For two months, Spencer Arrighetti was the answer to a question the Houston Astros desperately needed answered. With Hunter Brown sidelined and the rotation in disarray, Arrighetti stepped in and pitched like an ace.
June has looked different. Arrighetti is still missing bats, still limiting walks, and still competing. But the results have turned, and Saturday night against the Cleveland Guardians offered the clearest example yet. Three home runs. Six runs. All three long balls surrendered to left-handed hitters, a group that had barely touched him all season.
It started on the first pitch of the game.
Travis Bazzana, Cleveland’s rookie second baseman and leadoff hitter, jumped on Arrighetti’s opening fastball and sent it over the wall in right-center field. It was not a mislocated pitch so much as a statement, the kind of swing that establishes a tone before the home team has even come to bat. Two innings later, Kyle Manzardo turned on a first-pitch fastball and put it into the left-center seats for a two-run homer. In the fifth, Bazzana came up with runners on second and third, worked a 1-2 count, and got a sweeper he deposited deep into the right-center bleachers for a three-run shot that put the game away.
All three home runs came off left-handed hitters. That detail matters because, until Saturday, it had essentially never happened.
Entering the game, Arrighetti had not allowed a home run to a left-handed batter in his first 11 starts and had surrendered only three total across those outings. Against a Cleveland lineup that sent eight left-handed or switch-hitters to the plate, he gave up three in a single evening.
“Stuff overall, I thought it was good,” Arrighetti said afterward. “Made a couple mistakes that got punished. Other than that, feel like I was in the zone a lot, competitive a lot.”
He was not wrong about the zone. Arrighetti threw strikes on 72 percent of his pitches, which he said was his best rate of the season. He walked nobody. He struck out eight. The underlying indicators were, in many ways, encouraging. The scoreboard was not.
“I think there’s been some pitches kind of more in the heart of the plate that they’re putting some good swings on,” manager Joe Espada said. “But he’s still creating the swing and miss, he’s still punching people out. I think it’s just been some pitches that I’m sure he would like to take back.”
The broader June context makes Saturday harder to dismiss as a one-off. Arrighetti posted a 0.93 ERA across 29 innings in May, earning AL Pitcher of the Month honors. In four June starts, he carries a 6.95 ERA over 22 innings. The form of the struggle has shifted week to week—last weekend in Kansas City it was eight hits, nearly all singles; Saturday, it was three home runs.
It is worth remembering what Arrighetti was asked to do and what he delivered. When Brown went down with a shoulder injury in May, Houston’s rotation was already fragile. Arrighetti absorbed the burden of a staff that needed someone to take the ball and give the team a chance. He did that repeatedly. Brown has returned now, and the cavalry of Cristian Javier and Ronel Blanco is approaching. The margin for Arrighetti’s struggles has grown.
That does not make the June numbers any less real. Arrighetti knows it.
“I feel like the adjustments that I needed to make after Kansas City were made,” he said, “and just some stuff didn’t go my way tonight.”
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