Ace working way into groove
Unbeaten lefthander Dallas Keuchel begins rehab with Class AA stint Monday.
Dallas Keuchel will begin a minor league rehab assignment Monday night with Class AA Corpus Christi, the first time the Astros ace will have faced hitters in six weeks.
Keuchel, who hasn’t pitched since June 2 to recover from a pinched nerve in his neck, is scheduled to pitch two or three innings in the outing against Frisco at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi. Though Astros manager A.J. Hinch was noncommittal on how many rehab starts Keuchel will need, it’s all but certain the All-Star lefthander will require at least two.
“I don’t know, to be honest with you,” Keuchel said. “It (depends on) how I feel on Tuesday and then how I continue to progress.”
“Maybe one, maybe 14,” he joked. “I don’t know.”
Keuchel hasn’t targeted a specific game or series on the Astros’ schedule for his return. If it were up to him, he would have come back before the AllStar break. But with an enormous cushion in the American League West standings, the AL-leading Astros played his rehab conservatively.
If Keuchel needs only two rehab starts, it stands to reason he could return to the Astros’ rotation during the team’s three-game series in Detroit from July 28-30. If he makes three starts in the minors, he wouldn’t return until the first homestand of August at the earliest.
“I think I’m all the way back, but only time will tell,” he said. “As much as I’m going to push it on Monday, I’m going to be a little bit anxious for Tuesday but at the same time a little excited just because of how I feel right now.”
Guduan recalled with Harris hurt
The Astros called up lefthanded reliever Reymin Guduan from Class AAA Fresno before Saturday’s 4-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins.
The hard-throwing Guduan filled the roster spot vacated late Friday when the Astros placed reliever Will Harris on the 10-day disabled list with right shoulder inflammation.
Guduan, 25, came into Saturday with an 8.22 ERA in 72⁄3 major league innings and a 4.82 ERA in 371⁄3 innings in Class AAA this season.
Springer, Hunter share a bond
Former five-time AllStar center fielder Torii Hunter says he gets chills every time he tells the story he shared Friday on Fox Sports North’s broadcast of the Astros-Twins series opener. For years he had wondered what happened to the kid in the stands he played catch with while in Class AA in New Britain, Conn., in 1998 — the kid who turned out to be Astros All-Star center fielder George Springer.
Springer, a New Britain native, was just 8 years old at the time. From then on, Hunter became his idol. He’s the player Springer modeled his game after.
“I’ll never forget that,” Springer said on Saturday of their game of catch. “He didn’t have to do it, and he did it. It stuck with me. It was an everlasting thing that I’m not ever going to forget. He changed my life, and I was only 8 years old.”
The two have since become friends. They were introduced during spring training of 2013 by then-Astros manager Bo Porter when Hunter was with the Detroit Tigers and embarking on the 17th of his 19 major league seasons and a 23-year-old Springer was a wide-eyed first-round draft pick in Astros big league camp.
Hunter, who retired after the 2015 season, is in town this weekend for his part-time role as an analyst on Twins broadcasts. Since November, he has been a special assistant in Minnesota’s front office. The nine-time Gold Glove Award winner spent 12 of his 19 seasons with the Twins.
“He had fun. He enjoyed the game, no matter what,” Springer said. “It’s just how he played. It didn’t matter if they were up by 10 or down by 10 — he was the same guy. He’d hit a wall for his teammates. He’d run through a wall for his team.”
Springer, whose .994 OPS entering Saturday ranked fifth in the majors, says he tries to play like Hunter did with his own spin on it.
Hunter, 41, and Springer, 27, have kept in touch throughout this season, a year in which Springer has emerged as one of the best players in baseball.
“You name any kind of leadoff man that’s doing what he’s doing,” Hunter said as the Twins took batting practice Saturday at Minute Maid Park. “The last guy I remember is Rickey Henderson.”
Though they didn’t get a chance to catch up Friday, Springer sent over a Torii Hunter Twins jersey for his idol to sign. As of Saturday afternoon, Hunter had yet to send it back.
“I’m thinking about the words to put on there,” he said, “because that’s a special player for me.”