Urquidy's maximum efficiency dominates A's

OAKLAND -- Today's most dominant pitchers rely heavily on strikeouts to shut down their opponents. José Urquidy needed only two to quiet the A's in Friday night's 8-3 win.

Urquidy operated with extraordinary efficiency in the series opener in Oakland, tossing eight innings for the first time in his four-year big league career to earn his fifth straight quality start. As the Astros wrap up a stretch of 13 games in 13 days, the extra length was appreciated by his teammates.

"His eight wins speak for themselves," said third baseman Alex Bregman, who homered in the fourth inning to seize the lead for Houston for good. "He always gives us a chance every time he goes out there. He did a great job of going deep into this game, too, when we needed him to."

Urquidy wasn't untouchable, as he gave up three earned runs to the A's. He hit a few snags early in his outing, allowing a two-run home run to Oakland shortstop Elvis Andrus in the second inning to put the Astros in an early 2-0 deficit. But that didn't throw him off, as he induced groundouts to retire the next two batters.

"That was very, very early in the game," Urquidy said. "I tried to be focused to throw more innings."

From there, Urquidy settled in, retiring 11 straight A's batters after surrendering the home run. He leaned mostly on his four-seamer, mixing in offspeed pitches to keep the A's on their toes and get outs on contact. The right-hander had particular success inducing soft contact, as Oakland batters managed an average exit velocity of 86.7 mph on Urquidy's offerings.

"They were putting the ball in play, and sometimes soft contact is the way to go," manager Dusty Baker said. "The more strikeouts you get, the more pitches you've got to throw. [Opposing batters] not hitting the ball hard and depending on your defense, you can't always time it like that, but they were swinging the bat and they weren't doing a bunch of taking."

Urquidy's stuff didn't necessarily overpower the A's. Oakland batters swung at and connected on half of Urquidy's pitches, but most of the resulting balls in play turned into outs. Urquidy didn't miss many bats at all -- in fact, he didn't record a swing and miss until the sixth inning, which is also when he struck out his first batter of the night.

“I think we had a total of five baserunners tonight, and he only walked one," A's manager Mark Kotsay said. "Really beared down in the strike zone. He got some early-contact outs. Unfortunately, we just weren’t really able to get anything going against him offensively.”

Urquidy was able to pitch aggressively in part because his team backed him with a resounding eight runs. It's not unusual for Urquidy to receive a lot of run support -- he averages 7.62 of support per start, the most of any Astros starter -- but every player in the lineup got at least one hit on Friday. Seven of Houston's 14 hits went for extra bases, and catcher Martín Maldonado, who homered twice in Urquidy's last start, hit a towering three-run blast in the fifth inning to keep the game out of reach for Oakland.

"He has to catch me every outing," Urquidy said, laughing.

With Urquidy rolling along as he was, was there a chance he could come out for the ninth inning?

No, Baker said. Urquidy's pitch count was relatively low -- he totaled 98 pitches, which is just under his season high of 104 -- but the team wants to make sure he stays healthy.

"We've got to take care of him," Baker said. "We've still got a long way to go, and he did his job."

Urquidy's performance on Friday night comes amid a particularly strong stretch for the right-hander. In his last three games entering Friday, Urquidy went 2-0, allowing three earned runs in 19 innings (1.42 ERA). It's a mixture of improved command and heighted confidence, Baker said before the game, that has allowed Urquidy to be the best version of himself.

"Whenever you have some success, that breeds success," Baker said. "It starts with one, and he's on a pretty good roll right now. And he's going to get better, too."