Brown twirls best outing of season, proving his skipper right

CHICAGO -- Despite an injury-plagued 2026 that has limited right-hander Hunter Brown to a 4.05 ERA in 40 innings entering Saturday’s contest against the White Sox at Rate Field, Astros manager Joe Espada hadn’t lost faith in his ace.

“He’s shown the velo and the shapes of his pitches are good -- getting ahead and executing his pitches,” Espada said before Saturday’s game. “I think he agrees that he could be better, but it’s going to click for him. This guy’s one of the best pitchers in the game. Hopefully, we see that version today.”

Maybe Espada had a peek into the future. Maybe the manager had a hunch. Or maybe Brown was just due.

Whatever it was, the Astros and Brown will gladly take his best performance of the year, where he tossed seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts in the Astros’ 4-1 win over the White Sox on Saturday. It was the first time Brown had pitched into the seventh this season, a surprising fact given he logged 185 1/3 innings in 2025, when he finished third in AL Cy Young Award voting.

Brown had a 5.22 ERA in six starts since coming off the IL in June. Saturday he looked more like that dominant starter the Astros hoped he’d be.

“That’s Hunter Brown right there,” Espada said after the win. “He looked pissed, too. I thought he came out there and he was pissed. He was tired of the performances. He wanted to show up today and give us an opportunity to win a series, and we did."

But it wasn’t just the fact that Brown pitched deep into the game -- it was the way he did it.

Brown’s velocity was up across the board; his average four-seam fastball and sinker speeds were up about 1 mph, his changeup was up 1.2 mph and his knuckle curve and slider were up about 2 mph.

“I feel like my stuff has increasingly gotten better over the last couple of weeks,” Brown said. “Even vs. Baltimore [career-high six walks and two HBP], I felt good about my curveball and the way that my fastball was working. I just simply lost too many hitters. I knew I was kind of trending in the right direction.

“I know I wasn’t too far away. And I was kind of able to iron that out and turn it into a good outing today.”

Then, there was the fact that he only improved as the game wore on. All-Star Munetaka Murakami led the bottom of the fourth inning off with a single, a potential land mine for Brown. But the right-hander struck out the next three hitters on 12 pitches, the beginning of a run of 12 straight batters retired by Brown.

“It felt like I was definitely in a groove, but you don’t think about things like that,” Brown said. “You’re just trying to make each pitch individually the best you can.”

The Astros’ lineup eventually was able to get to White Sox starter Sean Burke to buoy Brown. Isaac Paredes singled with the bases loaded in the sixth, and the ball went past right fielder Braden Montgomery to score all three runs. Paredes added another RBI single in the eighth.

It’s the third quality start since Brown returned from a shoulder strain that caused him to miss two and a half months, but it’s easily the best outing of the year and at a pivotal time, too.

The team placed Spencer Arrighetti on the 15-day injured list before Saturday’s game with right foot nerve irritation after he exited Friday’s series-opening win after just one inning. Brown’s ability to pick up 21 outs saved a bullpen that covered eight innings the day before.

Brown and the Astros know what this version of the right-hander could mean to the team -- Saturday’s outing was a taste.

“I don’t think I need to talk about it as much,” Espada said. “He knows. It’s August. It’s go time. I think we, as a club, we need that. I expect that from him, but today was one of those games where we needed him to go out there for seven innings since we used a lot of our pitchers last night. But he delivered.”