Astros no match for Red Sox in opener of 4-game series
Defending Cy Young winner allows 8 runs; Boston ace strikes out 12
BOSTON — Dallas Keuchel and David Price are fellow ace lefthanders, fellow American League Cy Young Award winners and fellow Southeastern Conference products.
But until Thursday night at Fenway Park, the two friends had never matched up in a game, not even during the one season they overlapped collegiately when Keuchel pitched at Arkansas and Price at Vanderbilt.
Their first duel, however, wasn’t much of a duel at all. While the previously struggling Price held his end of the bargain for Boston, Keuchel was lit up for eight runs in the Astros’ 11-1 loss to the Red Sox. The worst of Keuchel’s eight starts this season snapped his team’s string of consecutive quality starts at seven.
“It just seems like it’s all piling on when I’m putting guys on base,” Keuchel said. “When I’m not putting guys on base, that’s when I’m in charge.
“We’ll figure some stuff out, but I’ve been feeling good. That’s
the most frustrating part. Slowly but surely, my body’s been feeling better, and I’ve been seeing later life (on my pitches), but I’ve got to challenge guys and get ahead so that I’m not on the defensive — I’m on the offensive.”
Winless in his last five starts, Keuchel raised his ERA to a dismal 5.58. He has allowed five runs or more in four of his last five outings for the last-place Astros (14-22). In 33 starts during last year’s Cy Young campaign, he allowed five or more runs only three times.
‘I try to be too perfect’
Keuchel appeared to have turned a corner in Saturday’s seven-inning start against the first-place Seattle Mariners but Thursday took a step back toward the three performances that preceded it.
“I think I try to be too perfect on a lot of pitches, and that’s not the way you go about it,” he said. “You work on the plate until you work off and expand, and sometimes I try to be too fine, and that works against me a lot more than it helps me. (I’ll) get back to the drawing board, but I’ve been feeling good, man. It’s going to be there, and when it does, we’ll take off.”
Price, on the other hand, had one of the best outings of his young but somewhat poor tenure with the Red Sox. Boston’s $217 million man struck out 12 and allowed only one run over 62⁄3 innings, lowering his ERA to an even 6.00 despite his 5-1 record.
“I’m never over the hump. That’s for people that are satisfied,” said Price, who has recorded double-digit strikeouts in each of his last four starts against the Astros, the first to accomplish that feat since Sandy Koufax in 1964-65.
“I’m not a guy that’s ever satisfied. The one thing I want to do coming into a season, I want to stay healthy, and I want to stay consistent. I haven’t been consistent. Today was a good day, but in five days I want to go out and build on it.”
Five of the runs charged to Keuchel came on a pair of homers launched over the Green Monster in left field — Xander Bogaerts’ two-run shot in the first inning and Mookie Betts’ three-run long ball in the sixth. Both were on off-speed pitches, a 1-2 slider to Bogaerts and a first-pitch changeup to Betts.
The Red Sox (22-13), who have scored a blistering 51 runs over their last four games, ran up Keuchel’s pitch count to 69 through just three innings, scoring five times in the process.
An inning after Bogaerts took Keuchel deep, the redhot Jackie Bradley Jr. added a run-scoring single, extending his hitting streak to 18 games, matching the longest in the majors this season.
David Ortiz and Hanley Ramirez opened the third with back-to-back doubles, and Ramirez scored Boston’s fifth run on a single from Chris Young.
Keuchel faced the minimum in the fourth and fifth innings before Christian Vazquez and Bradley tallied back-to-back one-out singles in the sixth. Betts then tagged Keuchel with the fourth home run the pitcher has allowed in his last two starts after surrendering only one through six starts.
More whiffs, less contact
The eight runs were the second most Keuchel has allowed in his 108 career regular-season starts. The only start in which he allowed more came last September in Arlington, when the Texas Rangers tagged him for nine and chased him after 42⁄3 innings.
Price, the runner-up to Keuchel for last year’s Cy Young Award, allowed six hits — two to Jose Altuve — and issued only one walk. The Astros’ two-through-five hitters — George Springer, Carlos Correa, Tyler White and Marwin Gonzalez — each struck out twice against the five-time All-Star.
“We had a hard time making contact against him,” said Astros manager A.J. Hinch, whose team struck out 18 times in Wednesday’s 16-inning win over Cleveland. “He was attacking the strike zone very early; he had his fastball and his changeup going. He didn’t throw a ton of breaking balls; he didn’t have to. He was really the aggressor tonight and took over the game.”