Astros get ‘beat up pretty good’ as losing streak hits 5, division deficit grows

HOUSTON — Patience is not part of Jose Altuve’s approach. He entered Monday’s game slashing .371/.374/.581 on the first pitch of a plate appearance across his 13-year career. Of his 1,957 hits in an Astros uniform, 479 have arrived against the first pitch. Eight All-Star appearances, six Silver Sluggers, three batting titles and one Most Valuable Player award all suggest he’s doing something right.

Advertisement

Altuve’s aggressiveness can ignite a team trailing off course. At his best, Altuve is a one-man masking agent for everything that ails the Astros, be it injury, ineffectiveness or a near implosion. Injury and ineffectiveness have already taken permanent residence inside Houston’s clubhouse.

Stopping a free fall falls to the superstars still available to play. Yordan Alvarez isn’t coming back anytime soon, perhaps not until after the All-Star break. Whether the Astros are still in striking distance of an American League West title when he does is in serious peril.

Houston is a season-high 6 1/2 games out of first place after a lifeless 11-1 loss against the New York Mets on Monday night at Minute Maid Park. The team is 3-7 since Alvarez injured his oblique June 8. The offense has scored three or fewer runs in five of those games.

“We got beat up pretty good,” manager Dusty Baker said.

The Astros’ five-game losing streak is their longest since April 9-16, 2021. They have lost 10 of their past 14 games. After Monday’s meltdown, their playoff odds dipped below 50 percent, according to FanGraphs. They have just a 19.6 percent chance to win the division. Baker is fond of saying he watches the scoreboard and standings starting on opening day. Players haven’t followed suit.

“Absolutely not,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “We don’t need to look at anywhere else but right here, focus on the next game at hand. We don’t need to look at anything besides what we’re doing. And play better. If we play better, we’ll be where we need to be at the end of the year.”

Altuve struck two first-pitch outs during at-bats with runners aboard. He struck out on three pitches to start the game, too, a precursor for the pounding Max Scherzer put on the Astros’ hapless lineup.

Scherzer limited the Astros to three singles and a Yainer Diaz solo home run across eight excellent innings. He needed 49 pitches to procure his first 15 outs, seizing advantage of the Astros’ season-long aggressiveness.

Advertisement

Houston entered the game swinging at the first pitch of a plate appearance 33.7 percent of the time. Only the Los Angeles Angels did it more. Only the Rockies, Cardinals, White Sox and Nationals saw fewer pitches per plate appearance than the Astros’ 3.85.

Houston saw 3.79 pitches per plate appearance last season, so this isn’t something new. That lineup slugged .424 with an 8.7 percent walk rate. This one, now sans Alvarez, is slugging .398 and boasted an 8.3 percent walk rate before Monday’s game. It worked two total walks against Scherzer and reliever Grant Hartwig.

Altuve, Bregman, Kyle Tucker and José Abreu, the top four hitters in Houston’s order, finished 1-for-13 against Scherzer. Without any meaningful contribution from that foursome, success for this lineup is difficult to envision, especially without Alvarez.

“We need guys up and down the lineup because they only come up in the order three or four times during the ballgame,” Baker said. “We just have to go back to the drawing board and hopefully come up with some answers here pretty soon.”

The Astros lost 11-1. They are 39-34.

The Astros have lost five straight games and 10 of their past 14. They are six games out of first in the American League West. They face Justin Verlander tomorrow at Minute Maid Park, where they are now 20-19 this season.

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) June 20, 2023

It’s worth asking what solutions even exist. Baker has, on multiple occasions this season, called his bench one of the most inexperienced of his managerial career. On Monday, it contained three rookies and Mauricio Dubón, who is mired in a 4-for-24 funk. No one in Houston’s infertile farm system is screaming to be called up, either.

Baker’s batting order construction can be befuddling, but moving underperforming pieces up and down does not change their underperformance. Abreu batted cleanup Monday. His 0-for-3 showing shaved his OPS to .588. Only one qualified hitter — Detroit’s Nick Maton — has a lower one. It could behoove Baker to bat Abreu lower in the batting order, but going away from him completely doesn’t seem to be an option.

Advertisement

Abreu is 19-for-49 with six career home runs against Justin Verlander, who will start Tuesday’s game for the Mets. If Abreu’s awful Astros tenure has demonstrated anything, it is the value Baker, general manager Dana Brown and influential baseball operations adviser Jeff Bagwell place on “the back of his baseball card.” Prepare accordingly, then, when Tuesday’s lineup is revealed.

Abreu does not deserve all of the blame. He is a symptom of an overarching problem. A team that is reliant on its superstars lost one and has so many others still searching for their true selves. Bregman has a .725 OPS. Thirty-five of Tucker’s last 51 hits are singles. He has four home runs since April 22.

Altuve entered Monday with 92 plate appearances all season. A fractured thumb sidelined him the first month and a half — a foreboding start to a season that hasn’t gone to plan. Getting him hot could change the entire complexion of the lineup. He arrived for his 96th in the eighth inning, one Scherzer started with a leadoff walk. Houston trailed by five runs but still harbored at least some faint hope.

Altuve allowed Scherzer’s first pitch to float by for a ball, a rare sign of patience for a hitter predicated on ambushing. He swatted Scherzer’s second pitch straight to Brett Baty at third base. Baty began the routine double play that ended a threat.

“I’d say our spirits are high in the clubhouse,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said. “We show up every single day. It sucks we haven’t been getting the results on the field, but the spirits are still high.”

“We know we have a great team, that’s where it starts. You have to believe it first. And we do believe we have a great team. We just have to keep showing up, keep playing baseball and hopefully turn this around.”

(Photo of Alex Bregman: Leslie Plaza Johnson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)