Thoughts about Astros’ first turn through the rotation

Hunter Brown takes the field for his first game of 2025. Photo by Kevin M. Cox/MLB Photos via Getty Images All five starting pitchers in the Astros’ rotation have a game in the books for 2025. Now that we have one complete turn through the pitching rotation, we can look back and evaluate how well they performed.

Of course, 1 game for each pitcher is just that, one game. If you want to draw inferences about how well they will perform in the future, well you can’t. This is just a small sample in 2025. But we can evaluate how well they started the season.

With sample sizes ranging from 5 -7 IP, pitching stats like FIP, ERA, or K/9 do not tell us much. However, a pitch modeling measure like…