Houston's losing streak is now 4
Oakland secures series by handing Astros their fourth-straight loss
Aug 8, 2020, 5:36 pm
Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images
Astros Michael Brantley
With the disappointing loss in extra innings late the night before, the Astros returned to RingCentral Coliseum on Saturday afternoon to try and even the series against the A's, who now owned a 3.5 game lead in the AL West over Houston. Here is a quick rundown of the middle game of the series:
Final Score: A's 3, Astros 1.
Record: 6-8, second in the AL West.
Winning pitcher: Frankie Montas (2-1, 1.57 ERA).
Losing pitcher: Framber Valdez (0-2, 2.04 ERA).
Valdez does his job
Framber Valdez ran into stress early on Saturday, facing trouble in the bottom of the first inning. It started with a leadoff solo home run, putting Oakland up 1-0 before they would record an out. He later allowed back-to-back one-out singles to rack up his pitch count in the frame but would limit the damage to the single run.
He was able to re-focus and settle in during the following innings, getting quick, scoreless innings in the next four. In the bottom of the sixth, a leadoff groundball that likely should have been the first out was instead a single that would come back to bite Houston. That runner stole second and advanced to third on a bad throw, then scored on an RBI-groundout, doubling Oakland's lead to 2-0. Valdez would go one more inning, giving Houston precisely what they needed by helping give their exhausted bullpen a break. His final line: 7.0 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 1 HR.
Houston's offense unable to get anything going
Unfortunately for Houston, Frankie Montas was even more efficient on the other side. Houston was only able to notch two hits against him over seven innings while Montas only had to throw 86 pitches over that span. Oakland would go to their bullpen in the top of the eighth, with the Astros getting just a single in the inning.
Nivaldo Rodriguez would take over for Valdez in the bottom of the eighth and allowed a solo home run to make it 3-0 before completing the inning. Houston would get a leadoff double by Kyle Tucker to start the top of the ninth, and he would come around to score on an RBI-single by Alex Bregman. That's as close as Houston would get, though, as Oakland would finish off the win to secure the series and extend Houston's losing streak to four games.
Up Next: The final game of this series and Houston's nine-game road trip will be on Sunday at 3:10 PM Central. Jesus Luzardo (0-0, 2.31 ERA) will make a start for the A's while Cristian Javier (1-0, 1.42 ERA) will look to continue his success in 2020 for the Astros.
It’s been an excellent weeklong stretch of games for the Astros tempered by the news of yet another season-ending injury to a starting pitcher. To get the bad news out of the way, it comes as no surprise that Ronel Blanco needs Tommy John surgery and is done until at least the middle of next season. While Blanco had not been nearly as good through nine 2025 starts as he was last season, he was still taking his regular return and on average getting into the sixth inning. Blanco turns 32 years old at the end of August. He’s not even salary arbitration-eligible until 2027. That last fact may be good news for him. The Astros will likely keep Blanco next year in hopes he can contribute in the second half of the season, since they will pay him barely the Major League minimum salary ($780,000 next year) That’s in contrast to Jose Urquidy, who in the midst of his salary arbitration years would have cost about three and a half million dollars to keep, so the Astros non-tendered him.
With Blanco joining Hayden Wesneski in the “See you next year! Hopefully.” club, it struck me as interesting that the Astros let Lance McCullers throw 102 pitches in his Wednesday outing vs. the Athletics. That’s eleven more than he had thrown in any of his prior four starts. McCullers holding up physically would be a huge boost, but the new essentials in the Astros’ rotation are Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. Framber has settled in to the tune of a 1.93 earned run average over his last four starts. Brown’s season ERA is 2.00. Brown has had five days of rest before all eleven of his starts this season. This Sunday is Brown’s presently next scheduled outing. He would work on four days of rest if on the mound Sunday against the Rays.
Taking the last two games from the Mariners was huge (for the second half of May anyway). Keeping the good times rolling by sweeping the two-game miniseries from the A’s was less significant but still nice. Maybe not quite nice enough to have Frank “The Tank” from the movie Old School belting out “We’re going streaking!!!” but it did give the Astros their first four game winning streak of the season. They still have not lost more than three straight.
On a heater!
Speaking of streaking, time for annual mention of one of my all-time favorite baseball factoids. The 1916 New York Giants hold the MLB record for the longest win streak with an incredible 26 in a row. Earlier in the season the Giants ripped off 17 in a row. Combine the two streaks and that’s 43-0! The 1916 New York Giants finished in fourth place. In all their other games the Giants went 43-66. The American League’s longest ever winning streak is of fairly recent vintage. The 2007 Cleveland Indians won 22 straight. There have been only two other winning streaks since 1900 of at least 20 games. The 1935 Chicago Cubs won 21 straight. The Art Howe-managed 2002 Oakland A’s won 20 in a row, and were the inspiration for the movie Moneyball. The Astros have three 12 game winning streaks as the longest in their history.
Expect the unexpected
Tuesday’s win over the A’s brought the Astros to the one-third completed point of the regular season. Isaac Paredes was definitely their best offensive player to that milepost. His “on pace for” numbers were the best on the ballclub 33 home runs and 93 runs batted in. Paredes also led in runs scored with 29. The last Astro to lead the team in all three of those categories was Alex Bregman who did it in both 2018 and 2019. That Bregman was clearly a better player than this Paredes, but Isaac healthy and making “only” 6.625 million dollars this season is a heck of a lot better value than Bregman at 40 mil for the Red Sox, especially given that while Bregman was off to a sensational start for Boston, he’s now out for at least a month with a quad injury.
Hunter Brown is on pace to win 20 games. The last Astro to get there was Gerrit Cole on the last day of the 2019 regular season. The day before that Justin Verlander won his 21st game.
The Cleveland Guardians’ bullpen was awesome last season, by far the best in the league with four relievers who each pitched in at least 74 games posting ERAs of 1.92 or lower, headlined by closer Emmanuel Clase’s microscopic 0.61. One-third of the way through this season for the Astros: Bryan Abreu sat at 1.90, Steven Okert 1.82, Josh Hader 1.57, Bryan King 1.52.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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