Mound woes on the rise
Pitchers facing toughest test yet
José Urquidy took the mound at Minute Maid Park on Wednesday for the first time since June 29. A pair of runs scored against him in a 29-pitch first inning were enough to close the curtain early.
Urquidy was pulled by manager Dusty Baker after just three innings in the Astros’ 8-5 loss to the Mariners. His abbreviated outing added to the starting pitching quandary that appears to be mounting for the Astros in the home stretch of the regular season as the team gets closer to a shortened playoff rotation.
After an off day Thursday,
the Astros play 17 consecutive games before their next break. Significant mileage from their starting pitchers will be paramount.
Zack Greinke remains on the injured list because of health and safety protocols. The Astros have no idea when he might be back or how many innings he will be able to give them upon his return. Luis Garcia is operating on a pitch limit, usually around 80, until the playoffs. Jake Odorizzi’s relationship with the club reached a boiling point this week after he publicly criticized the Astros’ usage of him and called a meeting with Baker, pitching coach Brent Strom and general manager James Click to clear the air. Regardless, it does not appear the Astros trust him to go past five innings.
Lance McCullers Jr. and Framber Valdez average a respective 99 pitches and 95 pitches in their starts, and each has 11 quality starts this season. Beyond them, the Astros’ rotation contains few assurances for the time being.
Urquidy has missed time this season with two stints on the injured list, both for shoulder issues, but began the year as a reliable option to go deep in games. When he pitches quality starts, the Astros are 7-0. Urquidy worked seven innings in three back-to-back starts in June and averaged 5.5 innings pitched per start before his most recent twomonth stint on the injured list.
He returned to the rotation Friday in San Diego and threw 71 pitches over 4⅓ innings, allowing two runs on five hits with one walk and four strikeouts. On Wednesday against Seattle, he threw 70 pitches while yielding four hits, two earned runs and two walks with two strikeouts.
Average velocity on his fastball (91.6 mph) and changeup (83.3 mph) Wednesday were down about 1 mph from his yearly averages, but Baker said that fluctuation is bound to happen for any pitcher who missed the chunk of time Urquidy has.
“Last time, he just maybe ran out of gas from not being out there, but this time he wasn’t sharp,” Baker said. “Nobody was really sharp today.”
Urquidy was not solely to blame for Wednesday’s loss. He exited with the Astros ahead 3-2. But tasking the bullpen with securing 18 outs was a big ask.
Yimi Garcia, Phil Maton, Kendall Graveman and Ryan Pressly were called for duty after each had pitched the night before in the Astros’ 5-4, 10-inning win Tuesday. Garcia allowed hits to two of the three batters he faced. Maton, brought in specifically to neutralize lefthanded hitter Jarred Kelenic, instead gave up a game-tying, two-run double. Graveman worked a scoreless eighth. In the ninth, two singles, a walk and a wild pitch spelled disaster for Pressly as two more runs scored. Blake Taylor gave up a tworun home run as the final death knell.
As for why it all went wrong, Baker intimated that the back-to-back days of work had something to do with it but also said his relievers simply gave the Mariners easy targets by hanging breaking balls over the plate.
“It’s just harder when you go to that bullpen every day on consecutive days like that,” Baker said. “The guys weren’t sharp today that were ordinarily sharp. … It’s a little bit disheartening because they don’t foul them back. They don’t miss them, pop them up. Just in this last week, they’ve been either hitting them hard or out of the ballpark, and you can’t even do that at the home run derby when you know what’s coming. So we just went through a couple of bad periods here.”
The Astros bolstered their relief corps at the trade deadline with the additions of Garcia, Graveman, Maton and Rafael Montero. The bullpen’s efficiency ramped up initially, and in the two weeks after the trade deadline it led MLB with a 2.11 ERA over 551⁄3 innings, but has since regressed with a 5.35 ERA in its past 67 1 ⁄ innings. Montero last appeared in a game Aug. 8 and remains on the injured list with shoulder discomfort.
Baker said he is not worried about the state of the bullpen and pointed back to the workload necessitated by abbreviated starts and extra-innings games.
“They’re working a lot, that’s the thing,” he said. “We had a couple of deep games that kind of give these guys a blow and sometimes one day off isn’t enough to necessarily rebound. So, you know, we’re going into a streak where we play a lot of consecutive games. They’re going to be working probably a lot, so we need to get some innings out of our starters.”