Pressly’s closer job safe after implosion in N.Y.
NEW YORK — For eight innings, they played a near perfect game in this ballpark hellbent on berating them. Nine were needed for the Astros to feel any type of fulfillment. Instead, after an implosion unlike any they’ve authored this season, players hurried out of a hushed clubhouse wondering how it went so awry.
“It’s just one of those things that I didn’t have it tonight. It sucks,” closer Ryan Pressly said after coughing up a three-run lead. “The guys go out there and they grind, put up runs and I just didn’t make my pitches. Sometimes you can get away with some mistakes and sometimes you can’t.”
Four games in June will not define the Astros’ season. The New York Yankees are an apt barometer for the true complexion of this club, but drawing grand conclusions from a midseason series against them is dangerous. The Yankees are baseball’s best team.
The Astros appeared superior for so much of Thursday’s game, the first segment of this four-day litmus test. Their All-star closer took the baseball with a three-run advantage. The fourth, fifth and sixth hitters in New York’s lineup loomed.
Pressly retired none of them, starting the sort of implosion few could have realistically envisioned. The Astros’ bullpen is perhaps its biggest strength. No group of relievers in the sport entered Thursday with a lower earned-run average or save percentage. None allowed fewer home runs per nine innings.
For one fatal inning, none of that mattered. The Yankees sent eight batters to the plate against Pressly and Ryne Stanek. Seven of them reached base. The duo threw 39 pitches. Joey Gallo struck out on three of them against Stanek. None of the other 36 produced an out.
“Our bullpen’s been so good all year,” manager Dusty Baker said. “Just things started unraveling, and we couldn’t put it back. That’s a tough one to lose, especially here.”
Pressly threw 13 of his 26 pitches for balls. He faced five batters and retired none of them. The first two hitters worked walks after 11 pitches. Pressly got ahead of Aaron Hicks 0-2 before leaving a four-seam fastball over the heart of home plate. Hicks parked it 412 feet away into the right field seats to tie the game.
Pressly threw 14 pitches to save the Astros’ 5-3 win against the Mets on Wednesday. He entered Thursday having not pitched on back-to-back days since May 21-22. Pressly did not use the predicament as an excuse, but Baker acknowledged on both Thursday and Friday it might have affected him.
“You have to go back-toback at some point in time,” Baker said on Thursday. “He’s not the guy to make excuses. He’s been so good.”
Social media claims otherwise, but Pressly’s spot as Houston’s closer does not — and should not — seem in peril. Thursday’s outing inflated his ERA to 4.26, but it is dangerous to judge any reliever based solely upon that statistic. Sample sizes are often so small that one implosion skews it severely.
Pressly is a prime example. He has pitched just 19 innings this season. He boasted a 2.41 ERA entering Thursday’s game. The four earned runs New York scored against him were one shy of his total all season. Such carnage will combust anyone’s ERA.