ANAHEIM, Calif. — After the 103rd pitch of Framber Valdez’s fabulous night, in the middle of another at-bat by baseball’s best player, Martín Maldonado rose from his crouch and set in motion a nightmare. He sensed something amiss with the Astros’ ace, signaled toward the first-base dugout and summoned head trainer Jeremiah Randall.
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Maldonado noticed Valdez with a facial expression he did not like, so Randall, manager Dusty Baker and pitching coach Josh Miller shuffled toward the mound. A brief conversation ended with no warmup pitches or pleading to stay in the game. Valdez exited alongside Randall, the one sight this injury-ravaged Astros club is not equipped to overcome.
“We can’t afford any more injuries,” Chas McCormick said he thought at the time in center field. “It’s like, ‘Holy crap, not our ace.’ It sucks. I just hope he’s OK.”
Chaos followed for the next three frames. Houston blew the six-run lead it held to begin the seventh inning, took a three-run lead into the ninth and watched its shutdown closer give it away. With the go-ahead run on third base during the 10th, shortstop Jeremy Peña suffered a cramp in his right hamstring on the first swing he took. He stayed in the game, struck out and sunk his OPS to .687.
Peña could not play defense during the 10th. A rookie with 12 innings of major-league experience replaced him and held an escape act in his hand. Turning a routine double play would have produced an 11th inning. Grae Kessinger instead sailed a throw to first base, allowing Angels rookie Trey Cabbage to cross home as the winning run and complete a collapse unlike any the Astros have absorbed across the last seven seasons.
“Shocking, you have to say,” Maldonado said after the 13-12 loss. “We lost a game with a big lead and with our best (pitchers on) staff on the mound.”
None of the season’s prior 92 games have better illustrated the tightrope Houston continues to walk. Saturday exposed everything wrong with a thin roster, inexperienced bench, taxed bullpen and beaten-up starting rotation. Depth is dwindling near nonexistence — and the trade deadline is still 2 1/2 weeks away.
Rookie general manager Dana Brown watched the whole wretched night unfold from a booth behind the plate. He should already feel an urgency to upgrade this uneven club. Perhaps Saturday furthered it. Texas now owns a three-game lead over the Astros in the American League West.
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No one in Houston’s clubhouse expressed long-term concern about Valdez’s injury, which Baker said he “hopes” is a cramp. Peña said he “should be” ready to play in Sunday’s series finale. Valdez, who missed a start after spraining his right ankle last month, did not commit to making his next start. Losing him for any length of time would decimate an already depleted pitching staff.
“We need to make sure he’s fine,” Maldonado said. “That’s a guy we’re going to need big-time going forward.”
Valdez exited after 6 2/3 excellent innings. He matched a career high with 13 strikeouts while falling one swing-and-miss short of equaling that personal best. Valdez settled for 23 whiffs on the 54 swings Los Angeles took.
After Luis Rengifo tagged him for a three-run home run in the third, Valdez did not allow an Angel to third base until the seventh, a frame he entered at 89 pitches. Houston scored five runs in the top half, widening its lead to six while forcing Valdez into a long wait before re-toeing the rubber.
Debate will rage about whether Baker could have exercised caution and removed Valdez after the offensive outburst. Houston had a 9-3 lead and nine outs to secure. That the team forced Valdez to skip World Baseball Classic and the All-Star Game epitomizes the extreme measures it is taking to ensure he stays healthy. Losing Lance McCullers Jr, Luis Garcia and José Urquidy to injuries only heightens their vigilance.
Baker needed five relievers to finish Friday’s 7-5 win, the consequence of a 4 1/3-inning outing from rookie starter J.P. France. The four leverage relievers in his bullpen are already overtaxed after absorbing an unsustainable workload in the first half. Bryan Abreu, Phil Maton, Hector Neris and Ryan Pressly all have at least 40 appearances this season. Each of those leverage relievers threw during Friday’s win. Sunday’s starter, Cristian Javier, hasn’t finished five innings since June 15 and has a 7.48 ERA across his past six starts.
Baker said Valdez had not complained of any discomfort between innings. Given Sunday’s uncertainty, Baker did what any other manager in his position would — send an ace back out for the seventh. Faulting Baker for what happened Saturday is silly.
.@astros fall to the Angels 13-12 in 10 innings
Framber Valdez struck out 13 but had to leave the game in the 7th. He talked about the injury after the game pic.twitter.com/3GEbI781Dq
— AT&T SportsNet™ | SW (@ATTSportsNetSW) July 16, 2023
Valdez started the frame by walking Matt Thaiss. Leadoff hitter Zach Neto struck a two-run home run, sending Shohei Ohtani to bat in a four-run game.
Ohtani has faced Valdez more than any other pitcher in his major-league career. The two-way superstar awoke Saturday 4-for-31 against Houston’s ace. Valdez struck him out two more times during the game and got to an 0-1 count during the seventh. Valdez fired a changeup. It sailed outside.
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“I felt a little pull there when I threw that pitch to Ohtani, my left leg,” Valdez said through an interpreter. “I don’t know if it was just exhaustion or dehydration or what, but I pulled something there.”
Valdez did not lobby to stay in the game. Asked if he could have continued pitching, Valdez replied, “No. In those situations, I don’t like to risk it or force it. We have great relief pitching and a lot of guys back there that can get the job done as well. I felt it was better to lose this inning than lose 100 innings.”
Ryne Stanek entered in relief. He walked a batter, yielded two hits and surrendered three earned runs. Two of them scored on Mike Moustakas’ game-tying, three-run home run off of Abreu, who made his major-league-leading 45th appearance Saturday. Abreu has never made more than 55 in any season.
Yet, Stanek’s inability to throw strikes or seize control of a four-run game forced Baker to again call upon his leverage relievers. For as dominant as all have been, a four-man bullpen isn’t sustainable for a team that fancies itself a World Series contender. Using them at the rate Baker and Miller are is a recipe for disaster — a fact Brown must understand after Saturday.
Neris tossed a clean eighth before Pressly arrived for the ninth. Houston had Rafael Montero warming alongside him but opted for Pressly in a three-run game. It was a save situation, sure, but Montero has a 1.59 WHIP and 6.57 ERA — again underscoring an utter lack of any trusted depth in a depleted bullpen.
Pressly had not allowed a hit to the previous 42 batters he’d faced. Ohtani obliterated a pitch for a leadoff home run to dead center field to spoil that streak. Four of the next five hitters reached. Two of them scored, including one on a passed ball Maldonado said he “should have caught.” Pressly threw a season-high 32 pitches.
“We didn’t play poorly,” Baker said, “they just outhit us.”
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Houston actually outhit the Angels 16-15. None of them came in the 10th. Peña could not get the go-ahead run in from third base after suffering his cramp. Alex Bregman flied out on the infield to leave him there, paring his season OPS to .718.
Bregman and Peña finished the game 2-for-12, putting Maton in a perilous position. Getting out of it required one groundball. Taylor Ward hit it to Mauricio Dubón, the fill-in second baseman who flipped to a fill-in shortstop playing his ninth major-league game, another glaring problem on a roster rife with them.
“I was ready, loose. Just didn’t make the throw,” said Kessinger, who received encouragement in the postgame clubhouse from Dubón, bench coach Joe Espada and first-base coach Omar López.
“Just it happens and tomorrow is a new day. We have to go back to work, that’s all we can do.”
(Photo of Framber Valdez: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
