NOT A FINE LINE
Framber Valdez implodes early in 10-2 road loss to Padres.
SAN DIEGO — Framber Valdez vacillates between dominant and dangerous. Emotion sometimes overtakes him and sends a start astray. The tendency marred his first two major league seasons, when Valdez flashed brilliance but could not avoid awful stretches of command or execution. The Astros hesitated to trust him because of it.
Two offseasons ago, Valdez enlisted the help of a sports psychologist. The doctor gave him tips centered on concentration and focus. Valdez smiles through struggles. He will step off the rubber when chaos comes. A deep breath does wonders. He rode the training to a breakout 2020 and beautiful beginning to 2021.
Saturday offered a setback, a stark reminder of the delicate line Valdez toes. Houston handed him a two-run lead after two innings. He took the mound during the bottom of the second and fell apart. Poise disappeared and disaster ensued. Valdez lost all sense of the strike zone and himself. He balked home a run, hit two batters and allowed four hits.
San Diego scored four times and erased the Astros’ early advantage. A pair of two-run home runs in the seventh against Cristian Javier prolonged a pitiful night. Fernando Tatis Jr’s moonshot off Josh James in the eighth ended it. Houston lost 10-2, wasting a chance to increase their American League West lead to 6½ games.
Valdez’s collapse canceled an otherwise encouraging offensive output against Padres starter Joe Musgrove. The Astros exhausted their former farmhand across 51⁄3 laborious innings. They placed a baserunner against him in every one. Only two scored.
Houston sent Musgrove to Pittsburgh before the 2019 season as part of its four-person package for Gerrit Cole. This winter, the Pirates shipped him to San Diego, where Musgrove morphed into an ace. He is one of only 10 qualified major league starters with a sub-three ERA. He threw a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers during his second start of the season. He shut out the Los Angeles Angels in the start preceding this one.
Alex Bregman, Yordan Alvarez and Yuli Gurriel struck three straight twoout singles against him to produce a first-inning run. Musgrove needed 26 pitches to complete the frame, Kyle Tucker struck a solo homer off his second pitch in the second, supplying Valdez a two-run cushion he could not protect.
The Padres sent all nine starters to the plate against him in the second. Valdez allowed six of them to reach. Wil Myers mashed a one-out double before Adam Frazier arrived. Valdez struck him in the bill of his helmet with an errant sinker, a scary scene that might have jolted the excitable lefthander.
The carnage could have been worse if not for National League-style baseball. Instead, Musgrove took a one-out plate appearance with the bases loaded. He popped up a bunt, handing Valdez an out he desperately needed. Tatis struck the next pitch past Gurriel at first base, sending two more runs across. Valdez soom balked in another. He somehow finished six innings, but needed only one to mar the outing.
Houston could not overcome the hole Valdez dug. Michael Brantley began the fifth with a single against Musgrove for a final a valiant attempt. Both Aledmys Diaz and Bregman flew out to left field, leaving the duty to Alvarez.
Musgrove evened the count at one before offering a cutter. Alvarez smacked it off his left knee and lay prostrate on the dirt. He writhed in pain and fidgeted for comfort he never found. A hush came over Petco Park and a pall enveloped the Astros’ dugout.
X-rays on Alvarez’s knee were negative, manager Dusty Baker said after the game. The team does not believe Alvarez will need a stint on the injured list, but Baker was unsure whether Alvarez could play in Sunday’s series finale.
“He was getting around a lot better as time went on,” Baker said. “We dodged a major bullet there because it looked terrible when he went down. He must have some strong bones because that ball was hit hard off his kneecap.”