Pecko totaled 22 starts at Triple-A<\/a> before drawing his first major-league assignment. The Astros took support measures in their capacity. Pecko worked out at Daikin Park the day before to begin to get his bearings. The Astros paired him for his start with catcher Christian V\u00e1zquez, a veteran receiver, which Espada deemed \u201cimportant\u201d while throwing Pecko into a playoff race.<\/p>\nAny level of preparation only goes so far on the precipice of realizing a dream. Pecko said he felt \u201cpretty nervous\u201d Wednesday morning, better when he arrived at Daikin Park then elevated again as he warmed up before his outing. That finally gave way to the feeling of taking the mound.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty incredible,\u201d Pecko said. \u201cWords can\u2019t really describe it, you\u2019ve just got to feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his debut, Pecko worked 3\u2154 innings, facing the Angels\u2019 lineup twice. He grappled with command, especially of his four-seam fastball, and needed 89 pitches to navigate the outing. Still, he limited the damage against him to two runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little sloppy, but I felt like I battled,\u201d Pecko said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have any expectations, I just wanted to throw well, throw strikes. Command wasn\u2019t there. It\u2019s been a little bit since I threw. But overall, I\u2019m happy with it and I think there\u2019s a lot I can work on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Pecko had last pitched Aug. 9 at Triple-A, working Wednesday on nine days\u2019 rest. He located 31% of his pitches in-zone, per Statcast, but the Angels chased at a 36% clip and whiffed on 11 of 39 swings taken against him. Pecko allowed three hits, walked three batters and struck out four.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he handled it very well,\u201d Espada said. \u201cHe\u2019s got some swing-and-miss stuff. Fastball\u2019s good, the sinker, threw some good sweepers. It\u2019s really good stuff. Missed some arm-side with his fastball. He gets the stuff in the zone, he could be pretty dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
An average of 3.3 walks per nine innings in the minors indicated Pecko was not his sharpest. He touched 95.9 mph with his four-seam fastball but threw just seven of 28 for strikes. Pecko attributed that to \u201cjust a mechanical thing.\u201d V\u00e1zquez called nearly as many sinkers, which induced six whiffs on 15 swings.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked calm,\u201d V\u00e1zquez said. \u201cVery competitive pitches. Only the fastball was missing up. The curveball was very good, the sinker to righties. It was a lot of takes on sinkers, so it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Angels scored their two runs in the fourth inning. Vaughn Grissom walked, Josh Lowe flared a single and Denzer Guzman drove a full-count sweeper to left field, where a fan in the Crawford Boxes reached over and caught the ball. Umpires ruled a double on fan interference and that both runners, who were moving on the pitch, scored.<\/p>\n
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Pecko faced one more hitter, striking out Oswald Peraza, before being removed. Five relievers combined to author 5 1\/3 scoreless innings from there, helping the Astros snap a three-game losing streak despite another quiet offensive performance.<\/p>\n
That type of bullpen workload Houston would rather avoid, making more length a logical goal for Pecko\u2019s next outing, whenever it occurs. The Astros, who began a stretch of 19 games in 20 days Tuesday, are piecing together their rotation even with 35 games left in their season, making plans difficult to project. Pecko, still, has officially become a factor in them.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou only get one (debut), and now that I\u2019ve done it, it\u2019s just baseball again,\u201d Pecko said. \u201cSo just build off it, work throughout the week and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Astros starting pitcher Ethan Pecko walks toward the dugout before a baseball game against the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-411688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411688","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=411688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}