Three hours before a long night began, Dusty Baker predicted his plight. He received a question about the state of his bullpen. The skipper peered down to the desk inside his office and began rattling off names: Ryan Pressly, Luis Garcia, Andre Scrubb and Brooks Raley. All were unavailable for Saturday’s doubleheader against the Angels.
“How does that look,” Baker replied rhetorically.
The answer arrived in game one. Baker’s bunch lost a battle of combusting bullpens, dropping a 10-9 decision in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader at Angel Stadium.
The Astros blew three separate leads, including a 9-7 advantage entering the seventh and final inning. Jo Adell struck a walkoff single against rookie reliever Enoli Paredes, completing an absolute meltdown from a depleted bullpen.
Paredes, Blake Taylor, Chris Devenski and Cy Sneed teamed to allow six runs in the final four innings.
Handed a two-run lead during his first appearance since July 26, Devenski yielded a game-tying, two-run home run to Justin Upton in the fifth. Taylor was afforded a two-run advantage in the seventh, too. In place of Pressly, Taylor walked Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani to start the frame. Baker brought in Paredes, who retired just one of the three hitters he faced.
The pitiful pitching wasted an excellent offensive night. With José Altuve and Alex Bregman on the injured list and Josh Reddick off during the first game, the Astros lineup still swatted 12 hits.
A day after finishing 3-for-24 with runners in scoring position, Houston went 6-for-10. The Astros scored six runs with two outs. Kyle Tucker totalled three hits, including two that drove in runners on second or third. The other was a solo home run in the second against Angels starter Griffin Canning.
Tucker now has a team-high seven home runs. Houston scored in all but two innings, including four runs in the first three frames. A shutdown inning from starter Brandon Bielak never came.
Saturday felt like an audition for Bielak to keep his rotation spot. José Urquidy’s return now leaves six starters for five spots. Bielak is the obvious odd man out. He did not make it out of the second inning in either of his previous two starts. But a strong showing against the Angels could have given the team pause in the short term.
Houston handed Bielak a three-run advantage after three innings. Bielak refused to hold it. He yielded four extra-base hits in a laborious 3 ⅔-inning stint. Trout and Adell annihilated opposite-field home runs against him, erasing the Angels’ early deficit. Trout’s homer — a two-run shot in the third inning — was the 300th of his Hall of Fame career.
Only 11 of Bielak’s 77 pitches generated a swing and miss. His changeup was effective against lefthanded hitters, but righties ravaged him all night. Six of Bielak’s eight hits came courtesy of righthanded batters, most of whom saw fastballs in advantage counts.
Bielak allowed a hit in every inning he worked. All but one featured an Angels run. Still, the team managed to get to the seventh within striking distance.
With two away in the final frame, Yuli Gurriel gave fist bumps in the dugout before being summoned back out onto the field. The Astros assumed he’d scored the go-ahead run in a battle of imploding bullpens. Umpires told the team otherwise.
Carlos Correa crushed a ball so hard that it bounced up and above the yellow line along the right-field wall. Gurriel could only advance two bases on the ground-rule double. He shuffled back to third base. For a club that struggled on Friday with runners in scoring position, the sequence seemed deflating.
Saturday showcased a different effort entirely. The Astros accumulated clutch hits in bunches, trying to buoy their brutal bullpen. Two pitches after Gurriel went back to third, Martín Maldonado shattered his bat and sent a single into right field. Both Correa and Gurriel scored, sending the Astros ahead. Unfortunately, the bottom of the frame had to be played.
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