Detroit – The Houston Astros gave right-hander Hunter Brown a nice cushion to work with for his homecoming start Saturday night.
The Lakeview High School and Wayne State University product, who will turn 25 on Tuesday, struck out nine in five innings, beating the Tigers 9-2. He’s now 2-0 against his boyhood team.
“I made some adjustments that will hopefully allow me to execute my pitches at a higher rate,” said Brown, who was coming off a rough start (six runs in 2.2 innings against Seattle). “Just a little bit of change in the stretch and in my wind-up. I felt good about it tonight and hopefully we can keep building on it.”
He was throwing knuckle curves, hard sliders and splitters off 95-mph four-seam fastballs and extricating himself out of early trouble with the strikeouts.
“He’s high-effort with high-end stuff,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said. “As the innings built, he won some big at-bats with his energy and stuff. I can see why they like him a lot. The mistakes he made, we didn’t make him pay enough. He stuck his nose in and battled.”
Most of the heavy lifting, though, was done by the Astros hitters, who picked apart Tigers lefty ace Eduardo Rodriguez through the first five innings.
“It was a weird outing for Eduardo,” Hinch said. “His misfires were more extreme than normal and it made for a long night for him.”
The first indication that this wasn’t going to be a vintage, or even typical Rodriguez performance was the 29 pitches he needed to get through the first inning.
His usual pinpoint command was absent, as was, despite facing seven right-handed hitters, his change-up. He only threw 10 of them. Most were for balls. One was blistered, a 109-mph exit velocity lineout by Jose Abreu.
Rodriguez’s other tool against right-handed hitters is the cutter. That wasn’t working for him, either. Four cutters were put in play with an average exit velocity of 94 mph.
“The change-up wasn’t working at all tonight and they took advantage of it,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like I say all the time, if you don’t have that location, you’re going to pay.”
The only thing that was typical for Rodriguez in this one, Alex Bregman had his number. Bregman ripped an RBI double in the first inning, and he broke a 1-1 tie with a two-run homer (off a cutter) to left in the fifth. Over his career, Bregman is 8 for 25 (.320) with three homers and seven RBIs against Rodriguez.
“If you miss over the plate, it doesn’t matter who is up there,” Rodriguez said. “He’s going to make good contact. I think if you see all those at-bats, I miss location and he took advantage. His double was a fastball, middle-middle. The home run I was trying to throw the cutter on his hands and I missed over the middle of the plate.
“It was just one of those outings you have to battle through. I tried my best to keep the game where it was.”
Rodriguez ended up with four runs and a season-high four walks on his ledger in 4.2 innings. He only had one strikeout and very few swings and misses. The Astros took 38 swings and missed on just three.
Bregman was on base five times, scored four runs and knocked in four runs. He had two doubles, a homer and a pair of walks. Jose Altuve had a single, walk, double and scored three runs.
“It got worse as the game went on because we stopped controlling the strike zone,” Hinch said. “They had 10 at-bats where they didn’t have to hit their way on (six walks, two hit-batsmen, a botched double-play ball and an error). On the flip side, we had 15 at-bats where we punched (struck out).
“We’re not putting the ball in play and they are drawing walks and getting hit by pitches and getting opportunities. They’re too good of a team to keep giving them opportunities.”
The Astros scored a pair of runs off reliever Will Vest in the sixth and sent eight hitters to the plate in a ghastly three-run eighth inning against Jose Cisnero. They banged out two singles, a double (Kyle Tucker), with a walk, hit batter and a wild pitch mixed in.
The Tigers had multiple hits in just one inning against Brown. Kerry Carpenter singled with one out in the fourth, extending his career-long on-base streak to 22 games (second-longest active streak in the majors), and stole second.
With two outs, Parker Meadows lined an RBI single off Altuve’s glove at second. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 104 mph, the hardest hit ball off Brown on the night.
In the fifth, Brown walked Zach McKinstry and gave up a single to catcher Carson Kelly, his first hit as a Tiger. McKinstry tagged and dashed home on a shallow foul fly down the left-field line by Riley Greene.
Meadows and Carpenter each had two hits.
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