Astros’ win streak ends in Boston
Uncaught balls, stranded men add up in defeat
BOSTON — On a beautiful afternoon beneath a Fenway Park crowd concerned it would see a sweep, the efficiency and excitement enveloping the Astros across the last week vanished.
Routine plays were not made. Their manager openly questioned one of his own decisions. The immobility of their infield’s juryrigged right side showed at the worst time.
And George Springer, the spark around whom a 10-game winning streak had sizzled, departed with a back injury in the fifth inning.
When Springer left, the Astros owned a two-run lead. When the game ended, Houston boarded a team bus bearing a frustrating 4-3 loss to end an otherwise stellar six
game road trip.
“I wouldn’t say frustrated,” said Josh Reddick, the only Astro to finish with two hits. “Disappointed. Upset. Those are probably better adjectives, I think. We came in and made a big statement. Obviously, we would have loved to have the sweep.”
Houston taxed one of the sport’s most supreme southpaws, chasing Chris Sale before he could complete six innings. They received a gargantuan go-ahead home run from Carlos Correa and a commendable start from Wade Miley.
All of their accomplishments were soured by a sort of sloppy baseball so foreign during this dominant stretch. Alex Bregman booted a ball in the first inning, allowing an unearned run to cross. Two fly balls into shallow right field dropped between converging fielders.
The second, which fell between third-string second baseman Yuli Gurriel and sparingly summoned Tyler White at first, preceded the go-ahead run in the seventh inning. Mookie Betts struck the baseball against lefthanded reliever Framber Valdez. It swirled in a gust of wind while the two infielders moved toward one another.
“It’s one of those you don’t really communicate,” White said. “First base, running backward, I don’t really say much. If I have to catch it, I catch it, and I just wait on him to call me off, or I chase it. I chased it, and he had the better play at it.”
Neither man made a catch. The ball fell, and White corralled it. He threw errantly to Correa, who made a sensational stretch to get Michael Chavis on a force at second base.
If the fly ball is caught, Chavis — all 5-10 and 216 pounds of him — remains at first. Instead, Betts stood there. He scored the go-ahead run with ease on Xander Bogaerts’ booming double off Framber Valdez into the left-center field gap. Whether Chavis could have done the same is questionable.
Whether Valdez should have faced Bogaerts was, too. The Sox shortstop entered the game 10for-31 off lefthanded pitching. Six of the 10 hits garnered extra bases. Hinch had Hector Rondon warming in the bullpen. The manager stuck with Valdez (1-2), a move he called a “bad decision.”
“I questioned it on the front end,” Hinch said, “so I’m going to question it on the back end when it doesn’t go our way.”
The seventh-inning sullied superb work against Sale. In three May starts before this one, the Sox southpaw struck out 41 of the 76 men he encountered. A seven-inning, 17-strikeout spectacle against the Rockies on Tuesday terrified opponents, suggesting this lanky southpaw and seven-time All-Star squared what went so awry in his abysmal April.
Though they struck out 10 times against him, the Astros elevated Sale’s pitch count, coaxing five walks in the 51⁄3 innings he worked. Not once in his three-year Red Sox tenure had he walked more in one outing. Sale had not walked a batter in the 15 innings preceding this outing.
“We had good swings against him, (and) we made him work,” Hinch said. “Getting him out of the game when we did was key because we started the game putting up really good at-bats. He’s going to get his strikeouts when he’s got this kind of stuff, but I thought we battled him. We just couldn’t get enough hits — enough two-out hits when guys were on base.”
Five times, the Astros took an atbat with a runner in scoring position. They did not record a hit in any of them. Seven men were stranded, including three in scoring position, while Sale worked.
Sale required 79 pitches to collect his first 12 outs. Correa crushed a 448-foot, two-run homer against him in the third inning. The slugging shortstop destroyed a mislocated four-seam fastball in a 1-1 count, sending it to dead center field, momentarily erasing the deficit his team faced.
Sale did not toss a 1-2-3 inning until the fifth. With one out in the sixth, he tossed his 100th pitch. Unsurprisingly, it was not a strike. Manager Alex Cora removed him after a walk to Reddick, a plate appearance that ended in Sale’s screaming an expletive when the fourth ball left his hand.
Against Sox reliever Marcus Walden (6-0), Jake Marisnick bounced into a double play, ending the inning and a pristine chance to extend a two-run lead Miley gave away in the home half.
After a shift-beating single, Bregman’s bobble of a ground ball and a wild pitch resulted in an unearned run in the first, Miley didn’t give up another run in the first four innings. Contact against him was soft and early in counts, though he fell behind frequently. He required fewer than 15 pitches to escape the second, third and fourth innings, all of which included a baserunner.
Two quick outs in the fifth turned the Boston lineup over for a third look at the veteran lefty. On the first pitch Miley made to Chavis, the rookie crushed a hung cutter for a solo home run over the Green Monster.
With a full count on Betts, Miley offered a backdoor cutter. Betts stayed back and rifled the pitch for a double. Bogaerts loomed. He blooped a fly ball toward that worrisome right side. Reddick and Marisnick were playing back. Neither had a shot. Nor did Gurriel, who ran back and saw the baseball drop over his shoulder.
“It definitely was a circus out there,” Reddick said. “It’s always a little bit of a circus here when the wind gets blowing.”
Added Hinch: “We didn’t play a clean game. Some of it was the elements, and some of it was just the way baseball goes sometimes. It won’t take away from a really good road trip, a really good group of games.”