MILWAUKEE — In the sixth inning of a series-deciding game, with a lead in peril, a starter wobbling and one of the sport’s feared sluggers sauntering to home plate, Brewers manager Craig Counsell climbed the stairs of his dugout. He stared toward a bullpen containing two choices: left-hander Hoby Milner and right-hander Joel Payamps.
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Two days earlier, Counsell confronted an almost identical situation. He chose Milner to face Yordan Alvarez with one out, the bases loaded and Milwaukee still within striking distance during the sixth inning. Alvarez annihilated Milner’s first pitch 383 feet over the left field wall for a grand slam.
Alvarez struck two of the Astros’ season-high five home runs on Monday night. Four came at ace Corbin Burnes’ expense. Houston scored 12 runs, extended its winning streak to eight games and crept within a game of the Texas Rangers in the American League West standings.
After 46 games interrupted by injuries and slowed by ineffectiveness, the best version of the Astros had arrived. Forty-eight hours later, it disappeared again, escorted out amid an absolute absence of power and established players performing well short of any reasonable expectations.
Only Alvarez appears exempt from blame. He arrived on Wednesday with a ridiculous 1.192 OPS with runners on base and a .457/.512/1.029 slash line with men in scoring position. Counsell tried to create a left-on-left matchup during Monday’s sixth inning. Alvarez has a career .306 batting average and .593 slugging percentage against left-handers — both higher than his numbers against righties.
On Wednesday, Counsell opted for Payamps. Alvarez fouled his first-pitch sinker and a fourth-pitch changeup to even the count at two. Payamps spun a slider in response. It broke toward the bottom of Alvarez’s strike zone. Alvarez flinched, seemed fooled and sulked back to the dugout after home-plate umpire Mark Ripperger rung him up.
“Yordan can’t come through all the time,” manager Dusty Baker said afterward. “We’re leaning on him so heavily.”
The Astros are starved for someone else to step up. They boarded a California-bound airplane on Wednesday afternoon mired in a 19-inning scoreless streak.
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Shutout losses on Tuesday and Wednesday squandered a chance to keep pace with the Rangers while offering a reminder of perhaps their biggest early-season flaw: a lineup lacking any sort of sustained power.
Houston managed nine hits in the two games following Monday’s outburst. Two of them fell for extra bases — a ninth-inning double by Jeremy Peña on Tuesday and Alex Bregman’s sixth-inning double on Wednesday. Alvarez’s strikeout against Payamps and Kyle Tucker’s lineout stranded Bregman at third base. No other Astro advanced that far.
Tucker and Alvarez are the team’s only two everyday players with a slugging percentage higher than .445. Only seven lineups have a lower slugging percentage than the Astros’ .381 clip. Five of their 18 home runs this month arrived in Monday’s game. Alvarez has four of the other ones.
The Astros are averaging 4.04 runs per game in May and have had two or fewer extra-base hits in nine of those 20 games. Alvarez and Tucker are responsible for 19 of their 45 total home runs and, on most days, are the only obvious sources of power in the lineup. Jose Altuve, it should be noted, has appeared in just four of the team’s 49 games, sidelined first by a fractured thumb and now again after falling ill during the sixth inning of Tuesday’s loss.
Altuve’s return could help solve the subpar slug. He is more than equipped to handle such massive expectations, but it’s worth wondering how many at-bats he needs before his timing is back to form.
In the interim, the club is in desperate need of either Bregman or José Abreu to turn around their pedestrian seasons. A 1-for-4 showing on Wednesday left Bregman batting .219 with 13 extra-base hits. His .358 slugging percentage is more than 120 points below his career average, but some underlying metrics suggest he’s been a victim of poor luck. His expected slugging percentage, according to Baseball Savant, is .411.
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Abreu’s continued cratering must be more concerning. He took his 200th plate appearance of the season on Wednesday and struck a single through the six-hole. Thirty-four of his 41 hits this season have been singles. He is slashing .222/.280/.259, has the second-lowest OPS in baseball and still — somehow — hits fourth or fifth in Baker’s everyday lineup.
Abreu has taken a team-high 57 plate appearances with runners in scoring position. He has struck 11 hits and struck out 11 times. Abreu entered Wednesday’s game with a 51.3 percent groundball rate with runners in scoring position. To end Wednesday’s first inning, Abreu bounced out with runners on second and third, inflating it higher.
Infuriating as it is for the fanbase, Baker’s faith in Abreu is unsurprising. Yuli Gurriel experienced similar loyalty last year despite a dreadful offensive season. Baker places a high premium on veterans and values their track records.
Hall of Fame first baseman Jeff Bagwell, the franchise’s influential baseball operations adviser — who visited Abreu in Miami this winter and finished his contract — spent most of this series extolling the numbers on the back of Abreu’s baseball card while filling in for Geoff Blum on the AT&T SportsNet Southwest broadcast.
What Abreu was cannot be disputed. What he is now must be more thoroughly examined. Abreu has not homered since Sept. 13, 2022, a span of 65 games and 272 plate appearances. He has one home run in his past 434 plate appearances. The average launch angle on his batted balls entering Wednesday’s game was 6.3 degrees.
“This guy is used to doing great and we’ve all been there, all of us that have played this game. It hurts you,” Baker said. “It hurts you on the inside, in your sleep. You’re trying to search for clues, everyone is trying to help. Sometimes you can listen to too many people, I’ve been there, too. He’ll get it. We’re all tired of talking about it, but as long as we’re winning … he’s going to have his turn. He’s going to have his turn to carry us.
Abreu does not deserve all of the blame for this series loss, the ongoing scoreless streak or this lineup’s overall listlessness, but the team constructed its roster believing he would provide thump. Baker still writes his lineups as if it will come. Abreu has hit cleanup in 11 of the 20 games in May, including all three games against the A’s and their left-handed-heavy bullpen last weekend.
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“These guys have one lefty, but when we played Oakland, they have three lefties,” Baker said on Monday. “… I got the numbers and the probabilities. I try to maximize our offense and our lineup to get some runs.”
The comment suggests Abreu will return to the cleanup spot on Friday when the team begins its series in Oakland. Altuve should return, too, perhaps masking the curious lineup construction. The Astros swept the A’s last weekend at Minute Maid Park, but managed 10 total runs. If any pitching staff can awaken this anemic offense, it is Oakland’s. If any offense can squander that opportunity, it is the Astros’.
(Photo of Abreu: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
