Ramón Urías ran the Astros' hitters meeting. Then his former team almost perfect game'd them

New York Times

10 hours ago

HOUSTON — Before he stopped history, Ramón Urías tried to tell his new teammates how to prevent it. No one inside the Houston Astros clubhouse had more meticulous knowledge of Friday's opponent than Urías, the 31-year-old middle infielder acquired 16 days ago from the Baltimore Orioles.
Using any of Urías' insights is logical. Astros manager Joe Espada deployed a similar tactic last week at loanDepot Park, where deadline acquisition Jesús Sánchez stood up during Houston's series advance meeting and spilled all he knew about the Miami Marlins team he just departed.
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Urías had the same responsibility on Friday afternoon. Espada said he expected to hear 'some of their style and strategy and go over some of the stuff we have noticed in the scouting report' of an Orioles roster ravaged by a trade deadline fire sale. Urías said he spoke of the Orioles' baserunning tendencies and how they play.
'I didn't have anything to say about the pitching staff because there's a lot of new guys over there,' said Urías after saving the Astros from ignominy in a 7-0 loss.
One of them stood on the precipice of perfection when Urías stepped into the batter's box for his third at-bat. Urías fell behind in the count 0-2, common for so many of his teammates against a tall Baltimore rookie named Brandon Young.
Young is a 26-year-old right-hander who made his 11th major-league start on Friday. None of the previous 10 lasted longer than six innings. Eight of them ended before Young could finish the fifth.
After the last one, a three-inning, six-run nightmare against the transient A's, Young told reporters, 'It's just disappointing letting the team down, almost every time I go out.' It inflated his ERA to 6.70 after a 10-start span in which he surrendered 11.6 hits per nine innings.
On Friday, an Astros lineup with the American League's second-highest batting average could not muster one through seven innings. Young flirted harder with a perfect game than any pitcher has this season, stunning a crowd of 33,654 that included many family and friends from his hometown of Lumberton, Texas.
'Came here since I was 5,' Young said. 'Sat in the right-field line all the time. Think tickets were like 7 bucks back then. Yeah, I mean, it means a lot coming here. It's still Minute Maid Park to me.'
All-Star shortstop Jeremy Peña did not play due to illness. The remaining healthy members of Houston's injury-ravaged team managed to hit one ball harder than 99 mph across the first 7 2/3 innings. Jose Altuve made two first-pitch outs. Yainer Diaz made another during the fifth. Young required just 62 pitches to procure his first 18 outs.
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'I would say it 100 percent affected me,' said Houston starter Framber Valdez, who surrendered three earned runs without any offensive support. 'I felt like I couldn't even sit down and I was already walking out to go out there.
'Sometimes that's just the game of baseball. Sometimes the pitcher is going to have a better game, is going to throw a perfect game. It definitely affected me. I felt like I couldn't even get a drink of water in and I was already out there.'
Taylor Trammell tried to drag bunt on the first pitch of the sixth, only for Young to secure the slow roller and record the first out with no incident. He threw just four pitches to retire the next two Astros, perhaps the first sign that something special could manifest on this otherwise mundane August night.
'We wanted to be aggressive because we know he's a strike thrower. We just couldn't really get anything going offensively,' Espada said.
'We knew he throws strikes. He really commanded both sides of the plate. We were off balance. We really couldn't hit (anything) hard.'
Urías didn't, either. He evened the count in the eighth inning, so Young tried to spike a putaway splitter. Urías reached for the pitch, struck it 56 mph and sent it two feet toward the pitcher's mound. Young left the rubber and barehanded the baseball.
'You smell it,' said Urías, who covers 26.9 feet per second when he sprints, in the 38th percentile of all major-league players. 'I just wanted to run as hard as I could.'
Young uncorked an off-balance throw while he did. Replays indicated the 26-year-old right-hander could've stopped and set his feet, but adrenaline amid a historic performance makes such clear thinking impossible.
'I just think in that scenario, if BY does set his feet, I think he's got a little better shot to make the play,' Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino told reporters. 'It's going to be a tough play regardless, but it's a really tough ask in that spot with the emotions and everything going on right there. It shouldn't detract one bit from the game that he threw. It was incredible.'
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Young's throw traveled past first baseman Coby Mayo's outstretched arms and up the right-field line. An accurate throw may nab Urías, but the play's sheer difficulty made it easy for official scorer Dave Matheson to rule it a single. Urías advancing to second base also allowed him to give the play an error it deserved.
'(Urías) is a really good hitter, but we've seen him hit that same dribbler 100 times and get thrown out by a couple steps a lot,' Mansolino said.
His new team relished the reversal of fortune.
'You're trying to break it,' Urías said, 'you don't want to go home and know (they) just threw a perfect game.'
(Top photo of Ramón Urías: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
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