The Unexpected Greatness of Framber Valdez

The Astros’ lefty is making history and emerging as one of MLB’s best pitchers.

Framber Valdez has made a special request for his last couple of starts on the road. The Astros’ starter has asked to wear Houston’s navy blue alternate jerseys, which the team usually wears only on Sundays at home—a particular scenario that’d fallen on only one of Valdez’s start days this season. Manager Dusty Baker pulled some strings, however, and Houston was allowed to don them for Valdez’s Aug. 30 outing at Texas and his start at Detroit on Monday.

“I don’t know why, but they feel lighter to me,” Valdez told reporters after Monday’s outing, which made clear that if Valdez wants neon-pink jerseys, the team should do whatever it can to satisfy his preference. Because against the Tigers, Valdez twirled the first shutout of his career in an utter dismantling of the team led by his former manager, making him just the 12th pitcher this season to throw nine scoreless (no one has done it more than once).

Then again, maybe it doesn’t really matter what Valdez is wearing. Because no matter the uniform this year, he’s been great. Monday’s start marked Valdez’s 24th consecutive quality start, the record for a left-handed pitcher, tied for the MLB record in a single season and the third-longest streak overall. The 28-year-old southpaw needs two more to tie Jacob deGrom (2018–19) and Bob Gibson (1967–68) for the longest all-time streak.

The definition of a quality start—lasting at least six innings while giving up no more than three runs—doesn’t apply as much to today’s game as it did previous generations. If a player meets the minimum requirement for one, he’d have a 4.50 ERA for the game, which is well above this season’s league-wide average ERA among starters (4.07). But in this bullpen-heavy era, starters are asked to hurl six innings less often than ever, let alone 24 consecutive times. That’s what makes this accomplishment notable. It requires consistent competence (if not always excellence) over four months of a grueling season, without having room for one hiccup.

Consider it the starting pitcher’s equivalent of a long hitting streak. Batters can go 1-for-4, or a .250 average, and keep their streak alive. That’s the minimum. The players who are talented enough to maintain such streaks—either hitting or quality starts—usually have to outperform the minimum in their individual games.

Listed at 5'11" and 239 pounds, Valdez does not look like a classic workhorse or someone who has a legitimate claim to being the best left-handed pitcher in the league. But the results speak for themselves.

The Dominican Republic native has pitched more innings (179 ⅔) and complete games (three) than anyone in the American League despite logging a game or two less than most other starters who’ve stayed healthy all season, due to Houston’s six-man rotation. The six-man setup gives Valdez an extra day of rest, which allows him to work further into games than he would otherwise. He’s surpassed 100 pitches 14 times during his quality-start streak and eight times in his last nine starts, indicating he’s only getting stronger as the season goes on. That also translates to individual games, as the typical rule of thumb that pitchers become less effective when they face batters for the third time has not held true for Valdez. In an era when many starters are merely asked to get through five frames, Valdez has averaged a hair under 6 ⅔ innings per outing.

That endurance has helped the man Baker calls “Framby” stick out in a loaded Astros rotation that includes future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander. Valdez’s 2.50 ERA ranks fifth in the AL, while his 3.09 FIP ranks sixth. No qualified starter in the majors has given up home runs at a lower rate (0.45 HR/9 IP)—he’s pitched the third-most innings in the majors, yet 161 pitchers have served up more homers than his nine. And no left-handed pitcher in the AL has accumulated more FanGraphs WAR (3.9). Not bad for a guy who was projected to be a back-end starter or reliever during his minor league career.

Valdez is 14–4 with a 2.34 ERA during his streak of 24 quality starts.

AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

Valdez, a late bloomer who didn’t start pitching until he was 16, has found this success by inducing ground balls like no MLB starting pitcher has been able to for decades. His career ground-ball rate of 66.3% is the highest of any starting pitcher who’s appeared since 2002, the beginning of FanGraphs’ batted ball data. And that career rate has been bettered by only two individual seasons by a starter since then: Derek Lowe’s 67% in ’02 and ’06. According to Baseball Reference research by Fox Sports’ Jordan Shusterman, that holds true dating back to 1988.

Valdez has no true modern contemporaries. His ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio of 4.1 this season is more than double every other qualified starter’s except for one—Giants righthander Logan Webb, who’s still a ways behind at 2.4. His ground-ball rate of 66.3% is nearly 10 points higher than second-place Webb’s 57.3%. Only Yankees closer Clay Holmes bests him in those areas if you extend the player pool to those with at least 50 innings pitched. By effectively pitching to contact, he’s essentially acted as a one-man antidote to baseball’s full-throated adoption of the three true outcomes (home runs, walks, strikeouts).

A lot of that has to do with Valdez’s sinker, his bread-and-butter offering of which much has been written about and sets up everything else. But his secondary stuff is nasty, too, and all four of his pitches (sinker, curveball, changeup, cutter) grade out as above average based on FanGraphs’ pitch values.

The curve has long been Valdez’s biggest swing-and-miss pitch, ever since he was an international prospect. It has a stellar whiff rate of 45% this year, and opposing hitters are batting .144 against it with a .200 slugging percentage. He threw it four straight times to Javier Báez to lead off the ninth inning Monday and induced a foul and three silly swinging strikes, illustrating just how hard it is for righties to make contact with Uncle Charlie as he dives into their feet.

The curve used to also be Valdez’s only real putaway pitch against left-handed hitters, but the introduction of a cutter to his repertoire over the offseason modified his approach while immediately becoming one of the best of its kind, ranking third among qualified starters, per FanGraphs. Hitters are batting a measly .091 against it with a .136 slugging percentage, and he’s already more than comfortable using it against both lefties and righties.

And Valdez’s changeup, while still perhaps his least lethal weapon, has been much improved this year after it consistently ranked as an average pitch. According to Statcast, it’s been worth -6 runs (negative values are good for pitchers), just a hair below his other three offerings. It also, like his curveball, is ranked by FanGraphs as the eighth-most valuable pitch of its type among qualified starters. He makes sure to flash it almost exclusively against righties, and in doing so has allowed just one extra-base hit (a double) in 256 uses of it this year.

To call this Valdez’s breakout season may be doing a disservice to his two previous campaigns. Last year, he posted the lowest ERA among Houston’s starters and emerged on the national stage by throwing eight innings of one-run ball against the Red Sox in a critical ALCS Game 5 win.

He was named to the All-Star team for the first time this summer, but would have deserved to appear in 2020’s All-Star Game had it not been canceled. That year, he ranked in the top 10 league-wide in walk rate, home run rate and FIP, earning him an 11th-place finish in AL Cy Young voting. It was an exceptional first full season as a starter.

But it’s fair to say what Valdez is on pace to do over a 162-game schedule in 2022 is more impressive. Even if he’s a long shot to win the Cy Young this year, he’s surely merited his highest career finish in the vote. And if he keeps finding ways to improve, he could win the Cy Young one of these years and/or help Houston bring home its second World Series title. Either one would reinforce the notion that even though strikeouts have never been more valued among pitchers, there’s more than one way to send a hitter back to the dugout.

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