Well, that was a gut punch.
In a game where Hunter Brown allowed one earned run across six innings, and the Astros lineup without Yordan Alvarez answered the call, the ending was cruel. Such is life and such is baseball, I suppose. It also doesn’t help that Bryan Abreu couldn’t locate a slider.
To be fair, the pitch that Anthony Santander hit for a grand slam wasn’t a bad fastball. It was at eyeball level outside of the strike zone. The fact that Santander got a hold of it speaks more to his ability than Abreu in that one moment.
But Abreu did put himself in that situation by loading the bases with no outs, so my sympathy only goes so far. Again, Abreu couldn’t locate his slider and the Orioles figured him out. They essentially waited on his fastball tonight. It was a disappointing development.
On the bright side, Brown continued his ascension, limiting Baltimore to one earned run across six innings. He only had seven whiffs on 54 swings, but was able to escape trouble when it present itself with minimal damage. For example, in the second inning, Jeremy Peña’s error instead of a potential inning-ending double play put Brown in a precarious position, with a run scoring and runners on the corners with one out. He thankfully struck out Jackson Holliday and James McCann to end the threat.
The Astros did the majority of their damage in the top of the third, with Jose Altuve hitting a two-run dinger to take the 2-1 lead followed shortly by Peña’s RBI double to drive in Yainer Díaz for a 3-1 advantage. Jake Meyers would then score Peña on a RBI single to make it a 4-1 lead. Considering how the game started, the Astros were bouncing back and it looked like a win was possibly on its way.
Colton Cowser’s solo home run in the bottom half of the third would cut Astros’ lead to 4-2, but Brown avoided any further mistakes. Peña would tack on another run to make 5-2 in the top of the sixth, thanks to a solo home run, his 13th of the season. Brown would finish off the bottom half of the sixth with no further issue, followed by Tayler Scott in the seventh, who retired all three of his batters. Again, this game looked like a Houston victory until it was clear that Abreu didn’t have his best stuff tonight. Without Ryan Pressly, well, it wasn’t an optimal situation.
In any case, the Astros should gain some bullpen reinforcements on Saturday, with Kaleb Ort returning along with a familiar face in Héctor Neris, who was released by the Cubs earlier in the week before agreeing to sign with Houston on Thursday. With Pressly still on the mend, Neris’ return couldn’t have come at a better time, especially on the heels of Abreu’s implosion.