HOUSTON – For the first time ever, it was Josh Hader against the Milwaukee Brewers in a save situation.

It looked pretty similar to how most of Hader’s showings with his former team did, too. 

One, two, three went the Brewers in the ninth inning Friday night at Minute Maid Park against Hader on 12 pitches with two flyouts and a strikeout to punctuate a 5-4 win for the Houston Astros. 

Hader, who tallied 125 of his 170 career saves and won three National League Reliever of the Year awards with Milwaukee, now has earned a save against all 30 MLB clubs. 

The matchup didn’t quite possess the same pizzazz as it would have last season when Hader, pitching for the team the Brewers traded him to, was on the San Diego Padres. But his two appearances against the Brewers in 2023 were in non-save situations. 

Back in his comfort zone and protecting a one-run lead late on a stormy evening in Houston, Hader looked like his old self and not the reliever who has been up and down this year with the Astros.

“He’s one of the best in the game,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “There’s no doubt about it. He’s one of the best in the game. “

Joey Ortiz put up a decent fight against Hader, taking the count full and on the seventh pitch lining out on a well-struck ball to right. But once Hader got that first out of the inning, it was a quick exit for Milwaukee. Blake Perkins popped out to second and Owen Miller, pinch-hitting for the .302-batting Brice Turang, to get a lefty-righty matchup, struck out on three pitches.

“Hader’s a tough at-bat for (Turang),” Murphy explained of the pinch-hit decision. “That’s a tough at-bat for lefties. We had prepped Owen before the game that if we get in that situation, to be ready.”

Freddy Peralta unable to keep the ball in the yard

Freddy Peralta has shown signs of being able to take the leap forward as a No. 1 starter this year, yet one important piece is eluding him: Pitching through the order a third time. 

After getting off to a rip-roaring start to the season with a 1.90 earned run average through four outings, Peralta has had a rougher go of things on the mound. 

With five more runs – all earned – in five innings Friday, Peralta now sports a 6.23 ERA over his last five starts. 

“It’s not typical of Freddy, but, again, he’s the guy you want out there,” Murphy said. “Anytime we’re playing, if he’s healthy I want him out there.”

The steady trend throughout this recent blip is an inability to avoid trouble once the lineup flips a third time. 

On April 25 against the Pirates, Peralta allowed two runs on a walk, RBI single and RBI double in the fifth, his final inning of the day.

He didn’t get a chance to face the order a third time against the Rays because he was ejected for hitting Jose Siri, but the next time out against the Cubs, Peralta gave up a two-run double, two walks and a run-scoring wild pitch in a decisive fifth. 

Then in his last time out against the Cardinals, Peralta allowed a two-run single in the fifth as soon as the order flipped and a RBI double in the sixth. 

It burned him against the Astros, too. 

With one out, one on and holding a 4-2 lead, Jose Altuve started Houston’s third turn through its lineup with an infield single, which in fairness was little fault of Peralta’s. But Jeremy Peña battled Peralta to a full count one batter later and golfed out a slider at the knees — but over the meat of the plate — 380 feet to left for a go-ahead three run blast. 

Peralta was more frustrated than usual following this loss. 

“Honestly, I thought I threw the ball really good today,” he said. “Sometimes things happen in the game that I can’t control. That’s it.”

Peralta felt off the bat that Peña’s blast, which traveled 380 feet at 98.2 mph off the bat and would have been a homer at 13 out of 30 ballparks according to Statcast, was staying in the yard. 

“The way that he hit it, for me, I don’t know how hard he hit it but I didn’t look like it was gone,” Peralta said. “I thought it was a fly ball – a regular fly ball.”

Turned out it wasn’t. 

And now, across Peralta’s last five outings, batters have hit .363/.462/.636 with three doubles, a homer and four walks in 22 at-bats. 

Peralta’s velocity is maintained in the later innings, if not even a tick higher than early on. The slider is still getting whiffs, but when batters are making contact the third time through, they’re squaring it up with an average exit velocity over 96 mph.

Neither Murphy nor Peralta identified what might be the malady for Peralta in those middle innings.

“I don’t think it’s reason to be concerned,” Murphy said. “I think any time he doesn’t blow through things, people are like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ That’s not how it is. You have to understand the game. There are a lot of guys who are doing a lot of research on him and doing everything they can to put their A-game on him.”

Joey Ortiz continues to mash

Joey Ortiz’s glove was touted when he was brought over to Milwaukee from Baltimore in early February as part of the Corbin Burnes trade. 

Turns out the bat plays, too. 

Ortiz hit a go-ahead three run homer in the fourth before Peña reclaimed the lead for Houston an inning later. It was part of a game where Ortiz reached base three times and finished a triple shy of the cycle. 

With a single to lead off the seventh, Ortiz had reached base safely in eight consecutive plate appearances. 

His lone out of the day was even an impressive battle with one of the game’s in Hader that ended in loud contact. 

“He’s looked great,” Murphy said. “He really has. Both offensively and on defense. He’s stepped up.”