Is Josh Hader Cursed, Broken, or Both?

If you're going to spend a lot of money on a free agent closer, you should shop high up in the market. That's what the Astros did this past offseason, shelling out $95 million over five years to bring Josh Hader home. Last season, Hader was untouchable, with a 1.28 ERA in 61 appearances and 33 saves in 38 chances.

This year, not so much. His ERA is 6.39, and was over 9.00 on Tax Day. He only has two saves, which are partly the fault of his teammates, but Hader again fumbled and lost. On the other hand, the Astros have struggled to find places to use him. He has only had one save since the first week of April, including an entire week in which he did not ride at all. On Tuesday night, Hader had his first two-inning regular season appearance since 2019. It's not the start that either Hader or the Astros have in mind, I think we can all agree.

When a reliever starts a multi-year contract like this one — especially a reliever in his 30s, who has had some very publicized struggles in the past 24 months — panic sets in quickly. But with Hader, there's plenty of evidence that his ineffectiveness is largely the result of being swallowed up by the Astros' Charybdis of rot so far this season, rather than a sudden loss of performance.

Hader is using a higher strikeout rate than last year, with a lower walk rate. His BABIP is .444, unmanageable for a human pitcher (as opposed to a tee) and the difference between Hader's ERA and FIP (over 4 runs) is ninth highest among over 200 professional relievers.

In addition, Hader has suffered from bad streaks. His LOB% is just 51.1% (it was 88.8% last year), and if you remove the one-run, 1/3-inning outing against the Braves, Hader's ERA would be 3.64. I know it doesn't work that way, and 3.64 isn't something he gets paid $19 million a year to produce, but if Hader's ERA had been in the 3.00 range by the end of April, no one outside of Harris County would have noticed.

The season is still young enough that it's no real distraction to go back and watch every single base hit Hader has given up. Of the 13 hits allowed, 10 were singles, which tells you something right off the proverbial bat. One of the three extra-base hits, CJ Abrams' triple to space, hung in the air forever and could have been easier if it had been driven a few degrees anywhere. In that same inning, Lane Thomas was credited with an infield single that should have been an error on Jose Altuve, and there was a Gleyber Torres blooper that came off a 59.3 mph hit. That's how he puts up a .444 BABIP.

I would love to be able to write this as a variation on the first season. God knows my job would be easier if, every time something weird happened in April, I could throw my hands up and say, “A small sample size!” But few of those hits raised red flags. For example: There was Brenton Doyle's wailing song – giving up any serious connection with Doyle is troubling – and the conga line for the hot line drive in that one nightmare out of Atlanta.

I want to highlight two things that Hader did differently this season compared to years past, because as much as I think his bad ERA is the result of bad streaks and the wrath of the BABIP gods, I'm concerned How throwing his slide again there he throws his fastball.

Let's go back to that Hader hit list. Only three of the 12 were off the slide. One was Ronald Acuña Jr.'s well-placed back-door pass. he hit it back into the box (actually almost past Hader's ankles) with one. Don't worry – hang in this league long enough and you'll eventually get Charlie Browned by Acuña.

One of the two hits Hader gave up on his slider was his only home run of the year. Davis Schneider came to the plate with a home run for the first time and two outs in the ninth.

One thing I love about Minute Maid Park is the huge row of Astros Community Sponsors signs behind the Crawford Boxes. (Including the only Halliburton ad I remember seeing in person.) When a home run hits one of those big metal plates it makes a satisfying BONG. If you watch the video of Schneider's home run you can hear that low, rumbling sound behind Todd Kalas' comment.

This home run was part of Schneider's national hero story that happened a few weeks ago, but the truth is that this pitch was an absolute meatball. Any skilled major league pitcher could have fired this slide of cement mixture off a Halliburton fence. And Hader knew it – before the director had even changed camera angles, the Astros' closer had begun to fall into the squat that every pitcher who gives up a home run should be familiar with.

On the other hand, hanging a slider and blowing a save is a big deal, even in April. But at the same time, it happens, even to close people. I won't draw any deep conclusions about Hader based on the results of a few slides, but overall, Hader's slider is about as effective as it was last year. The mistake on Schneider was bad, and impactful, but it looks like an isolated event.

Still, I'm concerned about one thing: For most of his career, Hader threw his slider in the low 80s for average. That velocity has dipped into the mid-80s the past three seasons, but so far in 2024, Hader's slider is averaging 87.5 mph. That's not a problem when you're alone — and, pipe shot from Schneider notwithstanding, Hader's slider has been good this year.

But opponents hit .344 on his fastball. Some of that is probably BABIP; His xBA player is .197, and that high batting average amounts to 10 hits over 17 batted ball events, which will eventually return to Earth. But Hader's whiff rate on his sinker is the lowest of his career.

Most importantly, there is change you can identify.

For most of his career, and especially after he made the transition to a traditional closer's role, Hader has lived in the zone with his fastball. Although the fastball is labeled as a sinker and we think of the sinker as an off-the-barrel pitch that tends to attract groundballs, Hader has had his greatest success using it to miss bats in the zone. . This is where he has been throwing the heater for the past year.

Hader wasn't really flooding the strike zone with fastballs; he was hitting very high in the area. Hader started in 2017, and from that year to 2023, he was one of 277 pitchers to throw at least 300 innings in the major leagues. Of those 277 pitchers, Hader had the third-highest IFFB%, the second-lowest contact rate, the second-lowest ERA, the highest K%, and the lowest (by nearly 20 points) opponents' batting average.

Hader's traditional approach is arguably the most effective strategy employed by any pitcher in the majors over the past seven years. It produced the two most desirable effects – whiffs and popups – in alarming quantities. And now he doesn't really do that. Here's a heat map of Hader's sink from this season.

Hader now puts the way most people organize their refrigerator: Cheese goes in the bottom drawer.

For the first seven seasons of his career, Hader was as fly ball a pitcher as you'll find. His fly ball rate entering this season was the sixth highest in that sample of 277 pitchers. This year, his fastball rate is 55.6%, probably because he throws fastballs down the field. (“Lower” in the following table is defined as the bottom four inches of the strike zone and below.)

For a relief pitcher, multiple grounders theoretically mean double play balls; Hader already has two this season in just 12 games, halfway through his career at four. But that also means more hard contact on the ground, and more of those hard-hitting singles like the one the Braves put together.

As far as Hader's struggles early this season were more than a small sample, here's my theory: Hader is throwing a lot of sinkers down the stretch, which more than flies in the face of everything we've learned from the early slump. -2010s Pittsburgh Pirates two-seam factory, putting that pitch in the same spot where he usually throws his slider.

At the same time, the velocity gap between Hader's fastball and slider — which has hovered around 12 to 14 mph for most of his career — is entering the single digits.

The most basic, common feature of a relief ace – in addition to bad facial hair, the presence of a swinging mound, or heavy metal music – is a hard fastball up the middle with a sharp breaking ball down low. Get enough heat on the fastball and enough spin on the breaker, and no hitter alive will be able to cover both.

Now, Hader throws his fastball and slider in the same spot, and there's so little velocity difference between the two that a hitter can arrive late on the fastball or early in the slider, guess wrong, and pitch again.

Watching Hader last night, he also caught two low sinkers that were called balls despite being in the zone; one of them is enough for a place that didn't show up in my search.

Home plate Stu Scheurwater is usually tough, but it's like he knew I was writing about this and wanted to stop Hader from throwing his fastball there.

I'm not worried about Hader long term because there's no reason for him to just go back to doing what he did last year. Indeed, he hit the bullpen with his fastball more last night than in any previous outing this year, and he left the game with four hits and a win. He will be wise if he continues to jump like this; those who deviate from the path of success only tempt the wrath of the BABIP gods.