HOUSTON -- Christian Walker has been pulling his weight in the Astros’ lineup for a couple of months now after a woeful start in his new surroundings. A .590 OPS in his first 50 games with the Astros, who signed him to a three-year, $60 million contract in December, brought criticism on Walker and sent him into overdrive to regain his stroke.
Walker is swinging the bat as well as he has all season and on Thursday afternoon, he cranked a pair of solo homers -- including a go-ahead blast on the first pitch thrown in the eighth inning by reliever Luis Peralta -- to send the Astros to a series win over the Rockies with a 4-3 victory at Daikin Park.
“Whatever is happening right now is part of work that started much earlier in the year,” Walker said. “The beauty of a baseball season is the length and the amount of opportunities that you have, and we started working pretty hard pretty early when I didn’t like how I felt. Here we are with three, four months of reps and work and good stuff under my belt, and I think it’s showing up in the game for sure.”
Walker is slashing .279/.345/.514 with 11 homers and 37 RBIs in 46 games since July 1, and he has eight homers in August, including five in the last seven games. His multihomer game Thursday was the 15th of his career and first with the Astros (74-60), who moved two games ahead of the Mariners atop the American League West.
“He’s been working his tail off and we’ve been getting some big swings from him,” Astros manager Joe Espada said of Walker. “Him and [Jose] Altuve, those home runs, the power surge today was great to see.”
Back-to-back two-out homers by Jose Altuve and Walker in the first inning -- the Astros’ first back-to-back homers since July 6 at Dodger Stadium -- got the Astros going, and catcher César Salazar’s squeeze bunt in the second scored Mauricio Dubón to make it 3-0.
Astros starter Jason Alexander got off a quick start, too, striking out five of the first six batters he faced. He gave up three runs and struck out a career-high eight batters in 5 2/3 innings, allowing solo homers to Ezequiel Tovar and Yanquiel Fernández.
“I did a good job getting ahead and when I got ahead, just making sure I was making my pitches,” said Alexander, who posted a 2.17 ERA and 0.97 WHIP in five August starts after being plucked off waivers from the A’s.
The game was tied at 3 in the eighth when Walker crushed a fastball off of Peralta and sent it a Statcast-projected 404 feet over the left-field wall to put the Astros ahead, 4-3.
“I faced [Peralta on Tuesday] and I felt like I missed a couple of good fastballs, at least one good fastball to hit,” Walker said. “The slider’s a good pitch and I wanted to get something up off the bottom to try to lay off that slider down. I just really wanted to be on the fastball there. Not trying to, obviously, hit it out of the park or anything like that, just focus on timing and putting the barrel on it. Luckily, it helped the team win there.”
Walker is second behind Altuve (23) for the team lead in home runs and leads the club in RBIs with 74. He’s looking more and more like the middle-of-the-order run-producer the Astros hoped he would be.
“He’s done it before where, [in] the second half of the season, he gets hot and he knows he’s going to hit,” Espada said. “For us, it’s continue to help him through this process. It’s been an up-and-down season for him, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And he’s finishing really strong.”
The resurgence of Walker and the return of slugger Yordan Alvarez from the injured list on Tuesday, in addition to the trades to acquire Carlos Correa, Jesús Sánchez and Ramón Urías at the Deadline, have given the Astros’ lineup solid depth it didn’t have earlier in the year.
Walker said opposing pitchers can’t pick and choose one Astros hitter they’re going to attack because of the talent up and down the order.
“I think that’s a good thing for us,” he said. “That presents some opportunities of hitting with guys on base, recognizing when a pitcher is not giving in and taking walks and getting traffic. We have a lot of confidence in this lineup now.”