If you want to know how I was feeling about this game before the Astros tied it up and Christian Walker’s walk-off blast, here was my working title for tonight’s recap: “Keep Bryan Abreu Away From The Mariners, Astros Lose 7-5 In Extra Innings.”
Thankfully, you don’t have to read my opinions about Abreu and his woes against the Mariners dating back to 2025. I’ll save that for another day. But allowing nine earned runs across five games to arguably your main division rival is never a good look. I guess Joe Espada is serious about keeping Josh Hader strictly to three-out scenarios unless it is truly a win-or-go-home situation.
In any case, the Astros walked off the Mariners Friday night to open a pivotal nine-game homestand. This lineup scored five runs against George Kirby. That’s crazy to me. Houston has done that only once since, on May 22, 2025, in a start by Kirby where he gave up more than two earned runs. That was a five-run outburst, too. And Yordan Alvarez is the first Astro ever to go yard off of Kirby.
Seattle scored two runs in the first inning to take a quick 2-0 lead, thanks in part to a questionable check swing from Randy Arozarena that helped set the stage for the Mariners. Alvarez’s solo shot would put the Astros on the board in the bottom half of the first, with a four-run output, all with two outs, occurring in the second to give Houston a 5-2 lead (Cam Smith’s RBI triple, Jeremy Peña’s RBI single, and Isaac Paredes’ two-run single).
The Astros wouldn’t score again until the bottom half of the tenth inning, although the Mariners gradually chipped away at the lead. While Peter Lambert again didn’t have his best, he provided five innings of two-run ball. He avoided additional damage when it mattered. Victor Robles would tag Bennett Sousa for a run in the sixth to shorten the lead to 5-3. Steven Okert would follow up and throw a scoreless seventh. Alas, Bryan Abreu had the eighth, and you can see where this is going.
The Astros entered the top half of the eighth with an 80.1% win expectancy. It would peak for the inning at 84.3% once Brandan Donovan grounded out for the second out; although his groundout would cut the lead even further, it was now 5-4. But it would quickly bottom out with Brock Rodden, in his Major League debut, hitting a two-out ground rule double to tie the game (5-5). That win expectancy would bottom out at 48.7% before Cole Young popped out for the third out to mercifully end the top half of the inning.
With the lineup failing to score in the eighth, Hader was brought in to preserve the tie in the ninth, and he did it. Albeit with some heartburn, getting Brendan Donovan with two runners on base and two outs. Unfortunately, the Astros couldn’t score in the bottom of the ninth, and Enyel De Los Santos promptly allowed two runs to cough up the lead.
Trailing 7-5 entering the bottom half of the tenth, it didn’t look good for the Astros. The team’s win expectancy was only 11.7% when Alvarez strolled to the plate to lead it off. His ground out would move Peña, who was immediately driven in by Paredes’ RBI single. Taylor Trammell would strike out for the second out, putting the pressure on Jose Altuve to keep the game alive. And credit to him and Daulton Varsho for both hitting below-the-zone sliders from Andrés Muñoz for base hits, with the latter driving in Nick Allen to tie the game. We all know what happened next.
The Astros are now 63-60, and this loss pushes the Mariners six games back in the division standings. The Rangers are currently losing 8-3 to the A’s, so Houston might find itself with a three-game lead over their closest competition for the AL West shortly. While the AL West doesn’t exactly house the best teams in the sport, someone has to win the division. A strong homestand would set the Astros up nicely in that pursuit.
Feature photo from Astros on X
What are the other candidates for win of the year? This one, the Yordan walk off home run win against Tampa on July 4, the combined no hitter vs Texas… what other ones make the list?
Those are main contenders to me. Can’t really think of any others beyond those.
I just searched for “win of the year” on the discord to see what other games elicited that language.
– 6/3 – astros score 6 in the bottom of the 8th to win 11-9. It was a skenes start too (before he fell off a cliff)
– 5/5 – lambert outduels Ohtani in 2-1 win vs LAD
In hindsight, Lambert out dueling Ohtani might be, in the words of Gandalf, the “turn of the tide” of the Astros season.
There was still a lot of losing after that Dodger series. I still think it was the cubs sweep that was followed by the Imai combined no hitter
That’s true. They were 2-5 through the Cincinnati and Seattle series immediately afterwards. But followed up with a 7-3 road trip through Minnesota, Chicago, and Texas.
I would say Lambert outdueling Ohtani was the turn of the tide for the pitching staff, at least to start the gradual climb up from worst ERA in history contender.
The Cubs sweep and no-no was the turning point for climbing back out of the below .500 pit.
April was so bad the team did need multiple turns of multiple tides to make it above .500 😂
Updated Fangraphs playoff odds after astros win and rangers loss
Division odds jumped almost 10% to 63.3%.
Now 72.5% to make postseason and 35% to get a bye.
Well, I am going to crash the party. For 7 innings, from 3rd. to 9th., the Astros were in a catatonic state. Lousy defense, base running and, particularly, ugly at bats with the mandatory first pitch pop outs. Who is supposed wake up the team, to snap them out of their stupor? Anybody? Our comatose manager, maybe?
While the Mariners were chipping away our well deserved advantage, the Astros were drifting aimlessly through 7 innings.
This situation is becoming a trademark of the Espada’s Astros. Boring, uninspired, and lifeless.
Well, we won. Cheers!
On the other side of the coin, the Astros have shown an ability to scrape and claw for wins. That was the 27th comeback win for the Astros this season. There is plenty to complain about with the Astros’ play, and much of it is due to a lack of talent compared to previous teams. But I think their ability to hang in there to the last out and scratch and claw wins is commendable.
I disagree. I think there is plenty of talent in this team, and when they focus and stick to a strategy, they are a winning team. Just by watching again yesterday game one can see the quality of AB in the first 3 innings. Then, same game, same pitcher, the batters lost all discipline. No strategy, a free for all swinging at the first pitch, and Kirby started cruising. At that point, I would expect Espada to intervene. Nope. The team woke up in the 10th. Maybe Altuve and Varsho BABIP, but those were good at bats, they didn’t hack, they reached to the slider down and away and lifted the ball. Lucky? Maybe. Skill? I don’t know. Patience? Absolutely. Against a very tough Munoz.
On one hand I agree wholeheartedly. The team’s play has been a sloppy slogfest since the day of the trade deadline, and signs of undisciplined ABs were already creeping in during the Rangers series, despite our sweep of TX.
On the other hand, I can’t ignore what Clack brought up: this team has an incredible well of comeback ability, which stands in sharp contrast to the 2025 and 2024 squads. Without dramatic comeback victories, we are probably 15-20 fewer wins on the season, and are a bottom of the barrel team.
How does one square the circle of being a team that is suddenly playing more sloppy and undisciplined ball, with also being a tenacious comeback/walkoff team? I don’t know. But that is what the Astros are right now, and prior to this odd stretch, they were the same kind of comeback team when it was their pitching that gave them almost no chance to win each day.
If the “mentality” of this team were similar to the 2024 and 2025 teams our record would probably resemble the Angels’.
I mean, we obvisouly sent Abreu out there, letting him implode, just so we could dump 5 runs in the bottom of the 10th.
PLayer(s) of the game: Bryan Abreu & De Los Santos – Both for setting up what was was a good chance to win, then flushing that shit, to setting us up for a chance at a huge Christian Walker walkoff. Love that for him by the way.
Paredes AB was so key in the 10th. Altuve and Varsho pure BABIP luck. We need .800 OPS Walker for the last 40 games.
That’s why BABIP is funny. Varsho previously had a 99 mph EV line drive caught for an out. But a bouncing groundball found a hole in the 10th inning. Actually, now that I look it, Varsho’s groundball was hit hard (95 EV). Although people get upset that Varsho hasn’t produced more hits,he has hit the ball hard with bad BABIP luck since joining the Astros.
Yes. I haven’t joined into the bagging on Varsho because his ABs have actually been good more than bad (at a bare minimum, he “should” be getting better results than he so far has).
If he keeps it up, he will provide at least some offensive value for us, when BABIP starts tilting his way more.
Paredes AB was great. I wonder if his hit off the 101 fastball caused Munoz to move away from his fastball the rest of the inning. Even though he generally uses his slider more than his fastball, he especially did so last night.
Varsho hit it hard but definitely a lot of seeing eye single luck in there.
Altuve was kind of luck (actually the xBA on that was really high) except also kind of intentional just because he’s been poking those low and away pitches out to RF his whole career.
Oh, yeah. Not disagreeing that Varsho’s and Altuve’s 10th inning hits were well placed and lucky. I was just making the point that Varsho’s BABIP luck with Houston was due for some reversal.
Altuve’s hit was luck but it was luck of the type he’s been making for himself his whole career. Golfing a trash pitch into a bloop hit. Gave me a flashback to ten years ago.
The pre-win headline you mention: “Keep Bryan Abreu Away From The Mariners, Astros Lose 7-5 In Extra Innings.” is humorous. Early the game thread (before we knew he would pitch), I mentioned that Abreu has some of the most damaging blown saves vs. the Mariners that I can recall. It’s almost like using Abreu vs. the Mariners brings on fans’ PTSD. At least this time the Astros came back from his blown save. Maybe it will start a strring of better luck when Abreu faces Seattle.
That 3-2 pitch to Julio in the dirt was just brutal.
I wasn’t there for Abreu’s inning (still driving home from work) but I do think this is a “thing” with pitchers. Lambert in San Diego was a good example. It was by far the least confident of his outings this season, and that was quite notable for a guy who has exuded a calm demeanor ever since he was called up.
Turns out, Lambert has some ugly history with the Padres, and him being so oddly nervous in their park makes a lot of sense if we consider “baseball PTSD” as an explanation.
I’m still upset that Abreu used poor judgement on handling a swinging bunt with 2 outs. If he makes the play, the Astros go to the 9th inning with the lead The bunt landed about half way down the line to first base. The runner was motoring fast. Abreu got to the ball at the same time as the runner.. Maybe he didn’t realize how fast the runner was moving, but he decided to underhand toss the ball to Walker. The throw took forever to get to Walker and the runner beat the throw. An underhand throw of that distance will start to lose velocity for the last 10 feet or so.. If Abreu had just made a normal firm overhead throw to 1st, the runner would have been out.
Yep, Abreu has some of the worst numbers in his career vs Seattle (and yes, starting particularly in 2023, he has had some CRUSHING blown saves/holds vs them).