ARLINGTON — Having thrown 95 pitches through five innings Saturday night, Astros ace Hunter Brown came down the dugout steps and didn’t even give manager Joe Espada a chance to ask him how he was feeling or whether he wanted a chance to go back out for the sixth inning.
“He said, ‘I’m going back.’ And that was it,” Espada said.
Brown rewarded his manager’s faith by retiring the Rangers in order in the sixth inning on 12 pitches — the first time he had thrown a 1-2-3 inning in the game — to complete six scoreless innings and lead the Astros to an 11-0 runaway win over the Rangers in the Lone Star Series at Globe Life Field.
The Astros (78-65) maintained their 3 1/2-game lead atop the American League West over the second-place Mariners with 19 games remaining. The Rangers dropped five games back.
“I really wanted him to go back out there for another 10, 15 more pitches, because his stuff was really good,” Espada said. “His changeup was still working; his fastball looked like it had plenty of life to it. So when he came down and he said, ‘I’m going back out,’ I said, ‘OK, son, go get ‘em.’”
Brown threw a season-high 107 pitches to tie his career high with his 11th win of the season. He said he wanted to go back out for the sixth because of where the Rangers were in the lineup, but also because Houston had used six relievers to cover 6 2/3 innings on Friday.
“I felt good. I really did,” Brown said. “I felt like in the second inning, I had to kind of dig deep in the tank there to get out of that bases-loaded jam, but other than that, they had some baserunners and stuff, and I didn’t feel like it was too many high-pressure pitches throughout the game. I felt like I definitely had some more, and that’s why I told Joe, and he said, ‘Go get ‘em.’”
Brown was able to save a few pitches by getting Jake Burger to hit into a 4-6-3 double play to end the fifth after two runners reached with no outs. Burger hit a ball right back at Brown, but Jose Altuve stopped it behind second base and flipped to shortstop Jeremy Peña, who made a nifty turn at second base.
“I went back and looked at the video and I think it clipped my pants a little bit, but as soon as he hit it, I was like, ‘Oh, no, that’s going to be off my leg,’” Brown said. “It was the best-case scenario, so that was awesome.”
Brown has a 1.44 ERA in seven starts since the start of August. He’s 2 1/3 innings away from matching his career high of 170 innings set last year. He lowered his season ERA to 2.25 in 167 2/3 innings this season and strengthened his AL Cy Young Award case.
“He’s a big reason why we’re in the position that we’re in,” first baseman Christian Walker said. “We can count on him every five days. He’s a lot of fun to play behind. He pounds his zone, he works quick, he competes. The edge that he creates for himself out there with this ‘Diesel’ persona, it’s just fun to be a part of.
“I think the amount of pitches he’s thrown and the ability to throw everything for a strike at any count, guys get to first base and just constantly talk about how nasty he is and how tough the at-bats are, and I love hearing that. I’m glad he’s getting the credit that he deserves.”
Walker spearheaded an Astros offensive onslaught by hitting a homer off Jacob deGrom — his first hit against him in 14 career at-bats — in the second. Yordan Alvarez, who has a slash line of .459/.553/.757 with three homers and nine RBIs in 11 games since coming off the injured list on Aug. 26, homered in the fifth, and Houston poured it on with three runs in the eighth and five more in the ninth.
They had 15 hits, including 8-for-19 with runners in scoring position after going 2-for-14 with runners in scoring position Friday.
“I think last night and tonight, it’s both ends of the spectrum,” Walker said. “But what I take from tonight is they had their ace going and we came in ready to compete.”
