Astros win 6th straight, firing on all cylinders with Deadline looming

HOUSTON -- The Astros are the hottest team in baseball and have the best hitter on the planet, but that doesn’t mean the club will sit on its hands prior to the Trade Deadline. If anything, Houston’s surge to the top of the American League West is a signal to the front office of what the club could be capable of in October with a few reinforcements.

While the Astros wait to see what roster additions will be made prior to Monday’s 5 p.m. CT Trade Deadline, they completed a dominating sweep of the Rangers -- who came into Daikin Park in first place in the division -- by winning Sunday’s series finale, 7-3, to stretch their season-high winning streak to six games.

“Just playing our tails off, man, on both sides of the ball -- the energy, the execution, just the determination by this club,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. “Right now, we’re just playing our best baseball, just top to bottom on both sides. We’re doing a lot of things very well. I love the energy. We’re locked in. That’s the type of baseball we need to play to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish.”

The Astros (58-55), winners of 11 of their past 12 games, have the longest active winning streak in the Majors and have posted back-to-back sweeps of AL West opponents to open up a 2 1/2-game lead over the second-place Rangers. Houston’s offense posted a 1.091 OPS in the sweep, outscoring Texas, 23-9.

What kind of statement did the Astros make with the Lone Star sweep?

“I think a pretty strong one, to be honest,” said starting pitcher Peter Lambert, who held the Rangers to two runs on three hits and two walks and struck out eight batters in 5 2/3 innings. “Just an unbelievable team effort all series, three pretty good games. It felt like each day somebody else was contributing in a pretty big one. A strong series.”

Houston never trailed at any point in three games. Cam Smith’s RBI single broke a 3-3 tie in the seventh inning, and Yordan Alvarez’s bases-loaded double scored a pair to make it 7-3 and cap a four-hit day, eliciting “M-V-P!” chants from the crowd.

“I think it’s something beautiful and something special listening to the crowd yell out, ‘M-V-P!’” Alvarez said.

Alvarez went 4-for-5 with two RBIs and continues to lead the AL in all three Triple Crown categories, hitting .330 with 35 home runs and 84 RBIs. He hit .467 (21-for-45) with 13 runs, five doubles, eight home runs, 16 RBIs and 12 walks in 13 games against the Rangers this year.

"The guys at the top are who beat us,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “I know Smith had a really good series, really good game today. [Taylor] Trammell had a really good last couple games, but the guys at the top, [Jeremy] Peña and Alvarez, are the ones that we couldn't slow down. I think that was really the story. Those two guys were in the middle of every inning, every rally that they had, and we just didn't have an answer for them."

Members of the Astros’ front office held a meeting prior to Sunday’s game to discuss trades to address their biggest needs: a left-handed bat, relief pitching and starting pitching. Astros general manager Dana Brown said on the team’s pregame radio show Sunday he didn’t want to trade any players from the Major League roster to get a deal done.

“We believe that we are [one of] the best teams in the West and one of the best teams in the American League, and that’s all that matters to me and our club,” Espada said. “Let’s go out and take care of business.”

The Astros did just that against the Rangers, and with possible reinforcements on the way via trade, and Peña and Alvarez -- who went a combined 14-for-25 in the series with six runs scored and nine RBIs -- setting the table offensively, Houston looks more and more like a team to be reckoned with.

“We knew back in Anaheim that this was going to be a pretty important series,” Alvarez said. “We knew we had to put a little intensity behind us, so I think that’s what we saw out there, that we put more intensity into the game and we treated it more like it was a playoff game for us.”