Gurriel delivers walkoff HR
Winning blast plus Reddick’s homer in the 8th awaken a sluggish offense
Before a game his team had to have, Josh Reddick emerged from the clubhouse in an orange jersey. Normal Astros pregame attire is either a light sweatshirt or sleeveless hoodie. Reddick rebeled.
He traversed the field and made normal conversation. The jersey bore his normal No. 22. Arching across its back was “Mr. Irrelevant,” Reddick’s motivational moniker.
Reddick’s name is not the third, fourth or even fifth mentioned when discussing the Astros’ lineup. Maybe that fuels the fire of a 32-year-old veteran who, on Friday, ignited this tepid team.
His eighth-inning solo home run was the most relevant swing of the first three months of this season. A team teetering toward a course for calamity, left for dead during seven dismal innings on Friday, was resuscitated.
“It’s the most important (swing),” Yuli Gurriel said. “Because without that swing we would have never gotten to that point.”
With two outs and no baserunners in the eighth, Reddick tied a game against the cellar-dwelling Seattle Mariners at Minute Maid
Park. He breathed life into a team that, for much of these last two weeks, has done nothing right. Gurriel also provided a sorely needed boost with a walkoff home run in the 10th, giving the Astros a 2-1 win that will resonate for however long this season continues.
They do not decide divisions in June and for that the Astros are abundantly thankful. Their terrible play is providing drama in an American League West set up for a Houston landslide.
Thirteen days ago, the Astros led the American League West by 9½ games. A loss meant they would end Friday night with only a 3½-game cushion. Instead, Reddick and Gurriel ensured it will remain at 4½.
“This has not been a great stretch for us,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’re not used to having these lulls in the season where we’ve lost some close games. We’ve been blown out a couple times.
“(But) we don’t really carry the baggage with us. … We don’t have this carryover effect. Our team does a good job of showing up to the ballpark and not bringing yesterday into today.”
With two outs in the eighth inning, Reddick came to the plate against Anthony Bass, a reliever against whom he was 3-for-6 lifetime with two home runs and a triple. The Mariners led by one run. The Astros appeared en route to a 10th loss in 12 games.
The Astros had not scored in 17 innings. A bases-loaded opportunity in the seventh was squandered in the most stupefying way. Buzz in the ballpark was nonexistent, a crowd of 32,828 beginning to quietly accept what has become the Astros’ appalling norm.
Reddick received a secondpitch slider down and in near his waist. The lefthanded hitter hammered it high into the air, admiring his work as he walked down the first-base line.
When the baseball landed in the right-field seats, Reddick slapped the outstretched hand of first-base coach Don Kelly. The dugout drifted into delirium.
“That felt like one of our biggest hits in the last week and a half,” Reddick said. “That’s the swing we’ve been waiting on to pick up our team, ourselves, the ballpark. It was a completely different atmosphere whenever I crossed home plate and saw our dugout going crazy.”
For seven innings, the Astros did nothing. Five runners were stranded in the first four innings. The Astros stranded 11 total baserunners Friday. In the last 12 games, the lineup has left 99 aboard, wasting good pitching on the rare occasion it arrives.
“We’ve been grinding,” starter Wade Miley said. “It’s been tough for everybody as a team. But that’s what good teams do. We pull together and find a way to win. We outlasted them tonight.”
Miley scattered three hits in six stellar innings. Austin Nola notched a cheap, 355-foot solo home run into the Crawford Boxes for the only damage.
Sixty-one of Miley’s 99 pitches were strikes. Both his four-seam fastball and cutter generated oodles of soft contact. Seattle put 11 in play, but averaged only 87 mph exit velocities when it did. Eleven of Miley’s 18 outs came via grounders.
“He was really good,” Hinch said. “The game had that feel where he had no room for error. He was in good control of the game and, yet, he’s pitching in a game with no room for error. We weren’t doing hardly anything offensivel,y and he did a good job managing what he could on the mound.”
Inserted as a one-out pinchrunner, Myles Straw stole second base in the seventh. He appeared prime to score the tying run when Jake Marisnick lined a single to center field.
As Straw rounded third, and coach Gary Pettis waved him home, the speedster stopped. He did not touch the bag, preventing him from going any further. A bases-loaded walk to George Springer supplied two chances to break the game open. Neither Jose Altuve nor Alex Bregman could deliver. The frame ended without a run and a deficit still intact.
“When the air lets out, it’s a big disappointment, a big downfall for us,” Reddick said.
Reddick rendered the mistakes moot in the eighth. During the 10th, he was in the on-deck circle when Gurriel cranked Mariners reliever Matt Festa’s four-seam fastball.
“We’re not used to losing this much, we don’t like it at all,” Gurriel said. “Hopefully, to win this game, it’s the launching point for another winning streak.”
The last two weeks, according to Reddick, have been “tough to bear.” He echoed Gurriel’s optimism for a turnaround after Friday’s theatrics.
Reddick concluded a postgame meeting with local media. An Astros spokesman held the outfielder’s orange “Irrelevant” jersey in his hand. Reddick took it, put it on over his T-shirt and departed for home.