The Houston Astros built a five-run lead before the fourth inning and still lost. Mike Burrows could not hold it, the Washington Nationals’ offense would not stop, and a late Houston comeback fell one run short in a 12-11 defeat Monday night at Nationals Park.
The Astros fell to 45-48 in the series opener.
Burrows bore the brunt of the collapse. He allowed nine hits, two home runs, and was charged with 10 runs in 4⅓ innings. Washington chipped away at the early lead with five runs in the third inning—a Luis García Jr. double, a Curtis Mead RBI single, and a CJ Abrams three-run homer that tied the game at 6-6. Burrows returned for the fifth, gave up a Mead solo shot to lead off, and was pulled with the bases loaded after a Braden Shewmake error extended the inning. James Wood capped the damage with a grand slam off AJ Blubaugh that made it 12-6. From the moment Abrams tied the game in the third, Washington had scored 11 unanswered runs.
Jose Altuve had opened the scoring with a three-run homer in the second, and Yainer Diaz added a two-run shot in the third to give Houston the early cushion. Both came off Miles Mikolas, who has been homer-prone all season but managed to absorb six innings and escape with a win despite allowing seven runs.
The bottom of the Houston order kept the Astros in it. Cam Smith, Diaz, Shewmake, and Brice Matthews combined for eight hits from the 6-through-9 spots. In the eighth, Matthews drove a two-strike sinker from Cole Henry over the left-field wall for a three-run homer that trimmed the deficit to one. Henry induced a groundout from Altuve to strand two runners, and the top of the Houston order went quietly in the ninth against Clayton Beeter.
Burrows has had a difficult season, and this was among his worst outings. Houston’s rotation decisions heading into the second half have become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Shewmake, activated from the injured list earlier Monday, started at shortstop in place of the injured Jeremy Peña. He went 2-for-4 with an RBI but committed a costly error in the fifth that helped extend Washington’s decisive inning.
Houston and Washington play Tuesday at 5:45 p.m. CT with Tatsuya Imai starting against Andrew Alvarez.
