Astros back All-Star Keuchel in win
On July 6, 1990, Preston Tucker was born in Tampa, Florida to both Mike Tucker, and Lisa Fernandez. Now, just 25-years later, Tucker is celebrating his birthday by finishing 4-for-5 at the plate with a home run, double, two singles and a pair of RBI for the Houston Astros as they would go onto defeating the Cleveland Indians by the final score of 9-4 on the road.
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The first-place Astros got things going by hanging a four-spot during the opening frame on the contest. Evan Gattis drove in Tucker to give his team the 1-0 lead then Colby Rasmus followed that up with an RBI ground-rule double to center field, making it 2-0.
Shortly after Chris Carter made it a three-run ballgame on a sacrifice fly, infielder Marwin Gonzalez recorded the second RBI single of the inning to right fielder, Brandon Moss which made it 4-0 to back up Dallas Keuchel.
Keuchel (11-3, 2.14 ERA) was informed that he would be joining second baseman Jose Altuve on the American League All-Star roster. Tonight against the Indians, he surrendered three earned runs on nine hits while issuing only one walk and striking out eight batters in six innings of work.
Jason Kipnis put Cleveland on the board in the third inning on a sacrifice fly to Rasmus out in left field to cut the lead down to just three. Tucker later responded with his fifth big fly of the season – a moon shot that soared into the right field bleachers, extending the lead back up to four.
Brandon Moss wasn’t going to allow his team to give up that early without a fight and picked up his first RBI triple to Tucker out in right field to plate first baseman Carlos Santana.
All-Star starter, Jose Altuve bumped the score up to 6-2 on an RBI double to center field, scoring Jason Castro with Austin Adams on the mound. He would eventually come around to score on Tucker’s base knock to left field.
With the Astros holding a five-run lead into the seventh inning, Gonzalez tallied their final run on a solo home run to right-center field to make it 9-3.
David Murphy would be credited with an RBI in the seventh on Cleveland’s second sacrifice fly of the evening.
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