DETROIT — The all-or-nothing batting approach has served the Houston Astros well during the first two months, though manager A.J. Hinch expects that to change.
The Astros stormed to the top of the American League West by hitting a major league leading 62 home runs. Only two other teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers (54) and Seattle Mariners (51) — had reached the 50-homer mark heading into Thursday’s action.
In contrast, the Astros rank last in the AL in batting average at .230, 21 points below the league average. Milwaukee (.229) is the only team with a lower average.
“We don’t have a ton of high averages but we do damage when we put the ball in play,” Hinch said. “We understand the averages are hopefully going to even out over the course of the season. I like that we’re starting to get more hits and piece more innings together than we did at the beginning of the season. We’re going to be better.”
The surprising aspect about the Astros’ bash and dash offense — they’re also tied for the league lead in stolen bases — is the sources of those long balls. Luis Valbuena is the surprise leader with 10 home runs while Colby Rasmus and Evan Gattis have eight apiece. The players expected to lead the club in that category — Chris Carter and George Springer — rank fourth and fifth with seven and six homers, respectively.
“Home runs make everyone feel better,” Hinch said. “It makes the hitters feel better, it makes the coaches and me feel better and it makes our pitching staff settle in. It’s hard to rely on it but we’ve hit enough of them that our team believes we’re going to hit one at the opportune time.”
They got another one at Detroit on Thursday from pinch-hitter Preston Tucker, whose first career homer tied the score at 5 in the ninth inning.
If they hit more than one, they’re unbeatable. The Astros are 17-0 when hitting two or more homers, their longest such streak since they won 22 consecutive games in 1994 when blasting multiple homers.
They’ve also been clutch. More than one-third of their homers have come in the last three innings.
“I’m really happy with the timing of the home runs,” Hinch said. “We’ve hit them when we’ve been down, we’ve hit them to separate ourselves in close games, we’ve hit them in key moments against good pitching. It’s part of our offense but it’s not entirely our offense. That threat is there virtually one through nine and that’s a good feeling.”
