Dylan Cease goes 8.2 scoreless innings against hapless Stros bats.
The Astros couldn’t have played any better into the Padres hands.
On a night when every Padre high leverage reliever was off the shelf, the last thing the Astros wanted to do was make a lot of quick outs and let the Padre ace starter to go deep into the game. Were the Astros hitters that bad tonight? Or Dylan Cease that good?
Cease had Astros hitters eating out of his hand. Through five innings he had a perfect game requiring only 61 pitches.
Meanwhile, Framber Valdez struggled successfully to keep the Padres off the board. In the second inning, with runners on first and third, Valdez escaped with a double play on Jake Cronenworth. In the fourth, the Padres got their first two runners on base, but Valdez stranded runners on second and third by striking out Fernando Tatis and getting Manny Machado to ground out sharply to second base, a scenario eerily similar to the conclusion of Tuesday night’s game.
In the fifth, Framber should have had a clean inning, but an Alex Bregman error forced Valdez to face the dangerous Fernando Tatis. But Valdez maintained the scoreless tie with a strikeout.
In the sixth inning Jason Heyward broke up Cease’s no-hitter, but the next three hitters ensured that getting base hits would not become an ugly habit, all three making quick outs, culminating in a Jose Altuve K.
In this game of shutout chicken between two aces it was Valdez who swerved off road first, allowing a Machado homer on a first-pitch, low-inside curve in the sixth.
Alex Bregman almost evened the score in the seventh, his long foul ball was close enough to the foul pole to require a video review. However, New York confirmed foul ball, not homer, and the seventh inning was another 1-2-3 for Cease against the meat of the Astros’ batting order.
After seven innings and 94 pitches of one run, five hit, six K pitching, Valdez was replaced by Kaleb Ort in the eighth. If the Padres were asking the question I asked above — are our hitters this bad, or Framber Valdez this good — Kaleb Ort gave the answer.
Valdez was that good. Without recording an out, Ort allowed three straight homers to Tatis, Machado, and Donovan Solano. It was Machado’s third homer in two games.
Then again, Bryan King managed to get three outs without allowing a run, so maybe Ort is that bad after all.
With the help of a fielding error, the Astros managed to put two runners on base with Yordan and Bregman on deck, but Alvarez struck out and, fittingly, Bregman flied out on the first pitch against reliever Tanner Scott.
The Astros ended with two hits in this game, and 17 for the series. Alvarez managed only two hits for the series, Yainer Diaz one, and Bregman two. Let’s hope this slump is followed by red-hot playoff hitting.
Maybe some Angels pitching is what the doctor ordered. Game time 7:10 CT. The Mariners and Yanks play later this evening.