Despite a 3.5-game lead in the AL West, the Astros are in trouble. They head into the last 20 games of the season with inconsistent starting pitching, a patchwork, overworked bullpen, and a lineup with only one or two consistent hitters and too many sure outs. They were pounded in two of the three games against the error-prone Yankees, including tonight’s 8-4 loss.
The Yankees opened the scoring in the second inning off Astros starter Cristian Javier on a two-out walk, a single, and an RBI single by Ryan McMahon.
But the Astros tied it in the third on a Yordan Alvarez homer, his second since returning from IL and fifth of the year.
But the Yankees took a three-run lead in the fifth on a McMahon solo homer, followed by three singles and two walks. The second walk was by Enyal De Los Santos, who was called for a pitch clock violation on a 3-2 count.
Cristian Javier struggled with command tonight. He only completed 4.1 innings, allowed four runs, six hits, three walks, and four Ks. He threw from behind in the count to most of the batters and only threw 46 strikes out of 78 pitches.
The Astros closed the gap to 4-2 in the sixth with the help of two Yankee errors that scored Yordan Alvarez following his leadoff double.
And Jesus Sanchez made the game exciting with a pinch-hit oppo-taco solo home run to the Crawford Boxes in the seventh inning.
Following De Los Santos’ and Craig Kimbrel’s clean innings, Caleb Ort came in the eighth to keep it close. He failed. After two walks with two outs, the Yankees blew the game open. A McMahon single made the score 5-3. It was his third ribbie of the game. But the big blow was Trent Grisham’s three-run homer, giving the Yankees an 8-3 lead.
The Astros made noise in the ninth inning. They added a run on a pinch-hit Victor Caratini single, a Taylor Trammell double, and an RBI Alvarez single. After a Jose Altuve walk loading the bases, putting the tying run at the plate, Yankees closer David Bednar struck out Carlos Correa and Christian Walker to close the game.
Jayden Murray made his major league debut, throwing 1.1 perfect innings in the eighth and ninth innings, striking out one and getting a lineout from Aaron Judge, his first major league opponent.
Yordan Alvarez had his second straight four-hit game. But the rest of the team only added six more, and the Astros only managed to score four runs despite three costly Yankee errors. The Astros were 1-11 with runners in scoring position and left ten runners on base.
The Astros face the third place-but-closing-fast Texas Rangers tomorrow in Arlington.