DOOMED BY CANO
Second baseman drives in two, including clincher in 10th inning
The Mariners’ Robinson Cano homers twice, including the key shot in 10th.
If he hadn’t two nights prior, Robinson Cano cemented his status as an Astros killer with his latest performance.
The Mariners’ star second baseman and $240-million man belted two more home runs Saturday night at Minute Maid Park, including a game-winning solo shot off Tony Sipp in the 10th inning that sent the Astros to a 3-2 loss. Of Cano’s major league-best 32 RBIs, a whopping 16 have come against Houston.
“The rest of the league’s not having a tremendous amount of success against him, but he certainly has our number,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’ve thrown him hard, we’ve thrown him soft and he’s found ways to do damage. … We haven’t solved the challenge. We’ve got a game (Sunday), and then the rest of the league can have him for a month or however long it is until we play him.”
Hinch will be pleased to learn the Astros don’t face the Mariners again after Sunday afternoon’s series finale until July 4. Through six games between the teams, Cano is batting .500 (13-for-26) with four of his American League-leading 11 home runs.
Only the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado (12) has more home runs in either league than Cano.
“I felt like where I put the ball, I really wasn’t too disappointed about my outing and my stuff that I had tonight. It’s just he’s a really good hitter,” Sipp said. “Probably one of the hotter hitters in baseball right now.” Keuchel’s start wasted
Saturday’s game needed extra innings to decide only because of Luis Valbuena’s game-tying home run to lead off the bottom of the ninth. The homer, a second-decker to right field off Mariners closer Steve Cishek, was the first of the season for Valbuena, batting a dismal .178 with a .568 OPS through 73 atbats.
In the innings leading to Valbuena’s long ball, the Astros squandered several scoring opportunities against Nathan Karns and the Mariners’ bullpen. Most of the night was somewhat emblematic of the Astros’ 11-20 start to the season: They couldn’t complement success in one facet of the game, in this case their pitching, with the other.
Their latest loss wasted a bounce-back start from Dallas Keuchel, who was coming off three uncharacteristically poor outings. Aggressive early in counts and regularly inducing weak contact, the ace lefthander over seven innings much more closely emulated the pitcher who was the best in the American League last season.
The Mariners’ only damage against Keuchel came on solo home runs, each to lefthanders Kyle Seager and Cano and each on the first pitch of the atbat. Despite Keuchel’s 5.11 ERAcoming into Saturday, Seattle’s home runs were only the second and third he has yielded this season. Tempers flare
Keuchel struck out eight, tying his season high, and walked only one.
Despite his solid start, home-plate umpire Ben May’s strike zone was a point of contention in the game and after it.
Hinch was ejected for the first time this season for arguing a questionable strike-three call to Carlos Correa in the eighth inning. Before the top of the 10th, Carlos Gomez was ejected by first-base umpire Jeff Nelson when his concerns with the strike zone from the previous half-inning spilled into a conversation with Nelson as Gomez walked to center field.
“As major leaguers, all we ask for is consistency, and it just seems like we’re not getting consistent calls behind the plate,” Keuchel said. “I’m not one to ever argue about when I’m in the wrong, but when you have a consistent zone in the first five innings, you can’t just open floodgates there in the sixth through ninth.”
For the second time in 11 days, the Astros couldn’t solve Karns, a power righthander who in locating his fastball, power curveball and changeup continually kept the opposition guessing. He allowed only one run over 61⁄ innings and has a 0.93 ERA in 191⁄ career frames against the Astros.
But it was Cano who again torched his divisional foes. Only once on Saturday, in the seventh against Keuchel, was he retired.
“He’s getting paid a lot of money for a reason,” Keuchel said. “He seems like he’s healthy and seeing the ball well right now. You’ve got to make quality pitches.”