{"id":663351,"date":"2026-04-04T20:17:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T20:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663351\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T20:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T20:17:32","slug":"astros-vs-athletics-game-thread-game-9-4-4-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663351\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros vs Athletics Game Thread: Game 9, 4\/4\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Houston Astros (5-3) travel to the Athletics (2-5) this afternoon in Sacrament0 in the second game of a three game series.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Astros game three starterRHP Tatsuya Imai will make his second start of the season for the Astros, this time opposite RHP Luis Morales and the Athletics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Saturday\u2019S TILT: The Astros and Athletics will play the second game of their three-game series this afternoon as Houston looks to bounce back after last night\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">ON THE HUNT: RHP Tatsuya Imai is making his second career start after getting knocked around in 2.2 innings in game four. He carries am 13.50 ERA with four strikeouts and four walks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Imai did not give up any runs this spring in more than ten innings of work. He is coming in off a sparkling career in the Japanese Professional League and remains a high ranking rookie of the year candidate this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">ASTROS VS. Morales: The Astros are squaring off against Morales for the first time. He pitched in only ten games last year as a rookie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">RIVALRY VS. THE ATHLETICS: The Astros and Athletics have squared off 182 times in their history. They have a 101-82 against the Athletics in their lifetime. However, the Athletics were 8-5 against the Astros in the 2025 season and 0-1 so far on the 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">MR. 500: LF Yordan Alvarez recorded his 500th career RBI last night on a sac-fly RBI in the third inning&#8230;became the 15th player in franchise history to record 500 RBI&#8230;is also the fastest player in franchise history to record 500 career RBI doing so in just 685 games, passing 1B Jeff Bagwell, who recorded 500 RBI in 717 games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Game Date\/Time: Friday, April 3, 3:05 p.m. CST<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Location: Sutter Health Park, Sacramento, CA<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">TV: Space City Home Network<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Radio: KBME 790 AM; TUDN 102.9 FM HD2 (Spanish)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros (5-3) travel to the Athletics (2-5) this afternoon in Sacrament0 in the second game of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,67679,3211,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-663351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-astros","12":"tag-houston-astros-game-information","13":"tag-houstonastros","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116348285499582947","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}