5 minutes reading
Reporting from ORACLE PARK
Adrian Houser has made it clear: He wants to be starting ballgames again.
Handed his first chance since June 16, Houser delivered six scoreless innings on 73 pitches, allowing two hits and a walk while striking out five.
But the Giants made none of it count. An empty afternoon with runners in scoring position, a gruesome error in left field and a late bullpen stumble added up to a 2-1 loss to the Houston Astros on Wednesday at Oracle Park.
The loss dropped the Giants to 50-71, handed Houston the rubber game and the series, and snapped San Francisco’s streak of four straight series wins over the Astros. The homestand now stands at 2-4 with three games against Colorado left to close it out.
Houser was moved to the bullpen after that June 16 outing in Atlanta, and he repeated postgame that he still sees the rotation as his place. Houser said:
“That’s what I signed here to do. That’s what I wanna do. That’s what I see myself as, as a starter. But at the end of the day, I always go about my business and wanna … get outs and win ballgames.”
His last nine appearances had come in relief, and the role fit: a 2.03 ERA on seven earned runs over 31 innings, including a single earned run and eight hits across 17 innings at Oracle Park.
Wednesday’s start also came against the club that drafted Houser in the second round in 2011. He entered the day with a 0.66 career ERA against Houston, his best mark against any opponent.
The first inning has been another story this season. Houser came in with a 9.64 ERA in the opening frame, second-highest in the majors, along with seven home runs allowed.
None of that surfaced Wednesday. Houser retired the side on 12 pitches in the first and faced the minimum through three innings before Jeremy Peña sliced a double down the right-field line to open the fourth.
The Astros countered with an opener, and it cost them early. Left-hander Bryan King was pulled after issuing two walks, and Enyel De Los Santos came on to face Victor Bericoto, who ripped an RBI single into left for a 1-0 Giants lead in the first. Drew Gilbert walked to load the bases before Osleivis Basabe fouled out to strand all three.
It set the tone. Through four innings the Giants had left eight men on base, and beyond Bericoto’s single they were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position, keeping Houston within striking distance.
Houston looked ready to pounce in the sixth with Nick Allen at second and one out. Instead, Allen misread Peña’s soft grounder to short, broke for third and got hung up; he was tagged out in the rundown, and Peña was cut down trying to take second behind the play. The strange inning-ending double play drew the first real pop of the afternoon from the sun-baked crowd of 28,101.
Giants manager Tony Vitello went to his bullpen in the seventh, and it unraveled in a hurry. Sam Hentges, making his 35th appearance, was greeted by a 375-foot Yordan Álvarez blast to right that came inches from tying the game but went for a single.
With one out, Bericoto turned a routine Daulton Varsho pop fly into a horrendous error, the ball glancing off the tip of his glove webbing to leave runners at second and third.
Keaton Winn relieved Hentges to face pinch-hitter Nelson Velázquez, whose sacrifice fly to center tied it — an unearned run charged to Hentges that erased Houser’s shot at the win.
With Heliot Ramos now in the Bronx, left field has been a sore spot for San Francisco. The Giants gave journeyman Eddys Leonard a week there before designating him for assignment Tuesday to make room for catcher Andrew Knizner, and Bericoto, reinstated from the injured list a day earlier after missing 26 games with an oblique strain, spent Wednesday in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons despite his RBI single.
Houston grabbed the lead in the eighth when Taylor Trammell tripled to lead off against Winn and scored on Allen’s sacrifice fly. The Giants bullpen entered the day with a 5.48 ERA through the first five games of this season-long, nine-game homestand, but Winn (L, 2-3, 2.98 ERA) limited the damage there, retiring the next two to keep it 2-1.
From the fifth inning on, the Giants managed exactly one baserunner: Christian Koss, who singled to center in the sixth and stole second before being stranded. Koss nearly tied it in the ninth, but Trammell hauled his drive in just short of the left-field wall.
In all, San Francisco went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base to Houston’s two. Vitello said:
“It sucks to leave as many guys on [as] we did and to have as big of a gap as we did between us and [Houston] in that category.”
Josh Hader (S, 17) retired the side in order in the ninth to convert his 20th consecutive save opportunity, and former Giant Steven Okert (W, 6-1, 2.11 ERA) took the win in relief against his old club.
The Giants fell to 10-21 in one-run games this season and have dropped six of their last seven rubber games.
Up Next
Following Thursday’s off day, the Giants close the homestand with three against the Colorado Rockies beginning Friday at 7:15 p.m. Landen Roupp (7-11, 4.22 ERA) is projected to start the opener, with left-hander Kyle Freeland expected to counter for Colorado in a matchup of the bottom two teams in the National League.
Notes
“The first one’s out the way.” That’s been the message to Giants reliever Trent Harris from teammates and the coaching staff after a rough major league debut Saturday, when he allowed three earned runs on three hits against Detroit while recording just one out.
The 27-year-old has called the week “a dream come true” after three and a half seasons in the Giants farm system. Harris said:
“I’m starting to build bonds with some of the veterans, taking [information] piece by piece and trying to incorporate it in [my] own routine. It’s been really cool.”
Harris was named Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Week for the week of July 20 after throwing seven scoreless innings across two starts for Triple-A Sacramento.
