Bullpen trouble deepens in 10-inning loss

HOUSTON -- Dusty Baker lamented another poor outing by his undermanned bullpen. He spoke with frustration about his team’s shoddy baserunning, which resulted in three outs on the basepaths to end innings. And he made no mistake how much the losses are weighing on him.

“Boy, this is tough to take,” he said after the Astros’ blew their second four-run lead of the season and dropped a 7-6 decision in 10 innings to the Giants on Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park.

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It was the Astros’ sixth loss in their past seven games.

The Astros’ beleaguered bullpen gave up five runs, including the go-ahead run on a Brandon Crawford single in the 10th inning off Cy Sneed, and couldn’t protect a 6-2 lead. The Astros fell to 1-4 in extra innings this year and are reeling at 7-10.

“I think this is a mentally tough team, and we’re going to continue to show up and work hard every single day and get better and play better baseball,” said Astros third baseman Alex Bregman, who homered and walked three times. “We’re holding up fine. We’re going to continue to compete and grind.”

The loss once again highlighted how thin the Astros’ bullpen is with so many injuries.

Rookie starter Brandon Bielak gave Houston five strong innings before Blake Taylor gave up a pinch-hit three-run homer to Hunter Pence to get the Giants into the game in the seventh and Ryan Pressly allowed a game-tying single in the ninth to blow a save.

“They say one of the biggest downers in sports or in baseball is when there’s a blown save -- and then the opposition, it gives them energy,” Baker said.

But how? Houston’s bullpen has been ravaged by injuries. In the last seven games, the Astros’ bullpen has allowed 24 earned runs, seven homers and walked 18 batters in 27 innings (8.00 ERA). During that span, two terrific starts by Bielak have resulted in no-decisions.

“Tough one today,” Bielak said. “It’s going to burn a little bit. I’m definitely going to think about it a lot tonight. Being baseball, we get to come back tomorrow and do it all over again.”

The Astros are still averaging 5.2 runs per game, though they’ve been without center fielder George Springer the last five games and Jose Altuve is hitting .187 with a .598 OPS.

“A lot of guys are trying to do too much, especially Altuve,” Baker said. “He’s such a great player and used to so much success. This is killing him. It’s killing us to see him feel this way. We’re going to give him tomorrow off, and that will give him two days to clear his mind and he’ll come back on Friday as the Altuve we’ve all come to love.”

Perhaps the biggest blight on the Astros on Tuesday was their baserunning. Josh Reddick was thrown out at third base for the final out of the second inning trying to stretch a double into a triple. Altuve was picked off for the final out of the sixth. Finally, pinch-runner Garrett Stubbs was caught stealing third for the final out of the eighth.

Baker said Stubbs tried to steal on his own, which was a mistake because he was already in scoring position.

“We messed up on the bases,” Baker said. “We’re not running the bases very well. We’ve got to improve big-time on our baserunning. We’re running into outs. This is tough to take. It’s a recurring nightmare that’s happening to us late in games.”