HOUSTON -- The decision made all the baseball sense in the world -- walk the guy batting .354 to get to the guy with much less pop in his bat, and less of a track record of clutch hitting.

From that angle, Houston catcher Robinson Chirinos had little reason to be too insulted by the Indians’ decision to intentionally walk Josh Reddick to get to him. Prior to this game, Reddick was 7-for-14 lifetime against Carlos Carrasco. He’s also been Houston’s hottest hitter for the past two weeks. There was a runner on second. First base was open. There was no logic in pitching to him.

Turns out, there wasn’t much logic in pitching to Chirinos, either. He swung at Carrasco’s first pitch -- a 92 mph fastball -- and sent the ball 426 feet to the train tracks in left field, breaking open a tie game and all but sealing the Astros’ 4-1 win over the Indians.

“All I talk about to our catchers is, ‘Catch a winner, get a hit,’ manager AJ Hinch said. “That’s a huge day. When you get a hit like that, that’s probably the ultimate day for a catcher.”

Not only was the homer Chirinos’ third of the season, it was the third of his career off Carrasco. So there’s a little history there, and that helped Chirinos gather a game plan ahead of time. He recalled seeing a lot of breaking pitches in his past at-bats vs. Carrasco. Sunday was different, though – in his first two plate appearances, Carrasco threw him more two-seamers.

Chirinos knew what to look for in that decisive seventh inning.

“Even before we started that inning, I was telling [Alex] Cintron, my hitting coach, I was going to look for a two-seam first pitch in my third at-bat,” Chirinos said. “I was lucky enough to put a good swing on it.”

The game, as it is constructed today, does not allot much time for a hitter on deck to think about the intentional walk unfolding before him. The days of watching the pitcher throw four balls five feet away from home plate are over. If the hitter on deck is going to let the insult of an intentional walk fester, he needs it to happen quickly.

And there most certainly is no time for his teammates to give him the old “Don’t let ‘em do it to you” pep talk from the dugout.

“As a hitter, it’s kind of like, you don’t feel good when they intentionally walk the guy in front of you.” Chirinos said, grinning.

Instead of thinking about it, Chirinos acted. About 60 seconds after the Indians called for the intentional pass to Reddick, Chirinos sent the homer over the tracks.

“As soon as he hit it, I think I was screaming as loud as I could into the ground and tried to hide it a little bit, I guess,” Reddick said. “You’re just so fired up in that moment that it doesn’t really matter.”

The homer erased six innings of befuddlement on behalf of the Astros’ offense. Houston had one hit and one walk against Carrasco until the big seventh, when the lineup started to act as it typically does when given a combination of a little luck and a break here and there.

They pounced, and then piled on.

Yuli Gurriel’s two-out double earlier in the inning looked like it might clear the short fence in left, but it also looked somewhat playable. The result was somewhere in between – it grazed the funky-textured wall, bounced and skidded away from Indians left fielder Jake Bauers just far enough to allow Michael Brantley to score from first.

“At first when he hit it, I thought it was gone, and then I was hoping he wasn’t going to catch it as he was camping under it,” Hinch said. “It was just high enough to stay off the wall.”

The breakout inning led to a series split and a winning homestand for the Astros, who lead baseball with a 10-3 home record.

“Carrasco threw the ball really well tonight, but that’s what this team’s about,” Chirinos said. “We never give up. We put some quality at-bats together even when the guy’s dominating the whole game. It was fun to see it. It happened quick.”