only to see the ball carom off a beam<\/a> on the Daikin Park ceiling. Correa mentioned that swing, as well as the platoon sense of passing a matchup with Alvarez.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think about most feared hitters in the league, you\u2019ve got (Shohei) Ohtani, (Aaron) Judge and Yordan, right, so whoever is hitting behind him is going to see that situation happen a lot,\u201d Correa said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me. Especially with a righty throwing sinkers at 100 mph, the matchup favors against a right-handed hitter (rather) than a left-handed hitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
To what extent a platoon edge \u2014 as opposed to just the threat of Alvarez \u2014 influenced Suzuki\u2019s decision was unclear. In his 31 starts last season, Soriano actually held left-handed hitters to a lower OPS (.666) than right-handed hitters (.715). Later in the Astros\u2019 3-0 season-opening loss, Suzuki brought a righty in from his bullpen to face Alvarez with two runners on base.<\/p>\n
Yet the third-inning move, as Correa noted, did allow Soriano to bypass one of two left-handed hitters in Houston\u2019s lineup. The other, Joey Loperfido, sat three spots away. Soriano issued a walk to Isaac Paredes that loaded the bases. But a 98.7 mph sinker boring inside on Correa coaxed a harmless liner to left field that ended the Astros\u2019 only real threat against him.<\/p>\n
The Astros did not put another runner on third base in their opening day loss. Soriano spun six scoreless innings, despite his four walks, allowing just two hits. That both were singles by Loperfido, and that Alvarez\u2019s non-home run was one of the best swings an Astro delivered against Soriano, perhaps backed Correa\u2019s point about the platoon matchups.<\/p>\n
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Houston could not have created more Thursday. Its roster has two left-handed hitters in Alvarez and Loperfido, who logged his 123rd major-league game in the opener, making for limited lineup balance. The Angels deployed four right-handers among the five pitchers they used Thursday, holding an Astros lineup missing only shortstop Jeremy Pe\u00f1a to three hits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came in a with a pretty good game plan on how they\u2019re going to pitch to us; we\u2019ve just got to make adjustments,\u201d manager Joe Espada said. \u201cI think it had nothing to do with how many righties we had. I just thought they came in and they were going to force us to stay inside the ball, use the middle of the field, and we\u2019re just going to have to make that adjustment as we move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Platoon matchups aren\u2019t everything. Last year, Houston\u2019s right-handed hitters ranked fifth in the majors in batting average and 10th in weighted runs created-plus against right-handed pitching, per FanGraphs. No team in the sport, still, took a lower percentage of its plate appearances with the platoon advantage than the Astros in 2025, per Baseball Reference.<\/p>\n
Though general manager Dana Brown voiced a desire all offseason to add a left-handed hitter, no such move materialized. Houston dealt left-handed hitting outfielder Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez to Toronto, re-acquiring Loperfido in that trade. It offered outfield prospect Zach Cole a chance to claim a roster spot in camp but the Astros sent Cole to Triple-A to start the season, citing his need to make more contact.<\/p>\n
Thursday perhaps reflected right-handed or left-handed hitter less than the arm Houston faced. Soriano, who faced Houston twice last season and allowed one run in 13\u2154 total innings, averaged 98 mph on his sinker Thursday and touched 101.3 mph with a four-seam fastball that he threw to both left- and right-handed hitters. His curveball induced eight whiffs on 11 swings and his sinker got another eight whiffs on 19 swings.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think especially with Soriano, we were swinging too much outside the zone,\u201d Correa said. \u201cWith a pitcher like him, you\u2019ve got to really zone him in and make sure that he\u2019s giving you something to hit. Even when he was throwing those sinkers down and in for strikes, 99 mph sinkers are tough to get to. But we could have done a better job of getting pitches to hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Astros officials preached a more selective approach all offseason. The team overhauled its hitting coach structure and harped on re-establishing an offensive \u201cidentity\u201d after posting the sport\u2019s second-highest chase rate and third-highest swing rate in 2025. Astros hitters, then, swung at 46 of 91 pitches Soriano threw and chased 44% of those he threw outside the zone, per Statcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the type of stuff that he has, he should never have a year like last year where (his ERA) was in the 4s,\u201d Correa said of Soriano, who posted a 4.26 ERA in 2025. \u201cSo, I think they\u2019re trying to take him to that next level, and he looked pretty good today.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Soriano\u2019s exit, Alvarez came up in another a critical spot. Walbert Urena allowed a leadoff double to Christian Walker in the seventh inning, the Astros\u2019 lone extra-base hit on the day, and walked Jose Altuve with two outs. With a one-run lead, Suzuki summoned right-hander Chase Silseth to oppose Alvarez, even with three left-handers in his bullpen.<\/p>\n
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Silseth entered allowing a career .875 OPS to left-handed hitters. Alvarez was 0-for-4 with a walk against him, though. Silseth threw one pitch, a splitter. Alvarez rolled it to the right side for a groundout, stranding two of Houston\u2019s nine runners left on base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Astros Yordan Alvarez (44) is walked during the third inning of a MLB baseball game on Opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-239033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}