Another late-inning attack makes it for Astros to lift Braves

The Astros got their third win in a row and set a positive record of 11-10.

For the first time in the 2023 season, the Astros have won three games in a row. On Saturday night, they enjoyed a productive offense and recorded 11 hits en route to an 11-6 win against the Braves. Two home runs by Yordan Álvarez and Kyle Tucker were key factors to get the W.

With Framber Valdez on the mound, the Braves couldn’t do much damage. For the first five innings of the game, Valdez held Atlanta to one run –Sean Murphy’s solo home run— and set the tone to give the Astros a chance.

The lefty threw seven strong innings in which he scattered seven hits and three earned runs with no walks and nine strikeouts. He did surrender another long ball to Ozzie Albies in the sixth inning, this time a two-run shot. With the winning decision, Framber evened his record to 2-2 with a 2.25 ERA.

The Astros didn’t show up on the scoreboard until Yordan hit a two-run dinger to give the Astros a 2-1 lead in the sixth. It was a massive 414-foot rocket for his second homer in as many days. Álvarez is hitting for a weak .222 over his last 12 games but he’s hit four home runs and driven in 15 runs.

Immediately, José Abreu reached base on an error and Kyle Tucker hit a 410-foot moonshot, another two-run four-bagger to make it 4-1 against Braves starter Kyle Wright.

Even though the Braves tried to come back with Albies’ homer in the bottom sixth, the Astros were able to hold to their lead and even added two more runs between innings eight and nine.

In the eighth, Jeremy Peña basically created a run. He bunted for a hit, stole second base, and then scored via a Corey Julks RBI single. Lastly, José Abreu recorded an RBI single of his own to drive in Yordan and got his fifth run batted in across as many games.

Serving as the closer, Bryan Abreu hung another zero to record his first save of the campaign. In his last eight appearances, the righty has pitched 8 1/3 scoreless innings of three hits, five walks, and 13 strikeouts.

On Sunday, the Astros will go for the three-game series sweep (12:35 pm CT) with a nice pitching matchup between Cristian Javier and lefty Max Fried.

VIDEOS AND BOX SCORE HERE.