Christian Javier is back again, but how much does it cost?

The Astronauts will almost certainly make it to the playoffs again. They led four games by 22 games in the AL West, which gave them about 2-1 odds to win the division, while the 9-1 odds support somehow playing for the playoffs. This will play nine consecutive playoff appearances, and in 11 years, spanning 10 years, spanning multiple roster makeovers, three front office regimes and three managers. As before.

What’s a bit unusual about this Astros is that the pitchers are a little uneasy. To be sure, not unheard of; I remember the 2017 team was unstable with a pitcher after Justin Verlander and Dallas Keuchel. But manager Joe Espada will have to do some tinkering here to make sure the pieces are all right.

How do I know? Well, in the overall era, the Astronauts are ranked 12th in the league and fifth in the playoffs. That’s not bad, but there are cracks under the surface. In fact, some of these cracks are on the surface. Just like Lance McCullers Jr.’s 6.97 ERA. Or Craig Kimbrel’s presence, not only in the lineup, but also in the middle of the role. Or, Framber Valdez, one of the team’s co-racing and playoff starters, simply openly clarified after a closed-door meeting that he didn’t intentionally hit the catcher in the chest with a fastball.

Whether you believe Valdez or not, “I didn’t mean to cross my catcher” is something Astros can take Keuchel and Verlander for granted. Good Things Astronauts are getting reinforcements from the injured list. Our Player Linker Tool and Swiss Army Knife’s Bane Luis Garcia comes from the Pennant Champion Astronaut Club in 2021 and 2022, just completed a 28-month 28-month comeback with Tommy John’s surgery. He started for the first time in the year on Monday and couldn’t come back at a better time.

But the one I was most interested in was Cristian Javier, who started on Thursday night only in his fifth major league after Tommy John’s surgery, against Carlos Rodón and the Yankees against the Mountains.

I’m interested in Javier because I’ve seen what he can do in the playoffs. In 2022, Javier gave a brief intermediate relief in the Topsaty topervy match against Seattle’s Al Divsion Series. (I call it the Yordan Alvarez game, but it’s not a specific description enough.) Promotion to No. With four spots in the seven-point best ALCS and World Series rotation, Javier scored 1 hit in 5 1/3 innings in his first start. He then threw two-thirds of the 4th World Series game. (This is a confusion for me, the only unplayed ball I’ve ever seen at any baseball level at Little League up.)

Even though the Phillies hit the record five home runs the night before, they were not hit outside of the possible realm. There were a lot of swings and missing in that lineup, a lot of feasts. What was really shocking was that Javier threw only two balls and closed them for six innings and allowed only home runs and two walks.

That night, 70 of Javier’s 97 courts were four and 25 were sweepers. There was only one pair of curve balls, both of which were my second left-handed batsman performance through commands, which hurt the duopoly. In ALCS, the story is roughly the same: 84 courts, 60 fastballs, 22 sweeps, and only two lefties with bent knuckles, neither of which produce swings.

In 2022 and 2023, 28.9% of Javier’s courts were not only fastballs, but four inches in the first four inches or higher in the area. In the past two years, about 240 pitchers have made at least 2,000 pitches. None of them has four bigger sellers than Javier. (Coincidentally, Rodón is third on that list, so if you look at Yankees-Astros tonight, you’ll know where to guide your attention.)

Many trends in baseball are cyclical. Chic fastballs are what are very fast cycles. The rampage that Javier ruined in the 2022 playoffs is the deification of four in the area. Even in the regular season, baseball Savant named it the fourth valuable four-man in the league, almost the same as Spencer Strider’s famous heater.

What’s interesting about this pitch is that Javier’s fastball is normal in most ways. Explosive speed, average arm side motion. And, there are no Bonkers Bailey Ober-type release points pranks here. Javier is 6-foot-1 and has an upright transverse transport that puts him near the bottom of the extended rankings.

There is a statistic in 2022 that Javier’s four-avator stands out: vertical motion. His four-seller rose three inches higher than comparable four holes, the second-most starter for Nestor Cortes.

Three inches doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s more than the maximum diameter of a baseball bat. And, when the court is one or two inches higher than the batsman expected, the ball that should be the line driver will eventually pop up at a speed. If you don’t appreciate how frustrating this is for batsmen, consider Bryson Stott’s reaction suddenly appeared in the World Series:

Later in one round, Rhys Hoskins did the same thing and gave it. The development of arrest:

OK, but that was three years ago. At that time, guys like Javier and Strider were challenging the traditional wisdom that appetizers require more than two pitches to succeed. Diversification has returned to style even in a relatively short period of time.

Javier learns himself. In 2023, the batsmen began to catch up. In similar innings, his 20-shot fastball was only much better than average in 2023. The opponent hit 0.121 on Javier’s sweeper and .183 on the 2022 fastball. In 2023, these figures rose to .209 and .236 respectively. Still good, but not dominant.

Back in 2024, Javier made changes frequently in the seven games before the elbow was sent. This has been a minor part of Javier’s track, but it’s going from low-unit digit usage in 2022 to 26.9% usage in 2024, with most of it coming from Fastball’s pie.

After TJ, Javier continued to add to his tracks. (basically) the thing with two parity pitchers is that it’s very obvious when you start throwing things. In his first game in the Grand Slam a few weeks ago, Javier threw 12 sinking pieces, which definitely caught the attention.

There was a warning sign even before Javier reappeared in the Grand Slam. He underwent five rehabilitation before returning to the Astronaut’s rotation, three of which were at the venue where Statcast data was generated. Here is what he threw in 2022 and 2023, then in 2024, and then in his rehabilitation work:

Man, what’s wrong, so he’s basically just a regular five-ball pitcher?

Yes, yes. After more than a year after a shelf after a major arm injury, there were only four games and 16 innings, so I wouldn’t come to a conclusion about what he threw. But it seems he is staying on the fastball (benefitably settled) and staying to his right-handed opponent, and most of the time it is the left-handed who replaces the curved ball:

I had a hard time seeing Javier Go, which was a fun little trick he pulled away. Basically, he has four holes, plus a pitch, each with an arm and glove side action for batsmen on each side of the plate. On the left wing, he has a little less secondary ball speed, while the right hand has a much more speed than the same effect on the right.

Now, Javier throws more changes and/or sinker pieces, and looks like (again, 16 innings, still building, without refunds if not ongoing), he once reshaped his four isolators so frankly. It still has evil vertical rises, but he is cutting some. As I said, this pitch never has the weird splitter-style handrail side movement. So now that he is throwing an actual splitter, his four-hole hand runs four-inch arms moving, not 2022.

Now, this is a continuation of a trend that actually begins in 2023, and this may disappear once Javier returns to full fitness. But strategically speaking, it makes sense to separate his four-pin from the sediment tablets as much as possible, especially when they enter at nearly the same speed.

I doubt Javier would be better off taking this more traditional approach. He hasn’t actually lost anything that made him so unpopular in the 2022 playoffs, and he’ll foolishly not adapted given that the batsman seems to have figured him out before he gets injured. Still, part of me is regretting that this unusual and dominant pitcher is now too strange to thrive in 2025.