Astros Sign Rasmus, Continue Building All-or-Nothing Lineup

Playing in Minute Maid Park, a launching pad that favors left-handed pull hitters (120 home run park factor) and righties (114) alike, the Houston Astros are assembling a lineup that should hit plenty of tape-measure shots in 2015. But the pace at which those sluggers rack up outs between highlight-reel homers could be equally breath-taking. Outside of batsmith Jose Altuve , the Astros feature a cadre of Dave Kingman All-Stars — and they just added to their collection by signing free agent outfielder Colby Rasmus to a one-year, $8 million contract.

In 2014, 30 MLB players hit at least 15 home runs while posting a walk-to-strikeout ratio below 0.4. The Astros now employ five of those strike zone-challenged sluggers: Chris Carter (37 home runs, 0.31 BB/K ratio), Evan Gattis (22 HR, 0.23 BB/K), George Springer (20 HR, 0.34 BB/K), Matt Dominguez (16 HR, 0.23 BB/K), and Rasmus, who popped 18 homers with a career-worst 0.23 BB/K during his “walk” year with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Rasmus wasn’t always an all-or-nothing hacker. Back when he was the prodigal son of the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system, then headed by current Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, Rasmus displayed both patience and power from the left side of the plate. He climbed as high as #3 overall on Baseball America’s top prospect list, and looked like a quick study in the majors by getting on base at a .361 clip during his age-23 season. But Rasmus has largely resembled a lefty-swinging B.J. Upton ever since, selling out for power while his once-precocious plate discipline slipped. Rasmus’ OBP bottomed out at .287 last season, tying Upton and Aaron Hill for 10th-lowest among hitters getting at least 350 plate appearances.

Rasmus throttles fastballs — he slugged .581 against them in 2014 — and he actually shows a pretty sharp eye against heaters too (22.5% chase rate, compared to the 25% MLB average). Among batters seeing 600+ fastballs last year, Rasmus ranked 11th in slugging, sandwiched between AL Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu (.585) and down-ballot NL MVP candidate Jose Harrison (.569). When pitchers toss him breaking or off-speed stuff, however, Rasmus becomes downright jumpy. He chased 37.5% of soft pitches in 2014, well north of the 32% MLB average. That lack of plate selection led to precious little contact for Rasmus, particularly on soft stuff thrown at or below the knees:

Rasmus’ contact rate by pitch location vs. soft pitches, 2014

He whiffed 45.4% of the time that he swung at a breaking or off-speed pitch, tying Ryan Howard for the eighth-highest miss rate in the majors. When he did manage to make contact against a soft pitch, it wasn’t particularly loud (.362 slugging percentage, close to the .343 MLB average).

Rasmus has some serious holes in his offensive game, and his big 2013 season now looks more the product of good luck on balls put in play than some legitimate breakthrough (his BABIP was .356 in ’13, nearly 60 points above his career average). That said, there’s little harm in Houston taking a low-cost, one-year flyer on the 28-year-old free agent on the off chance that they can tease out the talent that made Rasmus so prized when Luhnow ran St. Louis’ minor league system. Rasmus will go yard regularly in Minute Maid. Like many of his new teammates, however, he’ll have to get on base more often to make those blasts worthwhile.

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