Framber Valdez is the ostensible ace of the Astros starting pitching rotation. However, he is also enigmatic. He gives up a ton of hard hit balls, but he also generally pitches deeper into games than other starters. The “enigmatic” part may reflect that he is an unusual pitcher. Valdez currently has the 2d best career ground ball rate among starting pitchers in MLB history (63.1% GB rate behind only Brandon Webb).
Last year I wrote about Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown, both of whom had high exit velocity and hard hit rates. In 2023, Framber had the highest exit velocity among qualified starters and Brown would have had the third highest exit velocity if he had pitched a qualified number of innings.