Framber Valdez stellar in win over Minnesota Twins

For six rounds, Framber Valdez flirted with history. Thirty-five men in MLB history have thrown multiple no-hitters. Valdez’s attempt to join them on Saturday afternoon failed but propelled his team to victory.

Valdez made an unsuccessful bid until the seventh at Minute Maid Park. The Astros backed it up with four home runs, a raucous follow-up to their lifeless performance Friday night. And their bullpen held off a late Twins surge for a 5-2 win, tying their three-game series. Houston is 26-33.

Manuel Margot hit a Valdez sinker sharply up the middle for a single to start the seventh. Valdez had faced the minimum for six innings, allowing two base runners on balls and hits by pitch. Jose Miranda lined a two-out single to center to score Margot.

Valdez allowed no further damage, coming out after the seventh on 85 pitches with a 5-1 lead. Bryan Abreu allowed two walks and two singles in the eighth, with Carlos Correa’s drive to center bringing the tying run to the plate. Abreu struck out Ryan Jeffers throwing a 99 mph fastball to strand him.

Valdez retired his first nine batters. Margot opened the game with a lineout against Kyle Tucker in right field. Kyle Farmer drove a sinker to right to start the third. Tucker caught it before crashing into the wall. Christian Vázquez lined out to Mauricio Dubón in left field to end the game.

Margot got a first walk in the fourth. Valdez persuaded a flyout from Correa. After a close 1-0 pitch to Miranda missed low, Valdez walked around the mound smiling. Two pitches later, he threw a sinker to spark a slow comeback. Valdez started a 1-4-3 double play to end the fourth.

He only needed 57 pitches to go through five innings. Miranda lifted Valdez’s first pitch from the fifth to right-center field. Jake Meyers set up below at 371 feet. Byron Buxton flipped a 2-2 changeup in the dirt. Willi Castro hit a six-pitch at-bat, but couldn’t check his swing on a full sinker at 96.8 mph.

The Astros gave Valdez a lead thanks to blasts from Twins starter Joe Ryan. Yordan Alvarez had two, a two-run shot in the first inning and a solo homer in the fifth, matching his home run total from May. José Abreu hit his first home run of the season in the second inning. Tucker hit his 19th in the third.

Valdez unleashed an errant curveball to open the sixth that hit Farmer in the foot. Carlos Santana made a solid swing on a sinker, hitting a bouncer 108.8 mph right off the bat, but straight to third baseman Alex Bregman. He led into a double play. Valdez struck out Vázquez to extend his no-hitter attempt into the seventh.

Santana’s ball distilled an oddity from Valdez’s outing. It wasn’t overwhelming. Twins hitters averaged an exit velocity of 92.6 mph on 17 balls in play against him. Nine of them had an exit velocity of more than 95 mph, defined by Statcast as hard hit. Valdez induced just six whiffs on 33 swings and struck out two.

It ultimately resulted in a hit. Margot sent a Valdez sinker up the middle at 110.8 mph in the seventh. Second baseman Jose Altuve chased after him to no avail.

May was a strange month for Alvarez. He hit .283 but had two home runs and four RBIs in 28 games. Alvarez had never had fewer than 10 carries in a month in which he played at least 10 games. August 2022 was the only month in which he hit fewer than two home runs.

Alvarez started the month in a bad way, but hit .325 over his last 20 games. Before the match, manager Joe Espada said that Alvarez “looks like he’s calmer, in control of the pitches he’s swinging at…Once those line drives start falling in there, those- These become flying balloons and these turn into circuits.”

In his first at-bat, Alvarez got a hanging slider from Ryan and hammered it for a two-run homer. The ball left his bat at 109.5 mph and traveled 403 feet, hitting the face of the second deck in right field.

In the fifth inning, Ryan left a divider in the middle of the strike zone. Alvarez fielded it at 113.8 mph off the tee and over the right field wall. Alvarez added a 105.3 mph line drive single off the start against Diego Castillo in the seventh. The three-hit game was his first since April 27 in Mexico.

Abreu’s first home run of the season came in his 88th plate appearance and his fourth game after a four-week stint in the minors. He went for a full count against Ryan by committing three pitches, including two fastballs. Ryan tried another one and sped away at 94.4 mph.

Abreu hit it 376 feet to the opposite field, over the right field wall. It was only Abreu’s second extra base hit this season. Statcast has it as a home run in 19 of 30 major league ballparks. At 100.5 mph right off the bat, it wasn’t among Abreu’s 10 hardest-hit balls this season, according to Statcast.

Of Abreu’s 10 hits, seven came in games that followed his day off. After not playing on Friday, Abreu went 1-for-3 on Saturday, also striking out and throwing into a double play. He is 3-for-13 in four games since his time in the minor leagues.

In the ninth, Buxton sent a 416-foot drive to center field on a Josh Hader fastball. Statcast has him as a home run hit in 23 of 30 major league ballparks. Meyers retreated and managed to jump against the wall, depriving Buxton of additional bases.

Buxton held out his helmet to Meyers in greeting as he rounded second base and returned to his dugout.