New rules help; Baker offers another
As vaunted as the Astros’ bullpen is, even manager Dusty Baker thinks it might have its limits in respect to early-season innings.
After the third game of the year, a 6-4 victory over the White Sox on Saturday, Baker has yet to get more than five innings out of a starter.
José Uquidy went only four in his 82-pitch outing Saturday, which included a 33-pitch third in which, after walking Eloy Jiménez to load the bases, he struck out Yoán Moncada to end the threat. Baker used three relievers over the last five innings, getting two innings out of Ronel Blanco, an inning and two-thirds from Ryne Stanek, and an inning and a third out of Hector Neris, who struck out Moncada to end the game with the tying runs aboard.
Ryan Pressly was unavailable, Baker said, because he was under the weather for the second consecutive day. Baker said his closer should be good to go Sunday. Bryan Abreu and Rafael Montero needed a breather after throwing in each of the first two games of the series. And Phil Maton and Seth Martinez had pitched Friday.
“Both sides’ bullpens are almost overworked in the first three games,” Baker said. “Your starters aren’t really ready to go six or seven innings, so you have to go to your bullpen almost every day and go to your bullpen early. (Today) Stanek gave us one and a fraction, Neris gave us one and a fraction.
“I’d like to see the league early in the year give us another pitcher, because both sides could use another pitcher out of the bullpen, or else they’re going to be overworked, especially like in our case — we don’t have an off day until Friday in Minnesota.”
After Sunday’s series finale with Chicago, the Astros host Detroit for three games before visiting the Twins on Thursday. The day off will come mid-series at Minnesota.
Although he didn’t want to send Urquidy out for a fifth inning, Baker said he thought the righthander threw well, other than the two home runs he allowed. Moncada tagged him for a classic Crawford Boxes shot that just cleared the corner of the left-field wall in the second inning. In the fourth, Seby Zavala launched a no-doubter that thudded off the glass behind the train tracks in left.
“We knew we had to keep an eye on (Urquidy), especially after he had a 30-pitch-plus inning, which is really equivalent to two innings,” Baker said. “Blanco possibly could have given us another inning, but at that time, we thought that he’d done enough.”
Baker won’t be getting a roster adjustment this season, but one of the year’s changes definitely helped the Astros on Saturday.
With infield shifts eliminated, the Astros had at least three singles that might have been outs a year ago. Kyle Tucker was an early beneficiary, sending a grounder just to the left of a diving Elvis Andrus to drive home Houston’s first run in a two-run first.
“At first, I thought it was out,” said Tucker, no doubt accustomed to being robbed in past instances. “Then I looked and was like, ‘Oh. sweet.’ So it was nice to get that one through. We’ll see how it plays out the rest of the series and the rest of the season.”
Tucker delivered another run on a seventh-inning RBI single to right, this one well beyond the reach of any infielder. It scored Yordan Alvarez, who had reached on a line drive to left. Alvarez had two other singles — one a grounder to center, the other a grounder to right — that well might have been negated a year ago by a shift. If that’s a sign of things to come, the slugger stands a good chance of improving last year’s batting average, an already sturdy .306.
“That was a prime example where the (absence of ) shifts have helped the offense,” Baker said. “It’s really going to help the lefthand hitters. It helped Tucker. Helped Yordan twice. Thank God that they changed the rules.”
Another change might have helped Tucker on his first-inning RBI hit. White Sox starter Lucas Giolito was charged with the first pitch-clock violation of the series early in Tucker’s at-bat. The 3-2 pitch Tucker got to hit might have been less favorable had the count been 2-2.
With batters required to be facing the pitcher in a ready-to-hit position with eight seconds left on the clock — which runs 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds if any bases are occupied — Tucker wasn’t exactly a proponent of the clock in spring training. But so far this season, he’s generally had time to wipe his hands with dirt between pitches, as is his wont, and his early 1.062 OPS suggests he’ll fare just fine.
“When there’s someone on and you get the 20 seconds or as you walk up there in between batters, I think it’s fine,” Tucker said. “Fifteen, you’ve got to make it a little shorter, a little quicker just because you don’t have the extra five seconds. I think it just takes time to get used to and get comfortable with.”