NEW YORK -- If blowing a six-run lead en route to losing a home game to the last-place A’s on Sunday to cap a disappointing 3-6 homestand wasn’t the low point of the Astros’ season, it certainly was close. The loss dropped Houston back under .500, a day before the club cut ties with general manager Dana Brown.
Astros owner Jim Crane said Tuesday the club was simply in need of a change, while reiterating that manager Joe Espada had done a good job with the roster he’d been given and would be evaluated at the end of the season. Espada addressed the players in a meeting prior to Tuesday’s game and thanked them for supporting him through a difficult family issue, which caused him to miss Sunday’s game.
The Astros then took the field at Yankee Stadium and played the kind of baseball they will have to play over the season’s final 30 games if they want to hold off the Rangers and the Mariners in the wacky American League West race, coming from behind to beat the Yankees, 9-7, to climb over Texas and back into first place.
“This is the way we need to come here and play today,” Espada said. “Any other way wasn’t going to be acceptable. We needed to come here today and play like a team that is hunting to win a division, and we did.”
Yainer Diaz's second homer of the game and Yordan Alvarez’s RBI triple highlighted a three-run eighth inning that gave the Astros an 8-6 lead. After blowing leads Saturday and Sunday against the A’s, the Astros locked this one down with Josh Hader getting a four-out save -- his 19th of the season.
“I felt with the way the game was going, it was back and forth, we got punched, we punched them back, and we got punched again and we retaliated," Espada said.
“We needed to win that game. We needed to go out there and make a point that we’re going to win this game, and Josh was very efficient in that third of an inning [to end the eighth] and was able to close it out.”
Jeremy Peña went 2-for-5 with two runs scored and a home run, his 15th of the season, and AL Most Valuable Player Award favorite Alvarez went 3-for-5 with two runs scored and had his first triple since July 21, 2024, when he hit for the cycle at Seattle.
“Like I said [after the] last home game, yesterday we were able to use it as a day to reset, to go out here and give the effort we know we can and get the victory,” Alvarez said.
The Astros’ offense has a completely different dynamic when Peña and Alvarez are both swinging the bat well at the top two spots in the order, which was the case for most of the first half of the season but not for most of August.
“We’ve got to keep pushing,” Peña said. “This is the final stretch. Every game means so much, especially to our ballclub. We’ve got to treat every game like it’s a playoff game. We’ve got to show up and do the little things right -- move the runner, get them in, play good defense, good pitching, and win some ballgames.”
Diaz slammed his second homer of the game, this one to right field, to tie the score at 6 in the eighth. Peña then hit a two-out single and scored the go-ahead run when Alvarez rocketed a triple into right-center. Isaac Paredes’ single scored Alvarez for an 8-6 lead, and Diaz added an RBI single in the ninth to cap a 3-for-4 night.
“I think what clicked is ever since the first at-bat, my body was under control,” Diaz said. “I felt very good physically, and it helped me to not chase pitches that were out of my zone. I think that’s what helped me today and what clicked for me.”
In his second Major League start, which came on his 24th birthday, Astros No. 9 prospect Ethan Pecko allowed five runs on five hits and four walks in 4 1/3 innings. Houston has gone 12 consecutive games without a starting pitcher finishing six innings, but the offense made sure it didn’t matter on Tuesday.
“We needed to come out here today and play this way,” Espada said.