Oakland wins battle of pens, trims deficit
His feet shuffled and head hung down. Roberto Osuna trudged from the field while the crowd searched for reasons to get inspired. One of the division’s most feared closers ran in from the bullpen, equipped to finish what his counterpart handed him.
In a tie game during the ninth inning, Osuna allowed the bottom of Oakland’s order to best him. Blake Treinen accepted the mistakes, eviscerating the three Astros he faced in the bottom half to secure a 4-3 win Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park.
Osuna’s misery coupled with understandable yet costly eighth-inning aggression, two missteps unforgivable in games that determine divisions. Treinen’s save was his 33rd. Osuna’s loss was his second as an Astro.
Oakland creeped back to within 1½ games of the Astros in the American League West. It boasts baseball’s best record in one-run games. A revamped bullpen, with Treinen at the back, deserves credit. Tuesday, they threw 41⁄3 innings of one-hit ball in relief of Edwin Jackson.
“They get the lead and they come in and they’re tough to
hit, which is one way they win,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “They don’t win if they don’t score. And three of their four runs were either walk or hit by pitch.”
Closers are feared for their swing-and-miss potential. Tuesday, Osuna exhibited nothing resembling it. He threw 23 pitches. Two were swung on and missed. Command of his slider was nonexistent. With one out, Osuna threw three to eight-hole hitter Ramon Laureano. All missed the strike zone. A cutter did, too, allowing the former Astros farmhand aboard on four pitches.
“That’s never happened in the past, to walk a guy on four straight balls like that. It sucks, man,” Osuna said. “That was probably the worst thing I did tonight.”
Ahead 0-1, Osuna offered a slider to nine-hole hitter Jonathan Lucroy. He fisted a single against the shift. The ground ball just evaded Jose Altuve’s glove in short right field, allowing Laureano to reach second base and the top of Oakland’s stingy order a look at Osuna.
Leadoff hitter Nick Martini saw one pitch. Osuna aimed to go up and in. The four-seam fastball instead halved home plate.
Martini, just 2 for his last 20, bludgeoned it over Josh Reddick’s head in right-center field.
Laureano raced home as the winning run — an inning after he prevented it.
To begin the eighth inning against Jeurys Familia, the former Mets closer acquired to bolster the bridge to Treinen, George Springer blooped an excuse-me single to shallow right field. Alex Bregman bounced one of his own up the middle.
Laureano charged the baseball as Springer rounded second base — a play Springer said he would do “regardless of the situation.”
Mistake on the bases
Laureano’s right arm is renowned throughout the sport. His throw against the Angels this month — a majestic, 321-foot strike that reached first base in the air — was replayed incessantly.
Springer ran anyway. The right fielder said afterward that Laureano uncorked a missile that easily beat him to third base.
Familia fanned Altuve and Carlos Correa to extinguish the threat, leaving Bregman at second as the go-ahead run.
“Obviously there’s the old adage, you don’t make the first out at third base. I get it,” Hinch said. “The result would tell you to be a little bit more cautious there. But I also know, facing Familia, it’s hard to score. You’ve got to create your own opportunities against a guy like Familia.”
The A’s bullpen construction mandates early runs. Attacking the suddenly depleted rotation is paramount.
Held to one hit across four futile innings, the Astros struck for two runs against A’s starter Jackson in the fifth. He departed after Bregman rifled a game-tying double into the left field corner, engaging a battle of booming bullpens.
Jackson yielded two hits to begin the fifth. Pitching coach Scott Emerson paid a visit after Springer drew a walk to fill the bases. Jackson remained in, even as Shawn Kelley warmed. Bregman watched one pitch before ambushing an elevated cutter that tied the game.
Jackson is ageless. Tuesday was his 300th career start. In his 16th season, the 34-year-old is playing for his 13th team, matching Octavio Dotel’s major league record.
Time has forced reinvention. Jackson survives on a constant diet of cutters that dart away from righthanded hitters and hover in the low 90s.
He yielded one unearned run across his first four innings. If not for a yanked changeup to Marwin Gonzalez that Lucroy did not catch, no damage is done.
The second-inning passed ball allowed Correa — who stroked an opposite-field single — to reach second base. Gonzalez’s ground ball to first base moved Correa to third. Tyler White’s chopper to shortstop chased him home. The Astros’ 1-0 lead was brief.
Morton struggles in start
For a third straight start, Astros starter Charlie Morton did not eclipse five innings. He collected 14 outs and threw 89 pitches, languishing before a stingy lineup he neglected to put away.
With two outs, Morton walked three men and hit another. Jed Lowrie coaxed a two-out free pass in each of his first two plate appearances.
A nine-pitch effort in the first inning was squandered when Springer charged for an acrobatic grab.
Lowrie saw seven pitches to reach base in the third. Once during the plate appearance, he was down 0-2. The bases were empty, two were out and no danger was imminent in a game the Astros led 1-0.
Morton lost his command and destroyed the serenity. After allowing Lowrie aboard, Morton nicked cleanup hitter Khris Davis with his next pitch. Matt Olson loomed.
The lefthanded slugger spoiled Morton’s first pitch, a curveball, foul. Morton opted to repeat the offering. This breaking ball refused to break.
Olson clobbered it off the digital scoreboard that separates the first and second deck in right field.
The go-ahead home run mirrored so much the game-winning hit — prodigious fly balls made possible by mistakes.
“Two walks,” Hinch said, “that I'm going to go home remembering.”