HOUSTON – For all the good work the Astros did on the shooting hill Sunday afternoon at Minute Maid Park – they hit 20 hits, setting a record for the franchise in a nine-game game – that wouldn’t mean much if they weren’t Able to polish sweep angels.
It was not Jeremy Peñahis mind when he hit the plate at the bottom of the ninth inning with the game tied, but the party kicked off by hitting Homer with two departures from Ryan Tibera to send the Astros a 4-2 win It enabled Houston to celebrate one of its most enjoyable victories of the season.
Pena, who is contending for the American League Rookie of the Year Award after taking the top spot from Carlos Correa, earned a career best 4-5 and scored the first long-distance multiplayer match of his career. He also hit the right field in the fourth inning.
“It’s unrealistic to end it on a walking tour,” said Peña, who beat Homer in front of the Blue Jays on April 24. You’ve got a win and we’re going home. It was great.”
The Astros (51-27) won their sixth straight game and opened a 13 1/2 – Bulletproof Game On top of the west after the angels’ invasion. Houston allowed six runs during this winning streak, all but one of which came via the Homers solo.
“It was a good win,” said Dusty Becker, Astros manager. “Everyone went home happy. Peña had a great day. He got four injuries and broke up, then [Jose] Altuve had a great day. And so we had some other players having big days.”
Altuve, who scored 3-5 in his 1500th match, started the ninth round of the race with a two-single single. Pena, in second, knew Tebera didn’t want to face Basketball player Jordan Alvarez, who was on the deck, so he thought he’d get on the pitch – and he did, smashing the first-court slider and sending him over Mike’s trout head into the center field. A predicted Homer is 429 feet long.
“Get a good ground to shoot it and pass it to the next player,” Peña said.
The Astros didn’t get any hits until 4th, sending the Houston Angels into the game’s biggest deficit since June 18 with Homer’s solo in second by Luis Rengivo and RBI song in third by Shohei Ohtani off the start Framber Valdez to lead 2-0.
Valdez made his good start number 13 in a row and hit a career high of 13 hits (for five walks), notching 12 consecutive knockouts by knockout from the final from the first to second innings of the fifth, giving up some hits and walking between smells. That broke the previous franchise record nine times in a row by striking, which was done four times by three bowlers: Gerrit Cole twice, Randy Johnson and Don Wilson.
“I felt a little uncomfortable with all the walking I gave up today, but when I focused, I said I was going to hit more hitters and attack the area,” Valdez said. “I was excited about all the hits, but definitely felt a little uncomfortable with all of my walks.”
Behind Valdes, the Astros became the first team in major league history to hit 48 strokes in a three-game series without the benefit of extra rounds, according to STATS. This included nine hits from Trout, who went to 0 for 11 in the series.
“That line up there, they don’t chase that much,” Masker Martin Maldonado He said. “They’re always going to be in the strike zone. Framber, he wasn’t attacking the hit zone like he used to, so that’s why after the second half we kind of talked about it and said, ‘You have to hit those guys and let them out with that diver and the curve ball. That’s what We pretty much did it.”
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