Brown bears down for 6 strong frames as Astros eye AL's No. 2 seed

HOUSTON -- The four singles the White Sox pieced together against Astros starter Hunter Brown in the second inning of Wednesday afternoon’s game had an average exit velocity of 80 mph, including two infield hits. Chicago pushed across a pair of runs and forced Brown to throw 28 pitches in the inning.

“Honestly, I was kind of dragging my blanket a little bit after the second inning,” Brown said. “I couldn’t believe that. I’m better than that, than to do that. That was unbelievable, honestly.”

Another infield hit to start the third by Miguel Vargas and a walk to Andrew Benintendi is when Brown decided he had enough. No more soft contact. No more contact of any kind, at least for the rest of the third. Brown picked up his blanket, tied it around his neck and turned it into a cape.

Brown responded by striking out the final three hitters in the third en route to sending down 11 of the final 12 hitters he faced to complete six strong innings and send the Astros to a 6-2 win over the White Sox at Daikin Park.

“I really was not happy about that inning,” Brown said. “It cost me, like, 100 pitches in that inning alone. Obviously, that’s hyperbole. I don’t know if I got angry? I was just better than that. I felt I was better than them, and that’s kind of my mindset there.”

Brown, who missed 2 1/2 months earlier in the season with a right shoulder strain, will be as important to the Astros’ postseason chances as any player in the final 21 games of the regular season. Those playoff chances got a big boost with the Astros taking three of four games from the American League Central-leading White Sox to pull within 1 1/2 games of the No. 2 playoff seed in the AL.

The division winner with the second-best record would get the No. 2 seed in the AL, which comes with a bye into the Division Series.

“Why not?” said Brown, who’s allowed three earned runs over 12 2/3 innings in his past two starts.

The Astros (72-69), who sit 2 1/2 games ahead of the second-place Rangers (69-71) and 5 1/2 games ahead of the third-place Mariners (66-74) -- pending their results Thursday night -- in the AL West, own the tiebreaker over the White Sox by winning the season series, 5-2.

“We needed to come here at home and play well and I thought we did,” manager Joe Espada said. “We pitched really well, too. It’s the kind of series that I’m expecting the boys to do this time of year. That was really good. Good baseball.”

Jose Altuve’s 270th career homer, which came off Luis Castillo in the first, put the Astros ahead, 2-0, but Brown’s second-inning misfortune allowed the White Sox to tie the game. In the third, the Astros scored four times on an RBI double by Isaac Paredes, a two-run triple by Varsho and an RBI single by Christian Walker, who snapped an 0-for-11 drought with a pair of singles.

After throwing 69 pitches in the first three innings, Brown needed only 32 in the final three innings. He finished with 101 pitches, allowing two runs on six hits and two walks, while striking out seven batters. He’s allowed six earned runs across 23 1/3 innings in his past four starts.

“The third inning is when he really turned the game around,” Espada said. “We go score four and he just turned it to a different gear. He just went off and said, ‘I’m going to maintain this lead.’ You just saw a completely different demeanor out of him once he got out of that jam in the third.”

The Astros improved to 28-18 against teams that are .500 or better, which bodes well for the next nine games. After the D-backs come to Houston this weekend, the Astros will play road series at the Phillies and the Rays -- three teams currently in the playoff picture. The Astros are looking like a playoff team themselves, but there’s work to do.

“Really proud of the way we came here and played this series,” Espada said. “Now, we’ve got another good team [Arizona] coming in here. ... I want to see that urgency, and I think our guys are starting to keep the pressure on those games. We’ve still got baseball to play. I don’t want to get complacent. We’ve just got to continue to play well.”