Enyel De Los Santos may have thrown his last pitch for the Houston Astros, and the bigger issue is not whether that happens so much as how his season was handled along the way.
Middle relief has always been a little chaotic, and the Astros have long treated it that way. They tend to find two or three arms for the middle innings, usually from somewhere unexpected, and then try to turn them into something useful. De Los Santos has filled that kind of role for a couple of seasons, but this year’s usage tells a bigger story about the bullpen than his raw ERA ever could.
The easiest way to see it is through a simple comparison. One pitcher put up a 3-3 record with 71.1 innings, a 4.79 ERA, 3.42 xERA, 4.11 FIP, 8.45 K/9, 2.52 BB/9 and 1.39 HR/9. The other went 2-3 in 44.2 innings with a 3.43 ERA, 4.21 xERA, 3.66 FIP, 8.26 K/9, 4.23 BB/9 and 0.40 HR/9.
At first glance, the second line looks cleaner. But the deeper numbers narrow the gap.
The xERA and FIP are much closer than the ERAs suggest, the first pitcher walked fewer batters per nine, and the second allowed nearly one fewer home run per nine. That’s why the debate around these two arms has been so messy online since Pearson was let go.
The first pitcher is De Los Santos. The second is Nate Pearson.
And once you move past the surface stats, the usage patterns matter just as much as the results. De Los Santos pitched at least 1.1 innings in 21 of his 66 games.
He allowed 38 earned runs overall, but 12 of those came in games where he threw 1.1 innings or more. That still leaves the larger point: in those longer outings, he worked 34 innings and posted a 3.18 ERA.
In the other 37 innings, he gave up 26 earned runs, which works out to a 6.27 ERA when he was asked to get three outs or fewer.
That is the kind of split that makes bullpen evaluation tricky. A pitcher can look one way in the box score and another way depending on how he was deployed.
In another piece, A.J. Blubaugh showed the opposite pattern, thriving in single-inning work and slipping when asked to do more.
If the Astros had flipped those roles, the results might have looked a lot different.
Pearson’s usage paints a different picture. He made 40 appearances in 44 innings, and five of those outings were more than one inning.
Two of those came as a Royal even though 24 of his 40 games came as a Royal. Only one of his 17 earned runs came in games where he pitched more than one inning.
Eight of those runs, though, came in his last four outings.
The scoreless-outing numbers also tilt the discussion. Pearson had 31 scoreless appearances in 40 games, a 77.5 percent rate. De Los Santos had 42 scoreless outings in 66 games, a 63.6 percent rate.
That doesn’t settle the argument, but it does sharpen it. Pearson’s season looks better by that measure, yet the way both pitchers were used keeps muddying the picture.
The question is whether Pearson was actually the better arm this year or whether De Los Santos was simply put in spots that exposed him. Either way, that’s a decision Jim Crane gets to make.
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