HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Yainer Diaz hit a solo home run in a three-run third inning, Cristian Javier combined with four relievers to limit Arizona to three hits and the Astros beat the Diamondbacks 3-1 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Houston moved a season-high four games over .500 at 73-69 with its fifth victory in the last six games. The Astros expanded their lead in the AL West to three games over the Texas Rangers.<\/p>\n
The Diamondbacks have lost four of their last five games. They fell into a tie with the San Diego Padres for the final NL wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Diaz led off the third with a solo home run to left. With one out, Jeremy Pe\u00f1a and Yordan Alvarez hit back-to-back singles before Isaac Paredes hit an RBI double. Jose Altuve followed with a sacrifice fly, scoring Alvarez.<\/p>\n
Javier (2-5) yielded one run on one hit \u2014 a solo home run to Gabriel Moreno in the fourth \u2014 and tied his season high with eight strikeouts in five innings. Javier had his first win since July 27, snapping a four-game slide.<\/p>\n
Enyel De Los Santos allowed a hit in a third of an inning, and Bennett Sousa yielded a hit in 1 1\/3 innings. Sousa escaped a bases loaded jam in the sixth inducing an inning-ending double play by Nolan Arenado.<\/p>\n
Bryan Abreu pitched 1 1\/3 innings, and Josh Hader struck out the side in the ninth for his 23rd save in as many chances. It was Hader\u2019s 250th career save.<\/p>\n
Arizona starter Merrill Kelly (9-13) surrendered three runs on seven hits with four strikeouts in six innings. He threw seven shutout innings in his last start Aug. 29 against the Giants.<\/p>\n
RHP Brandon Pfaadt (7-2, 3.49 ERA) was set to start Saturday for the Diamondbacks opposite Astros RHP Ethan Pecko (1-0, 6.23).<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Yainer Diaz hit a solo home run in a three-run third inning, Cristian Javier combined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,4314,5,3616,654,7618,6175,38,97606,11192,47374,5993,893,5828,817,1109,660,4,1028,9500,9501,9496,9497,83120,9499,137,5355,2264],"class_list":["post-796994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-arizonadiamondbacks","tag-baseball","tag-bennett-sousa","tag-brandon-pfaadt","tag-bryan-abreu","tag-cristian-javier","tag-diamondbacks","tag-diamondbacksastros-score","tag-enyel-de-los-santos","tag-ethan-pecko","tag-gabriel-moreno","tag-isaac-paredes","tag-jeremy-pena","tag-jose-altuve","tag-josh-hader","tag-merrill-kelly","tag-mlb","tag-nolan-arenado","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40774-ap-arizona-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-san-diego","tag-yainer-diaz","tag-yordan-alvarez"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796994","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=796994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}