Houston Astros<\/a> continues. On Sunday, they clawed back in the eighth inning, authored a calamitous 10th\u00a0and suffered a sweep by the St. Louis Cardinals as a result.<\/p>\nA 7-5 loss was the Astros\u2019 fourth in a row and 12th in their past 14 games. This one required extra innings and undid a late surge by their sputtering offense. Its decisive sequence hinged on a miscue.<\/p>\n
Bryan King, working his second inning of relief, retired his first batter in the 10th. Jordan Walker then hit a routine chopper to third base, where Brice Matthews had replaced Isaac Paredes two innings earlier as a pinch-runner. Matthews mishandled the ball. King clipped Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas with a slider, loading the bases.<\/p>\n
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Masyn Winn, the Kingwood High School graduate, made it hurt, pulling a fastball from King into the left-field corner for a three-run double. It left one chance for Houston to answer. Taylor Trammell\u2019s infield single in the bottom of the 10th\u00a0brought the possible tying run to the plate and the top of the Astros\u2019 lineup around.<\/p>\n
Carlos\u00a0Correa hit a tapper back to Justin Bruihl. Dustin Harris, on third base, playing in his first game for the Astros after being claimed off waivers from the White Sox a day earlier, broke for the plate and was caught in a rundown. It left men on second and third.<\/p>\n
Bruihl battled Yordan Alvarez for eight pitches. Alvarez lined the eighth back up the middle, right where Winn, the shortstop, was playing. St. Louis summoned right-hander Gordon Graceffo, its sixth pitcher of the day, to face Jose Altuve.<\/p>\n
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Altuve bounced a single that Winn stopped in shallow center, scoring a run and bringing the winning run to the plate. Graceffo induced a ground ball from Christian Walker to end the game. The Astros emerged with a record of 8-15, swept for the third time in their past four series.<\/p>\n
The build-up<\/p>\n
St. Louis scored four runs in a six-batter stretch in the fifth, chasing Houston starter Mike Burrows, who had opened with four perfect innings. Cardinals left-hander Matthew Liberatore spun six innings of one-run ball, holding the Astros to three hits.<\/p>\n
Houston took three at-bats with a runner in scoring position against Liberatore. All came in the fifth, a chance to answer the Cardinals\u2019 rally. Yainer Diaz doubled. Two ensuing hitters could not advance him. Correa walked, positioning perhaps the hottest hitter in baseball as the potential tying run.<\/p>\n
Alvarez awoke Sunday leading the majors in slugging, OPS and home runs, a flaming core at the heart of a cooling lineup. Alvarez bounced a two-strike slider toward left field. But third baseman Nolan Gorman made a diving stop and a one-hop throw from his knees that beat Alvarez by a half-step.<\/p>\n
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An embattled Astros bullpen kept things close. Kai-Wei Teng threw two scoreless innings. Enyel De Los Santos worked one, stranding a one-out double. Their offense finally stirred in the eighth.<\/p>\n
Alvarez\u00a0\u2014 who else\u00a0\u2014 struck first. With two outs, he golfed a low changeup from left-hander JoJo Romero into the right-field seats, the 10th\u00a0homer for the slugger through 23 games. No other major-leaguer owns more. Altuve followed with a single. Walker, in a 10-pitch skirmish, drew a walk.<\/p>\n
Cardinals manager Oliver\u00a0Marmol turned to his top reliever. Closer Riley O\u2019Brien entered with a 0.00 ERA through 11 outings. He had faced 37 batters and allowed four hits. Isaac Paredes, mired in an early slump, strode to the plate hitless in his last 18 at-bats.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien\u2019s first pitch bounced, moving both runners into scoring position. Paredes whiffed at a 1-0 sinker at 98.2 mph. In a 2-1 count, O\u2019Brien tried another at 99.7 mph. Paredes punched it to right-center field, scoring both runners and forging a 4-4 tie.<\/p>\n
Matthews, pinch-running for Paredes, was picked off first base to end the inning. King preserved the tie with an escape act in the top of the ninth, stranding Jos\u00e9 Ferm\u00edn after a leadoff double. O\u2019Brien allowed nothing in the bottom half, sending the game to extras.<\/p>\n
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Fifth derails Burrows<\/p>\n
For four innings, Burrows resembled the pitcher the Astros saw all spring. His velocity was up a tick on his fastballs from his first four starts. He mixed five pitches and induced weak contact. St. Louis hitters worked some long at-bats. Burrows still retired the first 14 in order.<\/p>\n
He did not get a 15th\u00a0out. Burrows began the fifth inning at 52 pitches. Jordan Walker, sawed off by a 96 mph sinker, lined out softly. Gorman flailed at a 96 mph full-count four-seamer. Winn then bounced a slider through left side of Houston\u2019s infield for a clean single.<\/p>\n
It halted Burrows\u2019 rhythm. Nathan Church worked a five-pitch walk. Pedro Pag\u00e9s sent a tapper up the third-base line for an infield hit, a bit of poor batted-ball luck that proved costly. Burrows fell behind 3-0 to ninth hitter Victor Scott II, clawed back to 3-2, but yanked a fastball well inside.<\/p>\n
Ball four forced in the Cardinals\u2019 first run. JJ Wetherholt drove in two more by lining a slider for a single. It was the 35th pitch of the inning and 87th\u00a0overall for Burrows. Manager Joe Espada emerged to lift him. Herrera\u2019s single off reliever Steven Okert scored one of the runners Burrows bequeathed.<\/p>\n
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Burrows failed to complete five innings for the first time this season, a result that belied the tenor of most of his outing. The Cardinals averaged an 83.7 mph exit velocity on 10 balls put into play against him. Burrows struck out seven batters, a season high. He still owns a 6.75 ERA after five starts.<\/p>\n
Just making sure<\/p>\n
St. Louis is the only team in the majors undefeated when scoring first. After trailing early in each of this series\u2019 first two games, the Astros took a lead against Liberatore in the third inning.<\/p>\n
Trammell sent a one-out drive into the right-field corner. But his back-swing struck catcher Pag\u00e9s on the right side of the head, and Trammell stayed in the box to check on Pag\u00e9s. He did not break until realizing his fly ball was likely to land fair. It ricocheted off the wall, past the right fielder Walker and back toward the infield. Trammell, despite the late break, sprinted for a triple.<\/p>\n
Pag\u00e9s was evaluated by an athletic trainer and remained in the game. Correa sent a fly out to shallow center. Trammell tagged up, an aggressive move with Scott, the Cardinals center fielder, in the 62nd\u00a0percentile of major-leaguers in arm strength, per Baseball Savant. Scott\u2019s throw home bounced off the pitcher\u2019s mound and Trammell slid in with the game\u2019s first run.<\/p>\n
Injury notes<\/p>\n
After being scratched from Saturday\u2019s lineup due to a back spasm, infielder Nick Allen was \u201cstill not 100 percent\u201d pregame Sunday, Espada said. Allen\u2019s lower back was \u201cstill pretty stiff,\u201d Espada said, and he was undergoing treatment. It was unclear if Allen would be available off the bench.<\/p>\n
Reliever Bennett Sousa is on track to return from the IL at some point this week, general manager Dana Brown told the Astros\u2019 pregame radio show. Sousa, returning from an oblique injury, will pitch on back-to-back days as the final step of his rehab assignment before Houston activates him.<\/p>\n
Tatsuya Imai, on the IL due to arm fatigue, is playing catch and Brown said there is \u201cabsolutely nothing that should slow him down at this point because of the way he feels,\u201d but it\u2019s still uncertain when Imai will resume throwing from a mound. Imai becomes eligible to return from the 15-day IL on April 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astros starter Mike Burrows took a perfect game into the fifth inning Sunday but things came undone with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-257273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}