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 of the Tampa Bay Rays’ Isaac Paredes during the trade deadline demonstrated the uneasiness Houston’s baseball operations department holds about its existing first basemen.
That the club did not pivot elsewhere after the Chicago Cubs acquired Paredes prompted questions that Saturday’s 3-2 loss only furthered. For one frustrating afternoon, Houston couldn’t hide its biggest weakness. First-year manager Joe Espada has exhausted all options aside from starting Alex Bregman — and that might occur at some point across this grueling stretch of 18 consecutive games.
When it does, Bregman will play the position for the first time in affiliated baseball. Advertisement “We have guys, and I like the guys we have,” Espada said. “We have to put guys in a position where they can succeed and make plays and get some offense out of those guys.
We’ll continue to navigate those waters and get it done.” Singleton starting Saturday against Baltimore Orioles right-hander Albert Suárez should surprise no one. He is the lone left-handed bat among the Astros’ available options at first base.
The team views Singleton as its most competent defender, too. Playing him during eight of Valdez’s past nine starts illustrates it. Valdez generates more groundballs than any pitcher in the sport.
Espada attempts to play his best defensive infield behind him, but even that can go awry. Former Gold Glove shortstop Jeremy Peña sailed a throw on Austin Slater ’s routine groundball to begin Saturday’s game. Valdez escaped unscathed after the error.
The southpaw scattered just four more base runners across the next four frames. Peña and Jose Altuve supplied solo home runs that staked him to a two-run lead entering the sixth inning. Singles from Gunnar Henderson and Eloy Jiménez applied Baltimore’s first pressure against Valdez, but with two outs, Espada left his left-hander in for the platoon matchup against Colton Cowser.
Valdez spotted an 0-1 sinker on the outer half of his strike zone. Cowser chopped it toward Singleton at first base. The baseball exited his bat at 72 mph, traveled 4 feet and, for any other competent defensive club, should’ve ended the inning.
Colton Cowser on headfirst slide into 1st: "[Jon] Singleton is a big guy. I didn’t really feel like going head on with him. I may have slowed down a little bit.
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It’s kind of an unconventional thing to do, you're not really taught to do that. But just instincts took over." pic.
twitter.com/L8Js7ZnY7D — Jake Rill (@JakeDRill) August 24, 2024 “There’s no way with a ball hit that close to the mound, that soft, that a guy should beat the defense to the spot,” Espada said. Singleton stayed back instead of charging the grounder but still corralled it with Cowser not even halfway up the first-base line.
Valdez jogged off the mound in what appeared a half-hearted attempt to cover first base. Advertisement “I thought he was going to get the out there,” Valdez said through an interpreter. “I thought he was going to have a routine play.
I went over and covered, but the runner beat us.” Without anyone to receive his flip, Singleton tried to finish the play on his own. Cowser covers 28.
2 feet per second when he sprints, a shade above the major-league average. Singleton said he thought he “had a little bit more time” but did not expect Cowser to dive headfirst into the bag. When he did, Singleton lost the race by two steps.
“From my angle, it looked like both (Singleton and Valdez) could’ve had more urgency on it,” Espada said. “I haven’t really looked at it closely, but a ball hit that soft and in that general area — so close to first — the guy shouldn’t have beat the play. I need to take a closer look at the play.
” Failing to convert the out forced Espada to remove Valdez from the game in favor of Tayler Scott . Pinch hitter Jackson Holliday struck Scott’s first pitch into the right-center-field gap, clearing bases that should never have been loaded while bringing one of Houston’s biggest weaknesses back into the spotlight. “Baseball’s like that,” Valdez said.
“When you think you have the game in your hands, it just takes it away from you.” (Photo of Jon Singleton and Austin Slater: Tony Quinn / Sipa via AP Images).
