Sorry, Charlie
Morton has strong 7-inning outing but gets paltry support
The composition of the Astros’ deep position player group is designed to prevent many games like Wednesday’s. Even when missing a cornerstone like Carlos Correa, their lineup is still plenty potent.
Yet in this case it fell quiet in a 6-3 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Minute Maid Park. The Astros (31-16) mustered just six hits against lefthander Daniel Norris and two relievers. They were hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. Until they were down to their final out, their only runs had come on sacrifice flies.
A night of meager offense wasted the best start of the season by Charlie Morton, who pitched seven innings of two-run ball. Chris Devenski took the loss after allowing two runs in a poorly defended eighth. Jordan Jankowski, who made his major league debut, allowed a two-out home run to Jose Iglesias in the ninth.
Two of the Astros’ hits came with two outs in the bottom of ninth against Tigers closer Justin Wilson. Alex Bregman smacked a solo shot into the Crawford Boxes, his third homer
of the season. Nori Aoki followed with a single before Jake Marisnick ended the game with a fly out to center field.
“The first four innings, it felt like we had something going every inning,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said, “and then we just couldn’t really solve (Norris).” 3 hits for Bregman
Norris lasted 61⁄3 innings, allowing only four hits before Shane Greene shut down the Astros over the next 12⁄3 frames. Bregman accounted for half of the Astros’ hits in the game and finished a triple shy of a cycle.
“I would’ve traded that night for a win,” Bregman said. “But it’s baseball. We get to come back out here tomorrow and get after it and compete and try and win a series.”
For at least one night, Morton vanquished the demons that have besieged him late in his starts. The fifth and sixth, the innings that have plagued him, proved of little trouble against the Tigers. Neither was the seventh, which he completed for only the second time in 10 starts.
A weakly hit single to shallow left field by Victor Martinez marked the lone hit Morton yielded to a batter seeing him for a third time. He retired the other seven who made their third plate appearance against him.
Morton didn’t miss as many bats as usual — on 96 pitches, he extracted seven swings and misses — but he painted the strike zone for 24 called strikes. He struck out six, three looking, and worked around three walks. His cutter emerged as a viable third pitch.
Both runs Morton allowed came in the third inning, which opened with a swinging bunt single by Iglesias. After Ian Kinsler smacked a double to put two runners in scoring position, Morton threw a curveball in the dirt that bounced away from catcher Evan Gattis and permitted Iglesias to score. Kinsler scored on a double-play grounder by Miguel Cabrera.
Morton had retired 10 batters in a row when Martinez waffled his single into left field in the sixth. He finished that inning at 88 pitches. After Hinch sent him back out for a seventh, Morton required only eight more pitches to finish his evening.
“They were a little more aggressive than I think I was expecting,” Morton said. “A couple of quick innings.”
The outing improved Morton’s ERA to 4.06. He hadn’t completed six innings in his previous four starts. His only other start of seven innings came April 28 against the Oakland Athletics. Before Wednesday, batters who saw Morton’s sinkercurveball reliant approach a third time in an outing had posted a 1.143 on-base plus slugging percentage against him.
Devenski, who began warming at the start of the seventh in case Morton encountered trouble, came in at the start of the eighth and allowed a double to Iglesias. After a Kinsler single, Marisnick airmailed a throw home too high to be cut off when Iglesias stopped at third base. The mistake allowed Kinsler to advance to second base.
An Alex Avila ground- out scored Iglesias, and a Martinez groundout off the glove of diving first baseman Yuli Gurriel scored Kinsler. The runs put the Tigers ahead 4-2. Jankowski debuts
Jankowski was then summoned for the ninth inning as his pregnant wife, also named Jordan, watched nervously from the stands with the pitcher’s parents, sister and niece. Jankowski struck out the first two batters he faced, Mikie Mahtook and Andrew Romine, before his night turned south.
Tyler Collins tripled down the right-field line, and Iglesias drove a fullcount fastball into the Crawford Boxes to cap an 11-pitch at-bat.
“I felt fine. I thought I made some pretty good pitches,” Jankowski said. “Iglesias just beat me. I hit my spot, and he just beat me.”