BALTIMORE — The baseball trickled 4 feet toward the Houston Astros’ biggest albatross, a position still staggering this club as September draws near. No team in the sport is receiving a lower OPS from its first basemen, none has extracted fewer wins above replacement, and only one has fewer defensive runs saved. Advertisement The anemia reached its apex at 5:54 p.
m. on a beautiful Baltimore afternoon. Inches and some semblance of intensity separated Framber Valdez from six scoreless innings against one of baseball’s most lethal lineups.
The groundball he needed to finish it found Jon Singleton behind first base. What ensued accentuated the Astros’ most apparent weakness. They remain atop the American League West by 4 1/2 games while conducting an in-season carousel at first base, a byproduct of brutal organizational depth and José Abreu’s dreadful tenure.
Eight players have appeared at first base since the Astros jettisoned Abreu in mid-June. Soon, their cornerstone third baseman might become the ninth. Singleton has turned into the closest thing Houston has to an everyday first baseman, perhaps for no other reason than his major-league experience.
Three more hitless at-bats Saturday sunk his OPS to .680 across 338 plate appearances and .630 since the All-Star break.
He entered the game worth minus-5 defensive runs saved, according to Sports Info Solutions. Among qualified first basemen, only the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Josh Bell has been worse. A serious pursuit .