PIRATES BEAT ASTROS
Hunter Brown stumbles, Pirates defeat Astros 6-2
Jul 30, 2024, 10:34 pm
PIRATES BEAT ASTROS
Michael Taylor homered for the second straight game, Bailey Falter returned to the rotation and threw one-run ball into the sixth inning as the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Houston Astros 6-2 on Tuesday night.
Taylor hit a 403-foot, two-run homer off Astros starter Hunter Brown (9-7) in the sixth inning. Taylor hit a go-ahead homer in the ninth inning on Monday night in the Pirates' 5-3 victory. His fourth homer of the season also marked the first back-to-back homer games for the 33-year-old outfielder since August with Minnesota.
Falter (5-7), making his first start since July 6 due to triceps tendonitis, kept Houston in check, throwing 47 of his 66 pitches for strikes. The 27-year-old left-hander allowed six hits and one run with three strikeouts and no walks in 5 1/3 innings.
Astros catcher Yainer Diaz hit a solo homer off Falter in the fourth inning for his 10th homer and 58th RBI of the season.
Brown was pulled following Taylor’s homer, falling an out short of his 13th straight start of six innings or more. He allowed five runs, four earned, with eight strikeouts and two walks.
The Pirates scored first, in the second inning, on a fielder’s choice. In the fourth, Brown committed a two-out throwing error on a weak grounder from Connor Joe that allowed Joey Bart to score. The next batter, Jared Triolo, doubled to score Joe and put Pittsburgh up 3-0.
The Astros picked up their second run on a fielder’s choice on which Yordan Alvarez scored.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Pirates: Carmen Mlodzinski (right shoulder strain) was put on the 15-day injured list. ... OF Joshua Palacios (left hamstring) and OF Ji Hwan Bae (left knee), who both left Monday’s game early, ran on Tuesday but did not play.
Astros: RHP Justin Verlander (neck) and RHP Luis Garcia (Tommy John) threw off a mound on Tuesday, as they near a return. Verlander threw less than 30 pitches against live batters, while Garcia threw 30 pitches, also against live batters.
UP NEXT
Astros LHP Framber Valdez (9-5, 3.43 ERA) will look to help the Astros to a seventh straight win in games in which he starts, a stretch where he is 4-0 with a 2.49 ERA. Pittsburgh has not announced a starter.
Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.
“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.
Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.
After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.
“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.
“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”
The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.
“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”
A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.
Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”
“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”