HOUSTON — Maybe the All-Star break will allow Astros right-hander Hunter Brown a chance to appreciate his work in the first half of the season. It was hard for him to see the positives Friday night in the aftermath of the rubble of a 10-1 loss to the Mariners, but the rookie helped keep an injury-ravaged Astros rotation afloat.
Brown, in his final start before the break, recorded only nine outs against the Mariners at Minute Maid Park, giving up five runs and eight hits. Seattle scored nine times in the fourth inning, including four runs off steady reliever Phil Maton, to hand Houston its second consecutive loss.
“Pretty much, if you watched the game, it was pretty hit or miss,” Brown said.
The first half of Brown’s rookie campaign has been hit or miss, too, but considering the Astros lost three of their starters to injuries, he’s answered the call. In 17 starts, he’s 6-6 with a 4.12 ERA, 1.33 WHIP and eight quality starts, five of which have lasted seven innings.
“It’s been kind of up and down,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “Usually he has a lot of strikeouts and it’s just a matter of putting guys away.”
The first seven outs Brown recorded Friday were via strikeout, but his pitch count was high. He was at 45 pitches after two innings and 66 after three with the Mariners putting two runners on base in all three innings. The dam burst in the fourth when Seattle sent 11 batters to the plate. The first five hitters against Brown in the fourth reached base on four singles and a walk.
“Hunter Brown’s got a really good arm,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “We knew that coming into the game. He’s got swing-and-miss stuff. And he had it going on. But we did a good job just getting the pitch count up. Even though he was striking us out, it was five-, six-, seven-pitch at-bats. Eventually, we were able to get to him.”
The Astros came into Spring Training with a five-man rotation consisting of Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers Jr., Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy and Luis Garcia, with Brown waiting in the wings. Despite losing Justin Verlander to free agency, that was considered to be one of the top 10 rotations in Major League Baseball.
McCullers (forearm) was injured early in the spring, opening a spot for Brown. Urquidy (shoulder) and Garcia (ulnar collateral ligament) were injured in consecutive starts a month into the season, with Garcia having Tommy John surgery and being lost for the season. Urquidy is still rehabbing.
Valdez, who had his previous start skipped because of a minor ankle sprain, has delivered and will head to his second consecutive All-Star Game next week. Javier pitched well, too, through his first 14 starts of the season, posting a 2.90 ERA, before hitting a wall.
Through it all, Brown has taken the ball every fifth day and kept the Astros in games for the most part. They are 9-8 in his 17 starts.
“This guy is going to be really good in the future and I think he’s starting to understand how to get hitters out,” catcher Martin Maldonado said. “It’s always a big test the more information that’s out there for the hitters, and I feel like he’s been throwing the ball really, really good for us. He’s been valuable when we needed him to be valuable. He’s had a couple of bad outings and everybody is going to have those.”
With the Trade Deadline approaching, the Astros should be in the market for another starter, which would take some pressure off Brown. Especially when you consider Javier has given up 18 earned runs and 21 hits in 10 2/3 innings in his last three starts, with the most recent outing coming Monday in Arlington. He was shut down for the rest of the first half of the season because he was “just a little bit fatigued,” Baker said.
“They’ve been on the phones and talking to people, but nobody is going to do anything right now because there’s still a lot of teams still in it,” Baker said.
