Astros keep going in wrong direction
MINNEAPOLIS — Carlos Gomez held his arms out in confusion as his eyes fixed on the Minnesota twilight. He traversed a dozen steps backward in center field, confounded as to the whereabouts of the baseball until it dropped some 30 feet behind him on the warning track.
A disastrous defensive inning for Gomez in the Astros’ 3-1 loss to the Twins on Monday night serves as the latest nadir in
the former All-Star’s miserable 12 months with the team. He misplayed balls on consecutive plate appearances in the fifth and cost starter Collin McHugh two runs, the difference in the game.
Both gaffes were egregious for a major leaguer, especially for one three seasons removed from winning a Gold Glove while starring for the Milwaukee Brewers. Gomez’s offensive production through nearly 300 at-bats this season has been no less lamentable. And as the Astros’ season unravels, there seems to be little use on the roster for their struggling center fielder.
An 11th loss in 14 games leaves the once-surging club only two games above .500, its closest to the benchmark of mediocrity since June 26. In the span of only two weeks, the Astros have seen their promising chances at an American League West title diminish to merely an outside shot at a wild card at best.
“It’s something that you don’t feel good (about), and we lost the game because of that,” Gomez said of his defensive mistakes, the first of which was ruled an error. “I feel worse than anyone in this clubhouse.”
Given his team’s recent offensive anemia, Gomez’s miscues spelled defeat four innings before game’s end. The Astros mustered only four hits off Rice product Tyler Duffey and three Twins relievers, scoring their lone run on a George Springer double in the sixth.
Monday’s performance followed an ongoing trend for the Astros’ bats, which have averaged 2.3 runs in their last 14 games and produced a grand total of 18 runs in their last 10 games combined.
With American League MVP candidate Jose Al- tuve given a rare day off, five of the nine players who made up Monday’s lineup are batting worse than .225. Evan Gattis was 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, and the bottom three, A.J. Reed, Gomez and Jake Marisnick, combined to go 0-for-8.
Gomez grounded out to third base in the third, struck out in the fifth and hit into an inning-ending double play in the seventh. The free-agent-to-be’s batting average has fallen to .210, his on-base plus slugging percentage to .594.
At this point, with the third-place Astros desperate for production, manager A.J. Hinch would have a difficult time justifying playing Gomez over the defensively gifted Marisnick in center field. Hinch said Gomez would not be in the lineup Tuesday but was evasive regarding the veteran’s playing time moving forward.
“Obviously, I’ll take a look at it and see how it goes,” Hinch said. “We’ve been pretty beat up in a lot of ways, and you keep trying to hang in there with guys. You want to encourage more than anything. Clearly, it’s been a rough patch for him for a while.”
McHugh was dealt the hard-luck loss because of the Twins’ three-run fifth. With Eddie Rosario on first base and Jorge Polanco facing a 2-1 count, Minnesota manager Paul Molitor called for a hit-and-run.
Polanco ripped a fastball to center field that should have resulted in a single and runners on the corners. But the hard-hit ball bounced past Gomez, permitting Rosario to score and Polanco to reach third.
Two pitches later, Juan Centeno lifted a McHugh cutter to deep center field. As Gomez toiled well shallow of the ball’s trajectory, a dumbfounded McHugh muttered an expletive-included question to himself that was caught on the television broadcast.
Polanco scored, and Centeno was awarded a triple. Centeno then scored on a Danny Santana single to put the Astros in a threerun hole.
McHugh, who completed seven innings, absolved his teammate of blame.
“We didn’t lose because of defensive blunders,” McHugh said. “We lost because I gave up 10 hits, and they strung some hits together and got some guys on base and scored more runs than we did. One or two plays isn’t deciding the game tonight. That’s for sure.
“There’s just not a whole lot to say other than they scored more than we did tonight.”