Blanco’s Spin Rate, plus Astros Pitch Rankings

Ronel Blanco pitching against the Yankees. Previously this week I wrote about the Offense Edition of Astros’ stats, and so I will continue with the Pitching Edition of Astros rankings. But yesterday’s ejection of Ronel Blanco raises a more immediate question. Before we discuss the Astros’ pitching stats, let’s look at Blanco’s spin rate.

Blanco Spin Rate

By now, you probably know that Ronel Blanco was ejected in last night’s game for sticky stuff on his glove. I’m not going to get into the validity of the ejection. That’s based on the rules, and the umps detected the sticky stuff on his glove. But analytics can give us information as to whether Blanco was using sticky stuff to impact the…