Now that’s a stopper
McCullers allows only one hit in seven innings to make sure five-game losing streak is history
A tough week on the road ended Monday night with a solid bounceback performance by Astros starter Lance McCullers, who carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning to fuel a 6-4 win over the Giants at Minute Maid Park.
It was a night when Astros manager Dusty Baker was willing to give some of his position players a game off after a road trip that wrapped up with an ugly brawl Sunday and a three-game series loss to the A’s in Oakland.
Baker, however, had no takers. McCullers made it the next best thing to a night off for Houston’s lineup, striking out five with 13 groundouts in his seven-inning, 86-pitch outing as the Astros snapped a five-game losing streak.
McCullers entered the seventh having allowed only a hit batter, putting Austin Slater on first to begin the third. He got Alex Dickerson on a groundout, but Donovan Solano’s hard-hit grounder to third baseman Alex Bregman’s right skittered inside the line and into the left-field corner for a double that was one of just three Giants hits on the night.
Oddly enough, the lone hit came off just one of three times that McCullers shook off catcher Martin Maldonado, who after McCullers’ last outing went awry asked the righthander to trust him next time around.
“Maldy came to me after the last start and said ‘I’m going to put in the work. I’m going to put in the
preparation. You do your thing and trust me when I go out there,’ ” McCullers said.
“This game I relied a lot on him and his ability to call pitches and the way the defense played behind me.”
The righthander’s last start Aug. 5 came undone in a nightmarish sevenrun fourth-inning explosion by the Diamondbacks, who totaled nine runs in the inning en route to a 14-7 Arizona win that was the first of the five straight losses that Houston carried into Monday’s game.
Monday, however, McCullers needed just 86 pitches, 59 for strikes, while retiring 21 of 23 batters. He had 17 called strikes, nine on his sinker, and 10 swinging strikes to provide length and badly needed relief for the Astros’ underexperienced, overstressed bullpen.
“That’s what confidence and perseverance will do for you,” said manager Dusty Baker. “(McCullers) has the ability to delete that last outing, and he was outstanding.
“He was more aggressive with his fastball, which increased their swinging for the breaking ball. He was really, really good.”
In addition to good work from his infielders, McCullers did himself a solid with the glove in the third. With Slater on second after a stolen base, Mike Yastrzemski hits a shot to first baseman Yuli Gurriel that bounces off Gurriel’s glove to Jose Altuve.
Altuve threw to McCullers, who just beat Yastrzemski to the bag for the third out of the inning.
McCullers noted after the game that he was using a different glove but did not specify if it was for a technical reason or an effort to cast aside a tangible memory of a bad outing.
As for the Houston offense, a ringing double by Gurriel and an oppositefield, white-line job by Michael Brantley that bounced into the left-field seats were the strongest blows by an Astros offense that gave McCullers what appeared to be more than sufficient support.
That is, until the eighth and ninth innings, when the aforementioned overstressed bullpen gave up four runs to put the outcome briefly in question.
In the second against Giants starter Logan Webb (1-1), Gurriel lined an 0-2 pitch over the head of third baseman Solano for a double.
With Carlos Correa at the plate, Webb uncorked a wild pitch, and Correa bounced a 3-2 fastball toward first, where it caromed out of first baseman Brandon Belt’s range to score Gurriel.
Small ball and good fortune generated four runs for the Astros in the third. After a one-out single by Altuve, Josh Reddick was awarded first on catcher’s interference and Bregman walked to load the bases.
Brantley lofted Webb’s first pitch down the leftfield line, and it landed inside the chalk and bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double that scored Altuve and Reddick. Gurriel followed with a shot to Solano, and the third baseman’s throw home was off line for his second error of the game as Bregman scored for a 5-0 Astros lead.
Maldonado’s first homer of the season, a 104.9 mph fastball by Giants reliever Conner Mendez that traveled 367 feet into the Crawford Boxes, made it 6-0 in the sixth.
“Everybody put together some good team atbats,” Bregman said. “It was nice to see. That’s one in a row.”
With McCullers done for the evening, San Francisco broke through in the eighth on an oppositefield solo home run by Slater off reliever Josh James.
James also allowed the first three batters to reach in the ninth, including an RBI double by Solano, and gave way to Ryan Pressly, who got Brandon Belt and Wilmer Flores on fly balls to left before Brandon Crawford’s two-run single up the middle pulled San Francisco within two.
Slater, who got the Giants on the board in the eighth, followed with an RBI base hit, but Evan Longoria flied out to end a runaway that ended up being something of a nailbiter.