HOUSTON — It was a lonely walk back to the Astros dugout for Framber Valdez. The Houston starter failed to go three innings in his two World Series starts a year ago. He allowed a combined 10 runs in those outings. Four homers. Valdez forced his manager to pull the plug long before he’d planned.
His trip back to his dugout Saturday night was a lot different. As Dusty Baker emerged with one out in the seventh inning, the crowd rose to its feet. Valdez had a small grin. He fist-bumped Alex Bregman and Jeremy Peña, then got a slap on the rear end from Jose Altuve. He walked off with his eyes closed, hat off, head tilted up toward the Minute Maid Park ceiling, taking it all in.
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This World Series start was a gem. He allowed one run over 6 1/3 innings with nine strikeouts and three walks as the Astros beat the Phillies 5-2 to even the series at a game apiece.
“Framber is focused on his ability to overcome stuff,” Astros catcher Martín Maldonado said. “Before — he’s an emotional guy. If he thought it was a strike and the umpire missed something, he got emotional. If somebody made an error, he got emotional. If somebody got a hit through the shift, he got emotional.
“That’s the biggest difference between last year and this year. That stuff doesn’t bother him.”
Valdez’s curveball was his pitch Saturday. He threw it 42 times. Only 36 percent of those pitches were in the zone, but he generated swings on 44 percent of those curveballs that weren’t strikes. The translation: Batters chased his curveball all night with almost no success. His velocity was up across almost all his pitches.
The 28-year-old has been excellent in his three postseason starts this October, posting a 1.42 ERA. The Astros won each time.
It’s a huge step for a pitcher who was quite bad on this stage a year ago. He was a pitcher who took a punch and had no ability to respond.
“Last year my emotions got the best of me,” Valdez said. “I wasn’t able to throw even more than two innings without giving up a run. But those were things that I was able to learn, separate my emotions from my job on the field. Whenever I’m on the field, on the mound, I just keep my emotions outside off the field. Try to stay calm, collected.”
Valdez walked a batter in the first inning. Then another batter in the second inning. He allowed a hit in the third, then another in the fifth. Then there was a walk and a hit in the sixth.
Perhaps a different version of the same pitcher — an older version — might have seen at least one of those innings spiral. Or maybe Baker would have seen it coming and pulled him.
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But this version of Valdez found a way to reset. None of those aforementioned base runners came around to score. Bryce Harper hit into a 5-4-3 double play to end the sixth inning, eliciting a massive release of emotion as Valdez pointed to his infielders while walking back to the dugout.
“It’s his focus and his self-confidence,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I think he’s confident in himself, he attacks, he knows that he’s got good stuff. I think he has a lot of confidence in Martín and the pitches that he’s calling.”
The Astros needed a big start in Game 2. Sure, it’s the World Series. You need a big start every game. But Houston was coming off a gutting loss in Game 1, blowing a five-run lead to lose home-field advantage. That loss went to extra innings and the bullpen had been used.
Houston needed length and effectiveness and it got both. A night after the Phillies finally shredded the Astros’ feeling of invincibility, Valdez swooped right in to get it back with a nearly unhittable performance.
“I hadn’t seen a ball break like that in a minute,” said Phillies right fielder Nick Castellanos.
The Astros needed only Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly out of the bullpen. Their job was to protect a lead and allow Valdez to bask in a performance that felt good because it was a long time coming.
The core of this team was there last year when Valdez failed against Atlanta. His Game 1 flub put Houston in a hole at home. His Game 5 start resulted in the Braves getting a four-run lead in the first inning.
“Sometimes that needs to happen to you when you’re in the postseason,” Pressly said. “You get knocked around a little bit and you come back next year stronger. That’s what makes us better.”
Baker hypothesized before Game 2 that Valdez’s two young children might have been the inspiration for his elevation in maturity.
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“He doesn’t get nearly as upset as he used to,” Baker said. “You get a wife and two or three kids, man, that will make you do a lot of stuff. That will make you grow up.”
Then again, it might not have been the younger generation that gave him some perspective. Valdez said his father braved his fear of flying to make the trip to see his son pitch. He said that gave him “a little bit of extra strength.”
It’s probably a little of everything. And a year to think about two World Series starts that could not have gone any worse served as tangible evidence of what was wrong and just how much he still could grow.
He showed that growth all season, surely. But there’s nothing like redemption in the World Series. There was no way to show that he’d truly moved past his past failures at this point of the season if he didn’t prove it on the same stage.
“This was a really good game for the fans, a really good game for our team and also for me,” Valdez said. “I think I’ve just been playing really inspired. It just feels really good to be here in the World Series having this kind of outing.”
(Photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today)
