Shorthanded pen passes its first test
Three relievers help keep Greinke unbeaten with his new team
A successful knee surgery Friday morning formally began a post-Ryan Pressly predicament. The Astros bullpen, beset by this potentially devastating development, must now find ways to compensate without its best reliever.
When the news of Pressly’s ailment was still fresh and reality began to set in, manager A.J. Hinch maintained hope. He said Thursday how maneuverable his healthy group of hurlers is, a matchup-oriented group that he said will be tested nightly.
“I think it’s going to be fun,” Will Harris said. “I think you’ll see guys who are good matchups and stuff. I think it’s a fun challenge for all of us to come here every day and have our pods and work through it instead of pressing the easy button and putting Ryan in there for the eighth inning.”
Friday was the first of what promises to be plenty of patchwork nights in Pressly’s absence. The Astros faced two of baseball’s most dangerous hitters. They held a one-run lead against a division rival when starter Zack Greinke exited. Seven outs were required to secure victory.
Harris, Hector Rondon and Roberto Osuna teamed up for 21⁄3 innings of onerun ball, preserving a plucky start from Greinke in a 5-4 win over the Angels at Minute Maid Park.
On the surface, the situation seems straightforward. Even with Pressly at full health, Osuna is the team’s closer. Harris normally throws the seventh inning. Both men fulfilled their pre-Pressly jobs on Friday. How they arrived there is a different adventure entirely.
“I don’t care how we get our 27 outs,” Hinch said. “It may go in different orders.”
As Hinch promised, Harris’ role did not change.
Hinch used Harris — a cuttercurveball maestro who is menacing against lefthanded hitters — to relieve Greinke in the seventh after he retired Mike Trout for the inning’s second out.
Shohei Ohtani stood in and two men were aboard. Two were out. This was the game’s highest leverage situation, and Harris is the man to whom Hinch normally turns.
After a first-pitch curveball bounced in, Harris fired three straight fastballs. Ohtani fouled the first two and waved through another, an up-and-in heater that wasn’t precisely where Harris desired.
“(Ohtani) swung 1-0, swung 1-1 and was taking some pretty big hacks,” Harris said. “I was just trying to execute a heater up. It looked like he was looking for a heater. It wasn’t the pitch I was trying to throw. I was trying to go a little more up and in but I got away with it.”
Rondon ceded a leadoff home run to Kole Calhoun in the eighth, but an Astros insurance run in the bottom half lessened its severity. The ninth offered a surprise. Hinch did not want to pitch Osuna on Friday. The closer pitched four times in the previous five days, totaling 45 pitches, and Hinch indicated before the game his closer was unavailable. Nevertheless, Osuna took the ball in the ninth.
“He talked to me before the game and he told me I was going to be down,” Osuna said. “I told him I was feeling good enough to go out there and get three outs. I want to thank him and thank the coaching staff for trusting me tonight.”
Nine of Osuna’s 11 pitches were strikes. He threw his four-seam fastball with more confidence and deception than in recent weeks. Advice from Gerrit Cole aided Osuna, who retired the side to preserve Greinke’s 201st career win.
“I know these guys,” Hinch said. “And I know how to work my way around a conversation to whether I feel good about it. I put them in when I feel good about it. I don’t want to put a win in jeopardy, and I don’t want to put their health in jeopardy. He’s one in particular that can handle the workload. Obviously I’m not going to do this all the time. But a big win for the boys.”
Greinke yielded two earned runs in 62⁄3 innings. He allowed the leadoff man aboard in five of the seven frames he worked. The Angels amassed 10 hits against him, though only two were for extra bases.
Only once in 26 previous starts had Greinke yielded at least 10 hits. Friday was his longest outing ever with one or fewer strikeouts.
“I think the Angels did a great job today,” Greinke said. “I made a lot of good pitches and they got 10 hits. I didn’t think I made too many mistakes, and they just did a really good job.”
The damage was done primarily against Greinke’s array of secondary offerings. To start the second second, Calhoun jumped on a first-pitch curveball. Justin Upton and Albert Pujols pounded sliders. All three secured singles.
Calhoun and Upton each scored on a fielder’s choice, the only earned runs to cross against Greinke. Ohtani reached on Jose Altuve’s fielding error that started the sixth, an inning after Yuli Gurriel’s go-ahead two-run homer off Noe Ramirez.
On July 16, during Houston’s first trip to Anaheim after Jake Marisnick’s grisly collision with Jonathan Lucroy, Ramirez beaned Marisnick between his shoulder blades. The retaliation incensed the Astros, and a brief brouhaha occurred between both dugouts.
Major League Baseball suspended Ramirez for three games. After initially choosing to appeal, the reliever withdrew his request and served the punishment.
Angels manager Brad Ausmus summoned Ramirez in the fifth on Friday. The crowd greeted the gangly righthander with little malice, perhaps pacified by the passage of time, when he relieved Jose Suarez after a surprising start.
Suarez started Friday for the 12th time as a major leaguer. He carried a 6.75 ERA into the evening, and opponents had hit 16 home runs against him in 531⁄3 innings. Hope for a long appearance was faint.
But buoyed by a changeup the Astros could not square up and a curveball he spun at will, Suarez silenced one of the league’s most potent lineups. Houston mustered just two runs in four innings and stranded three runners in scoring position, unable to pounce on a vulnerable rookie who seemed to gain confidence with each out.
He encountered the middle of Houston’s order a third time in the fifth. Altuve skied out and Michael Brantley struck out, but Bregman crushed a changeup into the left center field gap, stopping the slog.
Ausmus climbed the dugout steps and Ramirez entered. Gurriel loomed.
Wielding a bat painted as a pineapple for Players Weekend, Gurriel evened the count at two. Ramirez spotted a four-seam fastball on the outer half, and Gurriel sent it to the opposite field.
“I really focused on letting the ball travel a little bit more so I could hit it to the opposite field,” said Gurriel, who finished 2-for-4. “At that point, Ramirez had thrown me four pitches, and none of them were fastballs. I thought I’d get a fastball there. I got it and was able to hit it.”
Calhoun gave chase in right field. He reached the warning track in time to watch the missile disappear into the third row of seats. Gurriel galloped around the bases with a go-ahead, tworun shot, giving the bullpen cushion to display its new normal.
“We pushed a couple of guys maybe a little further than I even want to,” Hinch said. “But you play these games to win, and when you have an opportunity to win, it’s nice to have guys step up and pitch well.”