NEW YORK — With question marks in their starting rotation, the Houston Astros could deploy openers on occasion over the season’s final month, manager Joe Espada said Sunday.
The Astros have three starters regularly providing length right now in Hunter Brown, Peter Lambert and Hayden Wesneski. Ethan Pecko made his third major-league start Sunday, with neither of the first two exceeding 4 ⅓ innings. Houston opted to use left-hander Bennett Sousa as an opener Saturday rather than start Javier, who has a 6.45 ERA and has allowed a 1.104 OPS his second time through lineups.
After the 13-game stretch, which ends Sept. 6, Houston will not play more than six straight days the rest of the season. But finding a way to extract more length from its starters — who were tied for the second-fewest innings in the majors in August entering Sunday — is a priority for a team that carried a two-game division lead into its series finale at Citi Field.
Espada said Sunday the Astros could consider using openers ahead of “certain guys” down the stretch. Javier would seem a likely candidate due to his struggles later in outings. Projecting the club’s rotation plans is difficult given the unit’s inconstancy, but an occasional opener-bulk reliever combination could expand its options to cover innings, albeit at the risk of taxing a bullpen already seeing a big workload.
“If I can get some early innings from some of our relievers to get that bulk guy through six innings, five innings, and then see (where) we are in the game, then I could deploy either a high leverage or middle leverage guy,” Espada said.
“We’re just trying to do different things, just trying to get through this long stretch of games and trying to give our team, our offense, an opportunity to win games. So yes, that will be something that we’ll be doing more of.”
The strategy saw mixed results Saturday. Sousa retired two of five batters faced as the opener, allowing one run and pressing Javier into the game in the first inning. Javier allowed no further damage until the fifth, when the Mets scored three runs against him. Houston used two more relievers, Enyel De Los Santos and Kai-Wei-Teng, to cover the final three innings of a 6-2 loss.