Houston Astros defeat Cincinnati Reds 4-3 – MLB Update
Houston Astros’ rookies put up a good show on Monday, August 1, to help the team beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-3 at Minute Maid Park.
With this victory, the Astros have made a good start with a 1-0 lead in the three games series.
Monday’s win would not come easily if it were not be about the trio of Jose Altuve, Jimmy Paredes and J. D. Martinez who played exceptionally well. It was Altuve’s 10th inning run that brought home the victory the Astros were expecting.
"I think you're able to say hey, we've got some talented players," Houston manager Brad Mills said of the young players. "And it's nice to see these guys just keep battling. There's no preconceived ideas of how they have to go about things or how they do
things, they just come up here and play."
For the Cincinnati Reds, the win came as a bit of surprise."We wanted to give him the win, and we had a chance to when we took them out of the game, but we couldn't get the big hit," Reds’ manager Dusty Baker said. "They just got a lot of singles."
The Astros had a relatively strong start when the game kicked off on Monday. Bud Norris pitched a scoreless inning following whom Bronson Arroyo was dispatched to the mound to keep the game in the defence’s hand.
But Arroyo was in for a surprise. Jimmy Paredes, one of the rookies of the night, tripled to deep centre, allowing Martinez to score in the second inning, giving the team an early 2-0 lead. Humberto Quintero came forward with another single.
His run tripled the Astros’ lead in the game against the struggling Arroyo who gave up 4-hits and three runs in the inning. But the Cincinnati Reds’ offence was quick to stage a comeback in the game. Joey Votto and Brandon Philips scored a single each to
bring the lead down to 3-2 for the Reds.
While Norris was able to pitch the third and fourth inning scoreless, the fifth one came with Jay Bruce’s RBI run that levelled the score. The game was open then for any team which was willing to capitalise upon the mistake committed by any player.
Astros, in the meanwhile, kept changing the bull-pen, from Sergio Escalona to Mark Melancon. He pitched the 10th inning with the game levelled as Logan Ondrusek came for pitching the 10th for the Reds and the Astros’ rookie Altuve executed
the pitch to perfection.
He quickly snapped in a single in the 10th to score the tiebreaking run for Houston to win the game 4-3 in the series’ first encounter.
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