Lack of pitching costly
Valdez remains in game to absorb beating to save bullpen for heavy use on Tuesday
ANAHEIM, Calif. — The time for Framber Valdez to leave the field was long gone. He walked the nine-hole hitter on five pitches. He pegged a baserunner with an errant relay throw he never should have released. The Angels loaded the bases with one out and a one-run lead.
Valdez neared his new normal — a complete combustion. But the Houston bullpen did not stir. The Astros could not afford to remove him. With an alarming absence of starting pitching depth, Tuesday is scheduled to be a bullpen game. Exhausting any reliever unnecessarily gives that game an even grimmer outlook.
Pitching coach Brent Strom strolled for a visit, urging Valdez to show some sort of composure. Albert Pujols loomed. Valdez dotted a two-seam fastball on the outer half. Pujols lofted it for a two-run single. Valdez hung his head. He lazily scurried to back up home plate. Two runs scored nonetheless.
Valdez bequeathed an Astros lead that should have been bigger. After gutting Angels starter Griffin Canning, they mustered
just three runs. They left eight men aboard through five innings.
On this night, with Valdez’s ineptitude, no amount of runs would matter. Valdez yielded seven runs in four innings, placing Monday’s 9-6 loss out of reach and Tuesday’s game in far greater peril.
The Astros stranded 11 runners and committed two errors. Robinson Chirinos allowed a passed ball in the fourth inning, too. In five games since the All-Star break, Houston has made seven errors. The lack of composure and attention to detail is baffling.
Troubling as Valdez’s outing was, the anemia was almost expected. The southpaw yielded 15 earned runs, walked seven and managed just three innings in three previous starts. Houston needed him to eat innings. Any good results would be a bonus.
He finished only four innings, unacceptable given the Astros’ awaiting Tuesday predicament. Baserunners reached scoring position in every inning he worked. A run scored in all but one frame. Forty-eight of his 85 pitches were strikes. No matter how easy the club tried to make this day, Valdez found a way to complicate it.
Houston handed the struggling southpaw an easier entrance to the game. Valdez carried a first-inning ERA of 11.57 into Monday evening. Josh James saved his teammate the trouble of trying to lower it. James, the first predetermined opener in Houston history, required 18 pitches to produce a clean first inning.
He was handed a three-run lead before he tossed a pitch. The Astros abused a 23-year-old rookie pitcher named Griffin Canning, handing the fellow an embarrassing evening beneath some storied guests.
The righthander made his 13th major league start. Canning’s college coach, UCLA’s John Savage, was in attendance. One of his program’s most successful pitchers, Gerrit Cole, watched from the opposing dugout.
Canning’s rookie season seemed commendable. During his first 12 outings, Canning struck out a franchise-record 69 hitters. Opponents swung and missed 33.3 percent of the time. Just Cole and reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell induced higher clips among American Leaguers.
Canning collected two outs on his first two pitches. Procuring any others was a problem. He lasted just 1 ⅓ innings, undone by an absence of control.
He threw 50 pitches. Twenty were strikes. Canning walked six hitters and accrued as many wild pitches (four) as outs. No pitcher in major league history had ever walked six, uncorked four wild pitches and lasted just 1⅓ innings.
After the first two outs, four straight Astros coaxed walks. Josh Reddick’s free pass drove in Houston’s first run. Alex Bregman nearly decapitated the youngster with a tattooed, tworun single right back up the middle during the second. Angels manager Brad Ausmus finally removed Canning after injury was nearly added to this insult.
Valdez ensured Canning’s calamity would be forgotten. He stranded two men in scoring position during the third, the only scoreless inning he worked. Andrelton Simmons socked a solo home run in the third.
Justin Upton and Pujols began the fourth with consecutive doubles. Nine batters faced Valdez in the fifth, an ugly inning the Astros forced him to finish.