Astros big bats fall to Athletics small ball

By the time the top of the 12th inning rolled around Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park, frustration hung thick in the air. The Astros had already let the game stretch on longer than it should have, and now the Oakland A’s, with their pesky brand of small ball, were pushing Houston to the brink. The first bunt came, then another, and then a third - all perfectly placed. The Astros scrambled, but nothing went right.

Before you knew it, the A’s had scratched out two runs without even hitting the ball past the mound. Houston, for all their firepower, had no answer for Oakland’s simple execution. By the end of the night, the Astros fell 4-3 in 12 innings, their bats silenced in the final moments after a brief spark from José Altuve. The A’s may be buried deep in the standings, but on this night, they pulled a fast one on the reigning division leaders.

“That’s kind of their style,” Astros manager Joe Espada said, shaking his head. “They like the safety squeezes, bunting guys over. We didn’t do a good job handling the ball there in that inning.”

It’s hard to argue with him. Oakland kept things old-school while Houston seemed stuck, watching the game slip through their fingers. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. Altuve had come through with a game-tying RBI double in the bottom of the 12th, but that’s where it stopped. The Astros couldn’t bring him home, and the game that could’ve been theirs slid into the loss column.

The defeat dropped Houston to 77-67 on the season, still hanging on to a 4.5 game lead over Seattle, who’d lost to the Padres earlier in the night. But with 18 games left, this kind of stumble didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad. Bryan Abreu, pitching in his AL-leading 71st game of the season, was downright electric. He took the mound in the 10th and 11th innings and struck out five of the six batters he faced. He had the kind of heat you’d expect after two days of rest, his fastball zipping in at over 100 mph, his slider biting with extra venom. His lone out that wasn’t a strikeout? Another bunt, naturally.

Espada noticed that extra juice in Abreu’s arm. “It helps when he’s rested,” he said. “We needed punchies, and he got them. That stuff was electric.”

Abreu knew it, too. “I had to come in and give it everything that I got,” he said after the game, still riding the high of those two spotless innings. “I felt the delivery was really smooth, and I was just throwing the ball through the plate.”

Then there was Spencer Arrighetti. After a rough outing in Cincinnati where he couldn’t escape the first inning, the rookie showed some resilience. He delivered 6.2 innings of solid work, giving up two runs while striking out seven. His curveball was his bread and butter, accounting for six swings-and-misses. It was the kind of bounce-back performance that shows promise, even if the end result wasn’t what the Astros were hoping for.

“It’s always encouraging when the work between starts shows up in the results,” Arrighetti said, sounding more relieved than proud. “Baseball’s a funny game. That’s kind of how it goes.”

Funny, yes, but also cruel sometimes. For all the good pitching, for all of Altuve’s heroics, Houston couldn’t get the one big hit when it mattered. The stat line was glaring: 2-for-17 with runners in scoring position. Nearly half of those came in extra innings, when the Astros had their chances but couldn’t deliver.

“We hung in there,” Espada said. “We got some big at-bats, got back into the game, but with men in scoring position, I thought we chased a bit. We tried to do a little too much.”

They’ll need to figure that out soon. Altuve went 3-for-5, driving in two runs, but he couldn’t do it alone. The team, built on big bats, had been undone by small ball - by bunts and hustle, by things that rarely show up in highlight reels but always show up in the win column.