Offense dominant in 4-game sweep
McCormick’s first MLB home run is among 3 in second straight rout
OAKLAND, Calif. — The destruction dragged on as clouds hovered over RingCentral Coliseum. Petty pregame songs preceded each of the Astros’ final two annihilations: Carrie Underwood’s “Before He
Cheats” on Saturday and Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign” on Sunday, and salty language peppered all four games. If this season is a redemption tour, Houston took its first step on Sunday, silencing a stream of abuse one inning at a time, culminating in a 9-2 win.
The two teams played 36 frames. Oakland did not lead during any of them. The Astros ended only six offensive frames without a runner reaching base. They are the fourth club since 1901 to score at least eight runs in each of a season’s first four games and the first Astros team to start 4-0 since 2001.
“Honestly,” rookie outfielder Chas McCormick said, “we just crushed them from Pitch 1 to the last pitch of the whole series.”
The Astros outclassed Oakland in every discernible aspect of baseball. They out-scored the A’s 35-9, shattering the Astros’ record for runs in the first four games of a season. They out-hit Oakland 47-21. Outfielder Ka’ai Tom threw the ninth inning of Sunday’s game, a white flag the Astros were happy to force. Yuli Gurriel had three hits on Sunday. Oakland’s whole team mustered four.
“They really didn’t like how we started last year, we started out cold,” manager Dusty Baker said. “We beat some good pitchers and we beat a good team. They were banged up some too at the same time. You have to jump on a club when they’re banged up and when they’re down. I have to give our guys credit.”
Aledmys Diaz hit third in Saturday’s batting order, and the seldom-used utilityman supplied three hits and scored twice. Jason Castro caught his first game of the season on Sunday. He hit an opposite-field home run in the first at-bat he took, widening a lead that only continued to grow.
Before the game, Baker worried about Castro’s matchup against A’s southpaw Sean Manaea. Oakland’s starter limited lefthanded hitters to a .605 OPS in the first 97 games of his career. Houston had three lefthanders, including Castro, in its Sunday lineup against him. Two of them took Manaea deep.
The Astros exhausted Manaea across 42⁄3 average innings. He needed 101 pitches to procure the 14 outs. Kyle Tucker took a 2-2 sinker out to right center field in the second, supplying Houston a lead it never relinquished. Tucker’s solo home run ended an early 2for-12 slump. Carlos Correa went 4-for-17 this weekend, too. It mattered little.
“It paints a picture that maybe we can go very far if we keep this up,” starter Jose Urquidy said.
Urquidy continued a concerning opening weekend trend for the Astros’ rotation, perhaps the only imperfection during this fourday beatdown. He finished only 41⁄3 frames and fired 101 pitches. For a team bracing for the innings bump after a 60-game season, inefficiency in the starting rotation is unacceptable. Urquidy, Cristian Javier and Lance McCullers Jr. failed to pitch into the sixth against the A’s.
Oakland didn’t take advantage of any of them. It loaded the bases in the first against Urquidy but managed one run. Urquidy walked the leadoff man during the fourth. He never moved from first base. The A’s left four baserunners against Urquidy and went 2-for-6 with runners in scoring position. On the weekend, Oakland had three hits in 26 at-bats with runners in scoring position. Astros pitching punched them out 14 times.
“You can’t do much better than the start we had,” Baker said. “You take a quick, fast start any time. You realize it’s a long season, and every series is not going to be like this, but you enjoy it while it’s here. You try to build off of it and go from there.”
Mark Canha’s one-out triple in the fifth finished Urquidy’s day. Brandon Bielak entered to procure the next two outs. He fired 42⁄3 hitless frames, saving Houston’s spent bullpen.
The first batter Bielak faced, Matt Olson, grounded out to Jose Altuve in the shift. Canha crossed home, pulling the A’s within three runs to start the sixth.
Oakland had few chances to call itself close. Manager Bob Melvin tried to maintain the flicker of hope with Adam Kolarek, a sidewinding southpaw against whom Houston crushed two home runs on opening night. Gurriel and Correa greeted him with consecutive singles. Myles Straw chopped a ground ball to score Gurriel from third. Castro came up and chopped another in the same direction.
Third baseman Matt Chapman, a two-time Gold Glover, collected the ground ball and gathered himself for a double play.
He played near second base in the A’s lefthanded shift, but positioning should not faze him.
Somewhere from glove to hand, his mind wandered. The baseball hit the dirt. All of the Astros were safe, and misery continued. The crowd continued to boo, but changed to an overdue target — the home team.
“Look, we don’t feel good about it,” Melvin said. “A little bit embarrassing. We played really poorly, and they played great. We ended up losing four games. But I think, in perspective, we have to look at it as just four games in 162.”
Melvin summoned Yusmeiro Petit from his bullpen to keep hold of his team’s hope. McCormick loomed, a man of six major league plate appearances. He felt awful at the plate all day. His swing seemed too long, and his plate discipline neared nonexistent.
McCormick is a 25-yearold rookie, on paper the easiest player to navigate in Houston’s lineup. Petit raced ahead of him with two cutters. A third didn’t break far enough outside, the sort of miniscule mistake Houston hammered all weekend. McCormick mashed it into the left field seats for his first major league home run. While he rounded the bases, he could not stop smiling.
“We’re a great team,” McCormick said. “We’re all just clicking for these four games. It’s cool to watch, cool to be a part of and I hope we keep this going.”