HOUSTON -- With two weeks to reflect on a tumultuous first half of the season and ample time to make some changes before his first start after the All-Star break, Astros right-hander Tatsuya Imai leaned more on his third pitch and delivered the kind of start manager Joe Espada hopes to see more of going forward.
Imai, pitching for the first time since July 7, held the Marlins to one run and four hits and struck out eight batters in six innings, while Isaac Paredes clubbed a three-run homer in the fifth inning to lead the Astros to a 5-3 win Tuesday night at Daikin Park.
Imai pitched the Astros’ fifth game out of the All-Star break, throwing for the first time since he went 3 2/3 innings two weeks earlier in Washington, which gave him 13 days between starts. He turned in one of the better starts of his rookie season, throwing 96 pitches (56 strikes) in his longest outing since June 25.
In his first 13 starts, Imai relied mostly on two pitches -- slider and four-seam fastball -- and had dispersed them pretty evenly, but that wasn’t the case Tuesday. He threw 52 sliders (54 percent) and 32 four-seamers (33 percent), leaning heavily on a slider that produced 11 of his 15 swings and misses. But he threw 12 changeups, which was his second-highest usage of a third pitch this year.
“It allows him to use his fastball and the slider more effectively,” Espada said. “The [changeup], when it comes out of the hand, looks very similar to the slider. I thought he got some swing-and-miss on that and it opened the door for the slider. And then [he] stunned them with the fastball at 96, 97 [mph] to some of them. I thought that usage of the third pitch was effective for him to be successful.”
Imai, signed in January to a three-year deal worth $54 million that was Houston’s biggest offseason splash, entered Tuesday with a 6.06 ERA in 52 innings pitched. He had retired only 15 of the 31 batters he faced in his two starts prior to the All-Star break and his 14.2 percent walk percentage was the highest among 184 pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched this season.
All that was in the past when he took the mound Tuesday.
“I didn’t want to think too much,” Imai said. “I wasn’t satisfied with the first half of the season, and then I want to just keep trying better. For the last half of the season, I want to get more W's and keep performing better.”
On Tuesday, Imai pitched around a two-out single in the first inning, but Espada was most encouraged when he struck out Marlins designated hitter Liam Hicks on a slider to start the second inning.
“When you see that slider and swing and miss, and a good hitter like Hicks takes that ugly swing on it, you said, ‘OK, it’s there,’” Espada said. “Those are the early signs I’m looking for Imai -- how well he’s throwing that slider. Is he getting swings and misses? And he was.”
Imai didn’t throw the changeup until facing nine-hole hitter Joe Mack in the third inning. Espada would like to see him throw it even earlier in the game.
“You build confidence on the pitch by using it,” Espada said. “It’s there. We’re not asking him to use it a ton, but when he does, it’s a good pitch. It’s swing and miss. The hitters say, ‘He’s using the changeup, so let’s look for it.’ And now that opens the door for more areas for him to go in there and expand the zone.”
Jeremy Peña led off the first inning with a homer, and the Astros led 2-0 on an RBI double by Lucas Spence in the second that was his first career RBI. Paredes took reliever Tyler Zuber deep with two outs and two on in the fifth, an inning that was kept alive when Yordan Alvarez (2-for-4) struck out but narrowly beat the catcher’s throw to first after a wild pitch.
Mack hit a two-run homer off reliever AJ Blubaugh in the seventh that cut the Houston lead to 5-3. Jose Altuve hit into a 5-4-3 triple play in the eighth to thwart a rally, but Astros closer Josh Hader threw a scoreless ninth for his 11th save.