Bullpen blows late lead in loss to Astros

After a nice, solid drubbing of the Houston Astros on Friday night which evened the four-game series at a game apiece, the Detroit Tigers looked to clinch at least a series tie on Saturday afternoon. Despite a lovely grand slam early in the game, the Tiger bullpen couldn’t hold onto this one as the Astros prevailed 8-6.

Framber Valdez‘s seventeenth start for the Tigers aimed to build upon two solid, six-inning, one-run outings in a row. Regardless of the start, though, walks have been a problem for him: coming into today he’d walked at least two batters in every start since the middle of May. As the late Jim Price used to bemoan on the radio broadcasts, “Oh, those bases on balls!”

Facing the Tigers today was Kai-Wei Teng, making his tenth start of the season to go along with thirteen relief appearances. He’s found a home in Houston’s rotation after having limited success in San Francisco the past two years. That’s not to say it’s been all sunshine-and-roses lately; to wit, two starts ago he faced these very same Tigers in Houston and didn’t make it through the fourth inning, having given up five runs and a trio of taters. One of those was to Colt Keith, amongst the three he hit that lovely day.

The Astros struck first: in the bottom of the second Christian Walker led off with a double; Kerry Carpenter took a strange route to it and might’ve had a play on it in some parallel universe. That cost the Tigers a run as Cam Smith immediately followed with a sizzling line drive home run to left field.

Meanwhile, the Tigers were getting pretty good swings against Teng, but the line drives seemed to be finding gloves at an annoying rate.

Houston kept coming in the third, with some singles and a double resulting in another run; one of the singles should’ve been an error on Spencer Torkelson making the run unearned, but that’s baseball, I guess.

In the bottom of the inning a walk and a grounder off Jose Altuve‘s glove put the first two runners on. After Isaac Paredes made a good play on a foul popup from Riley Greene, Teng hit Torkelson to load the bases and bring Kerry Carpenter to the plate. Teng hung a curveball, Carpenter swung, and the batter absolutely did not miss.

The Astros evened the score in the top of the fourth with a pair of singles, a productive groundout, and another single.

In the bottom of the inning Jake Rogers legged-out an infield single, and with two out Greene singled to right. Torkelson followed with a double that scored Rogers and pushed Greene up to third for a 5-4 lead. That was the end of Teng’s day, and lefty Steven Okert was summoned. Carpenter was due up next… and somehow he was not pulled for a pinch-hitter! Alas, he meekly hit a ground ball to first for the third out — as Jahmai Jones forlonly cried a single tear while sitting on the dugout bench.

With one out in the fifth, Hao-Yu Lee hit a fly ball just above the left fielder’s outstretched glove for his third home run on the year, making it a 6-4 game.

Valdez actually settled down quite nicely from the end of the fourth through the sixth, setting down seven in a row. He was done after six innings — his third straight start of that length — and his final line wasn’t great: 6 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 0 BB, 2 K. Tellingly, his settling-down coincided with a whole bunch of Astros hitting ground balls; if he’d only been able to do that earlier in the game, well then, now you’ve got something.

Drew Anderson took over in the seventh, and with two out he walked Paredes and gave up a soft single to Altuve for a bit of a jam, bringing up Walker who hit a line drive single to left, scoring Paredes and narrowing the lead to 6-5. That’d be it for Anderson, and it was a Drew-for-Drew swap on the mound as Somers inherited a two-on, two-out pickle. The lefty faced fellow lefty, pinch hitter Joey Loperfido, and coaxed a soft fly ball from him for the third out.

Will Vest replaced Drew in the eighth, and it didn’t go particularly well. Yainer Díaz led off with a single, and with two outs Christian Vásquez singled as well to put runners on first and second. Jeremy Peña singled to centre, scoring Diaz to tíe the game; the ball was misplayed by James Outman in centrefield, letting the runners advance a base. Paredes followed with a big, two-run, opposite-field double to un-tie the game and put Houston ahead 8-6.

After three quick outs, Jacob Waugespack replaced Vest for the ninth. A single and a sacrifice bunt put a runner on second with one out, and after a groundout a walk put two runners on. But a harmless groundout to shortstop ended the threat and sent the game into the bottom of the ninth.

Josh Hader, who’s back from the Injured List and in top form, got the Tigers 1-2-3 in the ninth, as he has done throughout his career against so many teams. The series finale is at 1:40 pm EDT on Sunday.

• I don’t put a huge amount of stock in pitcher wins and losses anymore, but Jack Flaherty leads the American League in losses with eight.

• Carpenter’s at-bat against a left-handed pitcher in the fourth inning was his sixteenth against a lefty all season. At that point he’d had 172 against right-handed pitchers.

• On this day in 1895, an electric locomotive was used for a passenger train, the first such occurrence in the United States. (It was between Washington and New York on the B&O Railroad, which should sound familiar if you’ve played Monopoly.) Go to any European country and ride their trains, and then come back to North America and wonder why we can’t have nice things like that.

I don’t put a huge amount of stock in pitcher wins and losses anymore, but Jack Flaherty leads the American League in losses with eight.

Carpenter’s at-bat against a left-handed pitcher in the fourth inning was his sixteenth against a lefty all season. At that point he’d had 172 against right-handed pitchers.

On this day in 1895, an electric locomotive was used for a passenger train, the first such occurrence in the United States. (It was between Washington and New York on the B&O Railroad, which should sound familiar if you’ve played Monopoly.) Go to any European country and ride their trains, and then come back to North America and wonder why we can’t have nice things like that.