Astros blow early lead
Brad Peacock gives up 3 runs in the eighth, and the Astros fall to Texas in 10 innings.
There was little time to react, so instincts took over. Will Harris stood 60 feet and 6 inches from Ronald Guzman, a 23year-old making the ninth plate appearance of his major league career for a Texas Rangers team beset by injuries.
Harris offered a cut fastball that slid down in the strike zone. Guzman stuck out his barrel.
The baseball exited his bat at 87 mph. Harris stepped from the mound, flung his glove down instinctively and touched the ball.
“I thought I caught it kind of in the bottom webbing of my glove,” Harris said, “and it ricocheted out.”
Debate can begin whether shortstop Carlos Correa, charging in behind Harris, corrals the grounder and turns a double play.
The bases were loaded, one was out and the game was tied. Correa fielding it surely gets one out. He told Harris after the game he did not think he’d get two.
If Harris catches it, two are surely out.
The inning ends, the game is prolonged and the Rangers get deeper into an Astros bullpen that — for the first time all season— collapsed.
Instead, Jurickson Profar touched home plate. Profar walked on five pitches to begin this oneout mess. Guzman’s baseball rested in the infield grass.
All were safe and a game was given away, 6-5 in 10 innings.
The Astros blew a fiverun lead against the Rangers, an unraveling that began with Brad Peacock’s sliders and ended as Harris instinctively, but destructively, tried to field that sharp grounder slapped his way.
“Today was just a little bit off,” Harris said. “I didn’t seem like I was as sharp as I’ve been. As a reliever, you’re going to have a lot of those days where you’re not going to feel your best and you have to do it.
“Today is one of those days and I didn’t get it done.”
He was not alone. Abusing the slider
Peacock’s slider is essential. Not harnessing it can yield disaster.
It was on a mislocated one that Peacock allowed Max Kepler’s walkoff home run Wednesday in Minneapolis in a loss at Minnesota.
Saturday, when he entered the eighth inning with a 5-2 lead, he snapped 14 of them. Only one was swung on and missed.
Two others were deposited into the right-field bleachers, erasing the three-run lead his team once enjoyed. Joey Gallo turned one manager A.J. Hinch surmised almost “hit him in the leg.” A fine pitch but a finer piece of hitting.
Peacock intended to throw Guzman down and in. He wanted to bury the slider in the dirt.
Instead, it leaked over the plate.
That’s now three sliders hit for game-altering home runs in Peacock’s last two appearances. All three by lefthanded hitters, too.
“It just wasn’t my day today,” said Peacock, who allowed a .759 OPS and eight home runs to lefthanded hitters last season. “I have to be better against lefties.
“I haven’t done a good job against them this year, so I have to change something up and figure something out.”
Still, the Astros placed the tying run in scoring position with no outs in the 10th.
Chris Martin, he of zero major league saves, was tasked with escaping the mess. His fourth pitch rolled through the six hole for Alex Bregman’s second single of the game. His fifth went up the middle for Jose Altuve’s first.
Now came Correa, his 0-for-7 slide snapped earlier in the game with a two-run single. Martin evened the count at 2-2. Correa bounced a grounder toward him, a pitcher again tasked with making an instantaneous decision. No clutch hits
Martin fielded it effortlessly. He tossed to Adrian Beltre at third base, eliminating the Astros’ lead runner.
They squandered two more at-bats — the ninth inning of this 10-inning game in which they did not score.
“We had a good chance and had some at-bats, we just couldn’t push the right one across at the very end,” Hinch said. “At that point in our order, we feel really good, get some guys on base and put some pressure on them.
“They made pitches and got out of it.”