It’s May 24, and the Astros’ team ERA is 2.39

No, seriously, it’s May 24, and the Astros’ team ERA is 2.39.

I guess it’s my job to put words after that, but I shouldn’t have to. It’s absurd. It’s remarkable. It’s unsustainable. It’s hilarious. It’s terrifying. It’s May 24, and the Astros’ team ERA is 2.39. This would be a remarkable factlet about the 1968 St. Louis Cardinals, but even they couldn’t compete with the Astros. Their ERA was a lofty 2.50 after 50 games.

It’s May 24, and the Astros’ team ERA is 2.39.

In honor of this tomfoolery, let’s dig into some stats and find more factlets. I like factlets. And without having a ready-made list before I decide to write an entire column about Astros pitchers, I’m pretty sure I can find enough. We’ll start with the obvious ...

Look at this wastrel, bringing the team down every time he pitches. His ERA is the 27th-best in the American League, which is just appalling. What’s he worth according to FanGraphs’ WAR, almost a full win? Shameful.

Other than Keuchel, the two ne’er-do-wells on the staff are Tony Sipp, who has a 4.15 ERA in 8⅔ innings and Joe Smith, who has a 7.07 ERA in 14 innings. Besides those two relievers who have thrown hardly any innings, it’s Keuchel bringing up the rear. And, sarcasm aside, he’s been quite good, you know.

(Sipp’s ERA is 2.70 ERA in May, and Smith’s is 1.93, in case you were worried about how the Astros were going to make it through this.)

There have been 68 pitchers in baseball history who have qualified for the ERA title with more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings and fewer than three walks per nine. The first was Sandy Koufax, who fashioned a 2.54 ERA in 1962, with a 10.55 K/9 and a 2.78 BB/9.

Which is another way of saying that through May 24, the entire Astros staff has been 1962 Sandy Koufax for every inning of the season.

But players weren’t striking out nearly as much back in ‘62, which makes Koufax’s numbers even more remarkable, so it’s better to move into the present day. It’s more helpful to think of the Astros through May 24 as being last year’s Stephen Strasburg (10.5 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, third place in NL Cy Young voting) for every inning of this season.

It’s like the Astros were a dumb thought experiment somebody came up with after too many edibles. “What if Stephen Strasburg were a robot and could pitch every inning, man? That’d freak people OUT.”

This isn’t a gobsmacking stat. It’s just to show how freaky and dangerous the Astros are. The old orthodoxy was that you could be a sinker guy or a strikeout guy, but you couldn’t be both. Sinkers were for inducing weak grounders.

Except the Astros have figured out a way to have their cake and throw it in your face, too. They’re not a sinker-heavy team. Even Charlie Morton, who made his name as Off-Brand Roy Halladay, Now With Sinkers! isn’t throwing his sinker nearly as much as he used to. Gerrit Cole has cut his sinker use from 18 percent to five percent since joining the Astros.

Which is to say that the Astros have figured out a way to strike hitters out with a contingency plan of getting them to pound the ball into the ground. It’s a combination of location and movement on nasty breaking balls, and it’s absolutely working.

This is probably the purest stat in the sabermetric ocean. Every swing starts as a hitter thinking, “I can hit this.” Every swinging strike ends with the hitter thinking, “Nope. I was wrong.” It’s such a great way to explain how often a pitcher does exactly what he wants to do.

And by this metric, the Astros have Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, and Lance McCullers doing what they want to do more often than everyone but five other starting pitchers in the American League. Morton has nearly doubled his swinging-strike rate since his days with the Pirates.

More substantively, this stat speaks to the Astros’ roster construction and the future of baseball. For the last couple of years, since the ‘14 Royals and the deification of Andrew Miller, all we’ve heard about is the rise of the super-bullpen and the old-school fireman. If you wanted a postseason juggernaut, you had to get two or three closers. Four, if possible.

The Astros are a reminder that the team that won the 2017 World Series was the team without a bullpen. Or, to rehash my own words ...

Last October, you could practically hear A.J. Hinch sobbing with regret during every trip to the mound. Instead of motioning to his left or right hand as he walked out, he would simply become a human shrug emoticon. By the end of the World Series, I was half expecting him to not stop at the mound and continue walking, through the open center field gate, out of the ballpark, and straight down the middle of the highway, cars honking and swerving to avoid him, until he reached the ocean, any ocean, and slowly walked underneath the waves, where there are no relievers.

They didn’t need the super bullpen then. And they didn’t chase one in the offseason, instead doubling down on the idea that Starting Pitchers Are Important, Actually. It seems like a more sustainable strategy in the regular season, and we already have a proof of concept for the postseason, especially if there’s a chance that Dallas Freaking Keuchel isn’t one of the Astros’ four best starters.

Also, their bullpen is a strength again anyway, with the lowest ERA and FIP in the American League. That doesn’t seem fair.

The Brewers’ bullpen is a huge strength, and it’s one of the reason they have the best record in the National League. However, they’ve thrown a combined 188⅔ innings. The Astros have thrown 127⅓. This is extremely important when you think about why the Astros’ bullpen was a mess in October. It wasn’t because Ken Giles or Chris Devenski were bad pitchers; they were just gassed. The starter-forward philosophy of this year’s team should help them avoid another white-knuckle postseason.

The corollary to this stat is that the Astros have thrown 20 more innings than any other team in baseball and 35 more than the second-place AL team, the Red Sox. While it’s only fair to be worried about the fatigue of the starters if we’re going to crow about the lack of bullpen use — and the Astros do lead the world in pitches thrown by a starter — they have an assortment of starters who weren’t ground into a fine dust last year, which is a rarity for a team that played an extra month. McCullers threw only 139 innings. Morton threw 170, and Keuchel thew 173. Cole didn’t have the extra month, so he topped out at 203.

Verlander threw 242 innings, but he’s an alien.

We’ll go back to a word we used in the opening paragraph, just to temper expectations: unsustainable. No, the Astros aren’t really going to finish the year like a 12-headed Cy Young finalist. Someone will stumble, and someone else will pull something. There will be balls that fall in, and there will be series where it seems like they can’t get anyone out. It’s still baseball, after all.

But it’s my duty to inform you that it’s May 24, and the Astros’ team ERA is 2.39. That’s hilariously appalling and horribly amusing. They’ve been doing it in a variety of ways, with a variety of pitchers, and it’s all working perfectly right now.

I’m not sure if the smart bet is for them or against them, but we might as well appreciate it while it lasts.