Astros broadcaster Geoff Blum summed up Tatsuya Imai’s night simply: “We got the good version of him tonight.” On Tuesday against the Miami Marlins, that version came with a twist—one built on a pitch Imai had barely used all season.
Imai worked six innings and allowed just four hits, finishing with eight strikeouts against three walks, as Isaac Paredes broke the game open with a three-run homer and Houston beat Miami 5-3 at Daikin Park to secure a series win. The outing was Imai’s first since a two-week layover around the All-Star break, and it carried extra weight: Manager Joe Espada and the Astros’ pitching staff had used that break to press the right-hander, again, to lean on a third pitch he had mostly ignored.
The message worked immediately. Imai doubled his usage of the changeup and splitter from the season’s first half, mixing them in against Miami’s left-handed hitters to set up the slider and mid-90s fastball that had, on their own, produced a 6.06 ERA across his first 13 outings.
“We still think the slider is a special pitch,” pitching coach Josh Miller said, adding that incorporating other pitches more frequently could help both the slider and fastball play better.
The only real damage against Imai came in the fifth, when a two-out walk to Otto Lopez set up Kyle Stowers’ RBI double into the left-center field gap.
By then Houston already had the cushion it needed. Jeremy Peña opened the game with a leadoff homer off Miami starter Tyler Phillips, and the Astros scratched across another run in the second on Lucas Spence’s one-out double. The decisive blow came in the fifth, after Marlins third baseman Javier Sanoja’s throwing error on a routine grounder from Christian Vázquez extended the inning for Houston. Reliever Tyler Zuber, who had replaced Phillips, retired Peña on a fielder’s choice before Yordan Alvarez reached base when a full-count sweeper he swung through got away from catcher Joe Mack. Paredes made Zuber pay on the next pitch, driving a hanging sweeper into the Crawford Boxes for a three-run homer and a 5-1 lead.
Mack answered with a two-run home run against Blubaugh an inning later, but Houston’s bullpen held from there. Jose Altuve grounded into the Astros’ first triple play since 2019 in the eighth, though it cost them nothing, and Josh Hader worked around a leadoff single in the ninth to close it out.
The win kept Houston at 49-54, three games behind the first-place Texas Rangers and 2½ games behind second-place Seattle in the AL West, with the Astros sitting third in the division. Alvarez remains tied with Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber for the major-league home run lead at 33, a mark he reached with his two-homer night against Miami on Monday.
Christian Walker made his return to the lineup after missing two games with right hip tightness, going 1 for 3. The Astros turn to Peter Lambert Wednesday as one of their most reliable starters to complete the sweep against the Marlins.
