In the eighth inning Wednesday night, with the Houston Astros tied and Yordan Alvarez at the plate, Texas Rangers left-hander Tyler Alexander fell behind 3-0 and threw a sweeper.
“Like, who swings at a 3-0 slider,” Jeremy Peña said afterward, “and hits it 110 to the batter’s eye?”
Alvarez did. He sent Alexander’s pitch 448 feet over the center-field wall, broke the tie, and left his teammates shaking their heads again.
“Left-on-left sweeper down and away—dotted down and away—and he pulls it in the air 110,” first baseman Christian Walker said. “That’s hard to do. I’m borderline speechless.”
The go-ahead blast was Alvarez’s second home run of the night and his 20th of the season, reached in the Astros’ 57th game, the fastest any Astros hitter has reached that mark. He has five home runs in three games against Texas. He leads all qualified major-league hitters with a 1.085 OPS. The Rangers intentionally walked him in the ninth to keep him from doing further damage.
Houston won 4-3 and improved to 25-32. Mike Burrows turned in his longest and cleanest outing of the season, earning the win with seven innings of two-run ball.
Alvarez’s first homer came in the fourth inning, a 428-foot shot off Jacob deGrom that followed a first-pitch slider fouled off, two missed changeups, a spoiled fastball, and an adjustment Alvarez made mid-at-bat. “He doesn’t wait for the at-bat to be over to make adjustments,” Peña said. “He makes adjustments pitch to pitch and that’s what makes him such a great hitter.”
Taylor Trammell, in his second game back from the injured list, drove in a run on a sacrifice bunt in the eighth, aided by a throwing error by Alexander, that scored Walker and pushed the lead to 4-2. Trammell also doubled and scored in the second, when Braden Shewmake’s sacrifice fly tied the game at 1-1.
Joc Pederson hit two home runs for Texas, including one leading off the eighth that cut the lead to 4-3 and brought Bryan King in for a four-out appearance. After allowing Pederson’s second homer, King retired the next four hitters. Enyel De Los Santos closed out the ninth for his fourth save.
The final game of this Silver Boot Series is Thursday night at Globe Life Field. Spencer Arrighetti starts for Houston against Nathan Eovaldi.
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