Keuchel gets win No. 16 as Astros roll
Homers back Keuchel in a typical victory for division leaders
Welcome to September, when thoughts of Dallas Keuchel as Cy Young winner, A.J. Hinch as manager of the year, and the gem that really matters — a division title for their Astros — are no longer far-off dalliances.
The stretch run, which few thought this team would be party to, is here.
Monday night’s 8-3 Astros win over the Mariners closed August and was the first of 25 games in a string of 28 in which the Astros play American League West clubs.
“I’m excited,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said during batting practice at Minute Maid Park. “I wish we could play tomorrow’s game after tonight’s game. I kind of want to hurry up and see where this ends.”
The Astros’ West-heavy schedule ends with the second-tolast series of the year against these same Mariners, who, after the departure of general manager Jack Zduriencik, are far from the same Mariners the Astros last saw in June.
The Angels, the team that was supposed to go punch-for-punch with Seattle in the West this year, also lost their GM in-season and have foundered of late. Now, the two teams everyone thought would be battling for last place — the Astros and Rangers — are the teams that could be the division’s highest finishers.
“With the way the teams were expecting things to go in our division and throughout baseball,” Hinch said, “some of the names that have changed jobs in the last
few months — or are no longer working in our division or outside our division — are surprising.”
So, too, remain the Astros.
Were one to search for a typical or even ideal 2015 Astros win, Monday’s game would provide a template. They got three home runs — from Carlos Correa, Hank Conger and Jed Lowrie — and continued to add on in the late innings, something they had a proclivity for earlier in the year.
Keuchel, who went seven innings and struck out eight in his 16th win, worked out of a basesloaded, none-out jam in the fourth inning — the swing moment of the game, Hinch said.
“That was probably the best combination and sequences of pitches I’ve seen him make in a crunch-time situation,” the catcher Conger said. “Just purely off that inning, that’s one of the best outings I’ve seen him throw.”
Sticking his neck out
While Franklin Gutierrez’s broken bat whizzed by, the reigning American League Gold Glove winner started a 1-2-3 double play for the first two outs.
“I have no idea where the bat was,” said King Keuchel, master of the ground ball and purveyor of the double play. “If it stuck me in the neck, it was going to stick me in the neck. I was going to try to get the out.”
With a strikeout ability that’s quietly but definitively increased this year, Keuchel fanned Mark Trumbo to end the jam.
Trumbo produced the one real oddity of the night: He homered off Keuchel, belting a solo shot in the second inning. Trumbo added a second homer in the ninth, but the first one was the head-scratcher. It had been more than a year since Keuchel had allowed a homer at Minute Maid, the last coming on Aug. 10, 2014, off the bat of the Rangers’ Adrian Beltre — a span of 1222⁄3 innings including Monday’s first inning.
Trumbo’s homer tied the game at 1.
The score stood until the fourth inning, when Lowrie knocked a solo shot out. Conger did the same two batters later off Mariners lefthander Vidal Nuno.
Lowrie, who was in an 0-for-28 slump but making hard contact, hit his sixth of the season to right field, putting the Astros ahead 2-1.
Conger, who does his best work against righties and started the day batting .149 vs. southpaws, hit a moon shot to left field, banging it off the front of the train (which was situated over the Crawford Boxes at the time, rather than in leftcenter field).
Shot at all-time mark
Conger’s homer put him at nine on the year. If he and Marwin Gonzalez can hit one more apiece, the Astros will have 11 players with at least 10 home runs, tying the 2004 Tigers’ major league record.
Lowrie finished with a pair of hits, and so did Correa, who ripped his 16th homer in his first game back after four missed because of a left hamstring strain. That came in a two-run fifth inning. The Astros scored three more times in the seventh.
Keuchel, 12-0 at home, is four wins away from 20 overall.
What’s going to come first — Correa’s 20th homer or Keuchel’s 20th victory?
“For him, four more wins in this month is going to be tough, but I would love for him to get there first, because that means we’re winning ballgames,” Correa said. “A homer doesn’t mean you’re going to win the ballgame. If you get those wins, it would be awesome.”