Valdez’s focus falters in latest rough outing
A flash of frustration from Framber Valdez arrived in Wednesday’s second inning. The Astros ace threw a two-strike curveball to Robbie Grossman aimed at the top of the zone. It was ruled a ball. Valdez paused and stared, then huffed his shoulders and stalked forward to receive catcher Martín Maldonado’s throw.
Valdez regrouped quickly, retiring Grossman on a groundout on his next pitch. But the sequence held a glimpse of what was to come. The second proved Valdez’s last scoreless inning. He would not finish the fourth, surrendering six runs to the Rangers in a 13-5 Astros loss and his shortest start of the season.
“He showed some frustration on the mound a little bit, emotion,” Maldonado said after the game. “We all know he’s an emotional guy.”
There was plenty of emotion on display Wednesday at Minute Maid Park. Maldonado and Texas second baseman Marcus Semien were ejected in the fifth inning after they exchanged words at home plate and both teams’ benches cleared. Valdez had exited by that point but experienced some earlier tensions.
Both benches were warned in the third inning after Valdez hit Semien with a first-pitch fastball. Rangers starter Andrew Heaney had plunked Yordan Alvarez in the first inning. Valdez’s fastball struck Semien on the shoulder. Valdez spun, yanked his glove off and put his hands on his hips.
Semien looked Valdez’s way as he walked to first base and shrugged, but continued to shake his head as he kept walking. The warning followed. Valdez seemed shaky. He started Ezequiel Duran in a 2-0 count, prompting a mound visit. Duran flied out, but Nathaniel Lowe hit a full-count curveball for a home run.
The at-bat was revealing. In seven pitches, Valdez threw Lowe, a lefthanded hitter, four changeups and two curveballs. Those are pitches Valdez usually saves for righthanded hitters. The cutter is his favored secondary pitch against lefties. But Valdez did not throw a single cutter Wednesday.
“Just didn’t want to use it,” Valdez said through an interpreter. “Today I just really wanted to go with the changeup, the curveball and the sinker.”
Lowe’s swing cut an early Astros lead to 3-2. Valdez stood still, hands on hips, looking out toward right-center field, until Lowe had nearly rounded the bases. Texas erased its deficit entirely an inning later.
Innings seldom snowball on Valdez. His arsenal is built to generate groundballs and alleviate jams. It did neither in the fourth as six straight Rangers hitters reached against him with two outs.
Mitch Garver singled on a chopper that third baseman Alex Bregman deflected on a dive. That was the last ground ball Valdez induced. Robbie Grossman drove a sinker into the gap in left-center for a double, and Leody Taveras lined a 2-0 changeup for a two-run single.
Semien drove Valdez’s next pitch, a sinker, into the left-field seats. As Semien rounded third base, he appeared to say something in Valdez’s direction. Valdez, with his back turned, said after the game he hadn’t heard Semien.
“I really didn’t pay attention,” Valdez said. “Obviously, he’s up there to hit, I have a ball, try to throw it past him. He hit it, hit his home run. But I really try not to pay attention to what hitters are saying.”
Still, Valdez, who walked his final two hitters before exiting, was candid when asked if he felt frustration had affected him in the outing.
“Yeah, I think so,” Valdez said. “Sometimes during the game things happen that just kind of take you out of your focus zone and you try to get back to it, sometimes it doesn’t happen. But those are things we’re going to be working on and trying to get better at.”
There was also a tangible factor to his outing. Valdez wielded his sinker with good velocity but left it and some offspeed offerings up in the zone. Maldonado said Valdez’s curveball “wasn’t quite there” and “we didn’t get that many ground balls like we normally do when the sinker is down.”
“A lot of teams try to hit him the other way, and that’s a perfect spot to do it,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “Just couldn’t get the ball down on a consistent basis. He was getting the ball up and away, and that’s right to the barrel of the bat.”
Valdez shrugged off the idea that he is working through any mechanical issues. In his last three outings, Valdez has allowed 15 runs on 21 hits across 15 innings against the Angels, A’s and Rangers. He left the outing in Anaheim, Calif., with a calf cramp but said Wednesday that issue has not lingered.
His ERA has climbed since the All-Star Break from 2.51 to 3.29. If Valdez is going through a rough stretch, it might only reinforce the Astros’ pursuit of starting pitching at the trade deadline. Late Wednesday, he aimed to downplay any broad implications.
“Sometimes you go out there with a plan and it doesn’t happen,” Valdez said. “You give up some hits, give up some homers and games like today happen.”