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Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch watched his team load the bases in front of hot-hitting Evan Gattis Rashaad Penny Color Rush Jersey , and all he wanted was the big designated hitter to send a drive to the outfield and keep the line moving.Hinch had to settle for one that cleared the fence.
Cleared the bases, too.
Gattis crushed a go-ahead grand slam in the sixth inning Friday night, Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa also went deep, and the Astros rolled past the Kansas City Royals 7-3 for their ninth straight win.
”We’re shaking hands after a lot of his at-bats,” Hinch said of Gattis, who has five homers in the first eight games of the Astros’ road trip. ”When guys are hot, there’s a ton of energy and a ton of fun.”
Charlie Morton (8-1) overcame another bout of wildness, at one point walking three straight batters, to last six innings for Houston. He allowed four hits and four walks while striking out nine.
Brad Peacock, Tony Sipp and Collin McHugh each contributed a scoreless inning in relief to wrap up the Astros’ latest win. All but one during their streak has come away from Minute Maid Park.
”I think our guys are just methodically going through their days,” Hinch said. ”This is a long road trip and it’s a lot more fun when you’re winning.”
The Royals, meanwhile, have lost four straight and 10 of 11.
Jakob Junis (5-7) served up all three Houston homers, getting tagged for six runs on seven hits and a walk. It was his fourth straight loss, his last win coming against the New York Yankees on May 18.
”We were putting some really good swings on it. We were hitting some balls hard,” Morton said with a grin. ”Really, I was just waiting for the dam to break.”
The Royals gave Junis some support early, jumping ahead 2-0 in the third on a two-out double by Mike Moustakas. It was a buoying at-bat considering the meek-hitting Kansas City lineup managed a single run in getting swept by Cincinnati during a two-game set this week.
It appeared the lead might stand, too, the way Junis breezed through the first three innings.
Bregman changed all that with his ninth homer of the season, a shot that just skirted the left-field foul pole. Correa added his 455-foot home run two batters later to tie the game.
Morton’s wildness allowed the Royals to regain the lead in the fifth, but Junis coughed it back up in the sixth. He gave up three straight one-out singles to load the bases for Gattis, whose soaring, 405-foot grand slam was the second of his career and third by the Astros this season.
It was also the second slam permitted by the Royals in their last two games.
”I was hoping we would get either a flyout or a mishit. I didn’t think I left it right over the plate,” Junis said. ”I thought it was up and away. He just put a good swing on it.”
ASTROS MOVES
Houston recalled 3B Tyler White from Triple-A Fresno and placed LHP Reymin Guduan on the paternity leave list. White was hitting .338 with 13 homers and a .444 on-base percentage, the second-highest in all of Triple-A. Guduan can miss no more than three games while on the paternity list.
ROYALS MOVES
Kansas City selected the contract of RHP Brandon Maurer from Triple-A Omaha and optioned RHP Jason Adam to the same club. Maurer was 0-2 with a 12.46 ERA for the Royals before he was sent outright to the minor league club on May 3. He’s worked 11 straight scoreless appearances at Omaha.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Astros RHP Joe Smith (elbow inflammation) rejoined the team, and Hinch said the reliever is ”pain free and the next step is to initiate a throwing program.” That could happen by the end of the weekend.
Royals OF Jorge Soler left after stumbling out of the batter’s box in the sixth. He was taken for X-rays that revealed a broken left foot. ”It will be awhile when your feet are hurt,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. ”They’re going to give it a CT scan or whatever. We’ll have a better idea. X-rays showed a positive break. We don’t think it’s a surgical thing right now. The CT scan will give us more of a look.”
UP NEXT
Struggling LHP Dallas Keuchel (3-8 Jesper Bratt Jersey Kids , 4.45 ERA) starts for the Astros and LHP Danny Duffy (3-6, 5.28) gets the nod for the Royals for a Saturday matinee with temperatures expected to approach triple digits.
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Over five seasons as ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Gerrit Cole threw one of the game’s hardest, heaviest fastballs, and he threw it often. The pitch helped him make millions of dollars. It put him in contention for major awards. Hitters swung through it again and again, and Cole seemed content not to mess with a good thing.
But when Cole was traded to the Houston Astros this offseason, a funny thing happened. He became more frugal with his fastball and ended up more overpowering than ever.
Cole has joined some of the game’s best pitchers – including Cleveland’s Corey Kluber and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw – in benefiting from a puzzling baseball paradox: In an era when pitchers are throwing harder than ever, they’re maximizing success by using fewer fastballs.
Pitchers – even ones with blazing fastballs like Luis Severino and Chris Archer – are using more offspeed than ever recorded, and while many aces think the downturn is a trend, some believe baseball could be entering a new age dominated not by 100 mph heaters, but by a steady stream of breaking balls and changeups.
So why is the hardest-throwing generation of pitchers ever going the way of the junk-baller?
Depends who you ask, but one culprit stands out to Cole, Kluber and Kershaw: baseball’s swing-changing batters.
”You can call it launch angle, or you can call it the upper cuts,” Cole said. ”There are a lot of swings that are dictating breaking balls.”
Cole’s move away from a fastball-first approach is striking given the reputation of his hardest pitch. He topped out at 99 mph as an ace at UCLA, and his fastball was the headliner on a resume that earned him an $8 million signing bonus as the first overall draft pick in 2011 by Pittsburgh. Under the guidance of Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage, Cole pounded the bottom of the strike zone with that heater, and for years, it worked. He was an All-Star and finished fourth in NL Cy Young Award voting in 2015, and was considered among the game’s most overpowering starting pitchers.
Then baseball’s flyball revolution took flight – a movement of hitters using upper-cut swings designed to crush exactly the kinds of sinking fastballs Cole was delivering. After never allowing more than 11 home runs in a season, Cole was tagged for 31 last year.
So it was time to change things up.
From 2013-17, Cole threw his fastball 65 percent of the time – well above the league average. But this year, he’s cut that fastball rate by about 10 points, replacing those heaters with sliders and curveballs. The new look is working. Cole is 8-1 with a 2.59 ERA through 15 starts and leads the American League with 138 strikeouts.
”I think you’re just continually trying to mess timing up, especially when guys are trying to slug,” Cole said. ”When they’re trying to hit it out of the park every time, you have an easier time changing speeds.”
Kluber and Kershaw have made similar adjustments in the past couple years. Both Cy Young winners rank among the league leaders in fewest fastballs thrown this season.
”Guys are geared up to swing for a fastball,” Kluber said. ”I guess it’s almost rare now to see somebody actually Ha Ha Clinton-Dix Jersey , like, go the other way with the breaking ball.”
Kluber has set a career low with a fastball rate of 41.8 percent this season. Same for Kershaw, who has dropped from a 72-percent fastball clip in 2010 all the way to 42.8 percent in an injury-hampered 2018.
”The hitters tell you what you need to do,” Kershaw said. ”And for me, I guess it’s been throwing a lot more breaking balls.”
Cole, Kluber and Kershaw suspect the tide will turn back, perhaps soon, once hitters recalibrate to the number of four-seam fastballs pitchers are throwing up in the strike zone.
But Trevor Bauer, Kluber’s analytically-minded teammate in Cleveland, thinks the offspeed uptick is only going to spread.
Two years ago, Bauer and Indians closer Cody Allen watched as 6-foot-8 Yankees fireballer Dellin Betances carved up Cleveland’s hitters with a fastball that averaged 98 mph. Allen – no slouch himself with a fastball around 94 mph – told Bauer that if he could throw hard like Betances, he wouldn’t even bother with a breaking ball.
”No,” Bauer recalled telling Allen. ”He should never throw a fastball.”
Bauer’s theory is that the threat of a 100 mph fastball might be more dangerous to hitters than the fastballs themselves.
”As guys throw harder, guys have less and less time to hit that offering,” Bauer said. ”So they have to speed up in order to catch up to it, which, that makes the breaking ball more effective.”
Hitters are left picking between two nasty poisons – risk being behind on triple-digit fastballs, or jeopardize taking ugly swings on breaking pitches as they dart out of the strike zone.
Veteran slugger Todd Frazier was with the Yankees last year when New York’s hard-throwing bullpen led by Betances, Aroldis Chapman and Chad Green overpowered hitters while also posting the lowest fastball rate in the majors.
”I have to set my feet for 98 mph, and understand I might get 84-88 mph slider,” said Frazier, now with the New York Mets. ”It makes it tougher on you.”
And yet, Frazier and his fellow hitters aren’t close to jumping off their fastball-first approach.
”The baseline of hitting is the fastball,” Mets teammate Jay Bruce said. ”You have to stay on the fastball. For me personally, that’s what my timing of th