I thought he would improve at keeping his pitch counts down. He was young, still kinda is. Big strong guy with a lively arm and good stuff. The Astros front office was fooled too, I guess. I think they gave him $65 mil.
Yeah, it's hard to be a solid innings eater type when your control sucks and you're constantly running up high pitch counts. He had a BB/9 of nearly 5 during the 2021 season and we're talking about essentially a 2 pitch mix here that is primarily the fastball. His advanced stats outside of 2022 have never been that good. Take whatever stat you like - xERA, FIP, xFIP, SIERRA - they have been 4+ in every season aside from 2022. I'd love to be wrong but I don't think he will ever have a season even close to what he did in 2022.
