Astros fall in familiar early hole in loss to A's

HOUSTON -- For the Astros, this Saturday in the park wasn’t anything like the Fourth of July. But in one way, it resembled every game since.

For the 17th consecutive time, Houston saw its opponent score first, with the A’s plating a first-inning run off Hunter Brown en route to a 5-1 victory Saturday night at Daikin Park. The Astros haven’t scored first since routing the Dodgers, 18-1, on July 4 in Los Angeles.

“We’re trying to score first. It’s not like we are not trying, right?” said Astros manager Joe Espada, who noted it can’t happen when a Daikin Park visitor crosses the plate in the first inning. “But it’s just a matter of not letting that be the conversation or, ‘Oh, we’re down again.’”

Playing from behind hasn’t necessarily been a death knell. The Astros trailed in 30 of their 60 wins. But they are 7-10 in this surreal stretch, including a 1-8 mark in home games, with the lone victory at Daikin Park an 11-inning win over the Rangers on July 12.

For the most part, the Astros’ opponents aren’t wasting any time getting ahead. They have scored in the first inning in 10 of the 17 games. The first run came four times in the second inning, once in the third, and twice in the fifth.

“We are a really good team coming from behind,” Espada said. “We have a ton of win-from-behind games. We are good when we have that pass-the-baton mentality, and we just haven’t been able to get that big hit right now. But we saw it in the last series [a three-game sweep at Arizona].”

An Astros injured list 18 players long -- including 11 hitters -- doesn’t help. The most conspicuous absence might be Jeremy Peña, who in 55 games as a leadoff hitter was slashing .354/.403/.538 before hitting the IL with a fractured rib, suffered when he was hit by a pitch against the Cubs on June 27.

In the expansion era (since 1961), only two teams have had a longer stretch of first-run futility, per Elias. The 1987 Orioles saw their opponents score first in 19 consecutive games, and the 1977 Braves endured an 18-game spell. The Astros’ 17-game stretch is six games longer than the previous franchise mark.

Brown, who in his previous three starts allowed 13 earned runs in 15 innings, allowed just one run on four hits and two walks and struck out five in Saturday’s five-inning outing, which totaled 98 pitches. After walking Nick Kurtz -- he of the four-homer, six-hit game Friday -- with one out in the first, Brown gave up an RBI double to Brent Rooker.

“Last three outings are teams that I pitch against a lot in the A’s and Seattle and Texas,” said Brown, who acknowledged Kurtz’s recent tear and Rooker’s ability as a hitter. “I’ve had a lot of at-bats against some of these guys, and I’d like to think that the same way I know what works against them, they probably know what I do. So it’s a little bit of cat-and-mouse there.”

Chas McCormick tried to even the game in the first inning when, with runners at first and third and two out, he bunted on the first pitch he saw from A’s starter Jacob Lopez. McCormick kept the ball just within the reach of springing catcher Shea Langeliers, whose throw nipped him at first base.

“I just saw the third baseman [Miguel Andujar] back and thought, ‘I’m gonna lay one down for an RBI,’ and [Lopez] threw it too off the plate,” said McCormick. “I should have just taken it and went back to swinging.”

As the first batter facing Astros reliever Bennett Sousa in the sixth, Langeliers homered to make it 2-0. McCormick’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth got the Astros within a run, but Lawrence Butler’s three-run homer off Héctor Neris in the ninth sealed the A’s third victory over Houston in three nights.

“We’ve just got to continue to grind at-bats and continue to stay in the game, and at some point we are going to find a way to win a game late or get a big hit in the middle of the game,” Espada said. “I don’t like when that [first-to-score stat] becomes the conversation or narrative. I just think that we need to tack along some good at-bats and get a big hit, and we should be fine.”