Astros lineup and hitting the ball hard

Yordan Alvarez hits a double on Sept. 22.With the 2024 season complete, we can look back at the Astros batters’ “quality of contact.” The statcast metrics provides information on the exit velocity and elevation of batted balls on contact. Hard hit balls are defined as events with 95 mph or higher exit velocity, and Barrels are defined as batted balls with a combination of exit velocity and launch angle which are likely to produce more than a .500 batting average and 1.5 slugging.

The decline in power is a running theme for the Astros’ offense this year. The offense ranks highly in batting average and wRC+ with rankings of 3d and 5th, respectively. But the ranking for Isolated Power (ISO) is…