg credits McCullers for being eager to learn, with respect to spin-rate data, "as soon as it was presented" to the young right-hander. 

Berg explains in his article that Lance has been working on replicating the change-up that Felix Hernandez deploys. This is pretty interesting. Take a look at whiffs per swing data for Hernandez, provided by Brooks-Baseball:

With McCullers tossing 125 2/3 innings last season, there is not a lot of data on his pitch usage. The data that Brooks-Baseball does have, however, is crazy. McCullers' worst month was June, where he only induced 26.92 whiffs per swing on his change-up.

Comparing Hernandez and McCullers' heat map with the change-up is pretty interesting as well:

It appears that McCullers is echoing Hernandez' pitch placement. McCullers  has a tendency to miss a little higher in the zone. With experience and more faith in his ability, I am confident that Lance will grow and locate his pitches better.

Overall, McCullers is a really good pitcher for the Houston Astros. In his rookie effort, he threw 125 2/3 innings, resulting in a 3.22 earned run average. Other numbers look quite nice. His strikeout-to-walk ratios are exceptional: 9.2 K/9; 3.1 BB/9; therefore, 3.0 strikeouts per walk issued. 

Once seen as a question mark with regards to a future in the bullpen or being a starting pitcher, this 22-year-old is silencing experts and internet bloggers. He is the real deal and should be in the mix for a Cy Young run as early as this season.

40-Man Roster Review: Dallas Keuchel

Dallas Keuchel. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a name can be worth a thousand words. Or many, many more. I am not going to spend all day writing this roster review. I assume that if you are here, you are already aware that Dallas Keuchel is a top-20 pitcher in all of Major League Baseball.

So let's just cover a few basics. Drafted and signed by the Astros in the 2009 MLB draft, Keuchel made his MLB debut just shy of three years after first signing a professional contract. He did not pitch poorly; 5 innings, 4 bases on balls, 4 hits, 2 strikeouts and 1 earned run.

Keuchel's mark in the earned run average department kind of fall in line with the Astros loss total during the 2012 and 2013 seasons(5.27. 5.15). They also help illustrate how the Astros went from a 55-win club in 2013 to an 86-win team in 2015 (2.93, 2.48).

Dallas Keuchel has a hell-of-a-story to tell regarding his 2015 season. The team itself was expected to be better than 70 wins; yet, not quite over the .500 mark. En route to a 20-8 record and a 2.48 ERA, Keuchel went 15-0 at home, started in the 2015 American League All-Star Game, and defeated the New York Yankees (on the road) in a win-or-go-home setting that was the American League Wild Card Game. 

Keuchel is the embodiment of the Houston Astros administrated by General Manager Jeff Luhnow. In the image below, observe how many pitches are in the outer third of the strike zone. Not only are they outside, but they are also heavily concentrated in the bottom portion of the zone. This helps to ensure both soft contact and downward force on the baseball. The result is a higher ground ball rate. 

Another graphic that I would like to direct attention to is with respect to his pitch usage. The main differences here are an increase in his sinker usage. In the first couple seasons, Keuchel used his sinker around 40% of the time. In the past two seasons, however, he is employing that pitch more and more. There is a slight dip in the mid-to-late portion of 2015. Overall, Keuchel uses his sinker more than half the time. His other pitches have essentially stayed the same in regards to usage. But it is very interesting that Keuchel is, for the most part, a two-pitch kind of guy. It works!

Most peripheral statistics suggest that Keuchel is not a fluke. The graphics selected show that he has developed an idea of where to attack batters in the strike zone as well as what pitches work well for him. In four seasons of data, only the 2013 season has an outlier in terms of BABIP. In order from 2012-present, Keuchel has posted: .277, .340, .295 and .269 marks in this statistic.

People may infer that Keuchel will not replicate his 2015 season in 2016. That is okay by me. Keuchel is not a fluke. He is a Cy Young Winner and a true major league pitcher.