San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Houston finds way to win 6th in row
HOUSTON — Amid a five-game win streak, the Astros’ method of winning with tremendous pitching and defense at last appeared on the verge of becoming untenable. A Detroit team with the secondfewest runs in the majors nearly made it so Saturday.
Kyle Tucker’s patience outlasted all else. Tucker’s bases-loaded walk in the eighth inning gave Houston its first lead of the game, and the Astros held on for a 3-2 win over the Tigers at Minute Maid Park, preserving an opportunity to go for a second consecutive series sweep in Sunday’s finale.
Framber Valdez recorded his third consecutive quality start, yielding two earned runs through six innings. He struck out a season-high seven batters but also yielded a season-high nine hits.
Valdez minimized the damage with his wicked curveball to give his offense a chance, but the Astros were limited to just four hits. The Tigers had 11 hits, though one multi-RBI hit off the bat of a legend was enough to maintain the lead for most of the game.
Tigers slugger Miguel
Cabrera drove in his team’s first two runs and in the process made history in Houston for the second day in a row, joining Hank Aaron and Albert Pujols as the only players with 500 homers, 600 doubles and 3,000 hits.
Jose Altuve’s solo home run was the only semblance of life for the home team through seven innings. Detroit starter Eduardo Rodriguez completed his longest outing as a Tiger, 62⁄3 innings on 99 pitches.
The Astros struck out eight times against him with one hit, one earned run and three walks.
Valdez issued just one walk, matching a season low, and used his curveball to strike out five hitters. Valdez’s curveball produced five outs through his first two innings — a double-play ground ball in the first inning and three swinging strikeouts in the second — to get him out of jams.
The Tigers’ contact was
not all for naught. Through three innings, Valdez gave up six singles and a double, though a few of the hits were infield ground balls or rollers against the shift.
The double belonged to Cabrera, who arrived at the plate with one out and runners on the corners in the top of the third. He drove in two runs with a hit lined into left field, his 600th career double, and received a congratulatory pat from Venezuelan countryman Altuve at second base.
Altuve retaliated in the bottom half of the inning when, with two outs, he sent a first pitch soaring into the stands for his fourth home run of the season. The homer gave Altuve 890 career runs scored, tying him with César Cedeño for fourth-most in Astros history.
Altuve’s blast stood as Houston’s lone hit through six innings. In the seventh inning, Kyle Tucker’s twoout walk ended Rodriguez’s outing as the Tigers brought in righty Michael Fulmer. Jeremy Peña provided the Astros’ second hit of the game with a two-out single, also putting a Houston runner in scoring position for the first time, but Chas McCormick flied out to end the threat
Fulmer had walked only one batter in five appearances this season before the eighth inning. He gave up a one-out single to Altuve, then a game-tying triple to Michael Brantley, ripped 107.4 mph off the bat to score Altuve. With two outs, Fulmer intentionally walked Yordan Alvarez and unintentionally walked Yuli Gurriel on four pitches.
Fulmer fired five pitches inside to Tucker, who let the first two go by for balls, fouled off the third and took two more balls. Brantley jogged home as the goahead run, a fittingly nonchalant finish to what up until then had been an understated offensive performance for the Astros.