Passan: How Astros’ Hunter Brown became the calendar year AL Cy Young
Of the 460,000-plus outings by a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball history, among the ugliest came a little more than a year ago. Hunter Brown, a right-hander for the Houston Astros with a high-octane fastball and an array of off-speed pitches, allowed nine runs to the Kansas City Royals and mustered only two outs. He yielded 11 hits, the most ever for a start of less than one inning.
In the weeks following the thrashing, Brown journeyed to find the version of himself who had gone from unheralded high schooler to standout at Division II Wayne State to major league rotation piece. He asked hard questions — of his teammates and himself. He weathered a few more middling outings and was on the cusp of a demotion. And he realized that in order to secure his future, he needed to look into his past and reacquaint himself with a long-abandoned pitch.
“He embraced that ass whooping,” Astros closer Josh Hader said, “and just became who he is now.”
Today, the 26-year-old Brown is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Since a transformative relief appearance last May, in which he unleashed a two-seam fastball he had stopped throwing five years earlier, Brown owns the best earned run average among American League starters at 2.20, nearly a quarter-point better than reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. Only Paul Skenes, arguably the game’s finest starter, has a lower ERA in that time frame than Brown. In six starts this season, Brown sports a 1.22 ERA, has struck out nearly six times as many hitters as he has walked and resembles the archetypal modern pitcher, marrying velocity with a six-pitch arsenal that consistently flummoxes hitters.
It all started May 11, 2024, in Detroit, where Brown grew up rooting for the Tigers and trying to emulate Justin Verlander. He had fiddled with seemingly everything since the Kansas City nightmare, changing his stride and hand placement during his delivery to no avail. He had sought counsel from teammates — Verlander, Hader and veteran reliever Ryan Pressly. His best advice came from hitters, though, when Brown presented them with a question: If you were facing me, what would you be looking for?
“Oh, Brown, that’s easy,” nine-time All-Star second baseman Jose Altuve told him. “Hard and away.”
Brown asked Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña the same question and was greeted with the identical answer. Ditto for longtime Astros third baseman Alex Bregman. Each said Brown’s arsenal, with his four-seamer, cutter, slider and curveball breaking to his glove side, needed a complementary offering inside to right-handed hitters particularly. His two-seamer re-debuted May 5 against the Mariners but found its footing six days later at Comerica Park.
“It’s no secret. At the time I was pitching terribly,” Brown said. “I knew I was running out of time. Something had to give. I just switched my mentality. Like, all right, this is going awful. I got to see all my family and friends, and I was like, ‘You know what, if this is my last major league game for a while, I’m gonna go out there and let it all loose.'”
Brown entered the game in the third inning determined to embrace a pitch he had ditched when the Astros chose him in the fifth round of the 2019 draft. While others, including Statcast, call it a sinker, it doesn’t have the standard boring action of the pitch. Brown says it is a “flat, running” fastball thrown with a two-seam grip — and he is convinced it helped salvage his career. He limited the Tigers to one run on five hits over five innings with seven strikeouts that day.
He picked up the pitch almost immediately because of his familiarity with it. During his three seasons at Wayne State, Brown threw almost exclusively a two-seamer and slider. When he entered the Astros organization, their philosophy was simple: Pair a hard breaking ball with a top-of-the-zone four-seam fastball and find success. He did and shot through Houston’s system after COVID, joining the Astros for the stretch run of their eventual World Series victory in 2022.
Brown’s ability to add pitches had already endeared him to Houston’s development staff. During his draft year, he filled out a survey for the Astros on his pitch mix and said he threw a curveball even though he had scrapped it in college. Early in his time with the Astros, coaches asked him to throw the curveball just to see what they had. After the first curve Brown tried, a coach chimed in: “Yeah, you’re gonna keep throwing that.”
Considering he had added a changeup and cutter during his time with the Astros, too, Brown didn’t fret about the rebirth of his two-seamer. The pitch didn’t need to move like his teammate Framber Valdez‘s. It simply served as a reminder to hitters that Brown wasn’t afraid to throw inside and that they couldn’t hunt the rest of his arsenal on the outer half of the plate.
“I wanted to go back to just athletic throwing,” Brown said. “I don’t want to be a robot. I think people get so locked in and dialed into repeating the exact same delivery every single time, which, yes, in a vacuum, if you can do that, that’s awesome. There’s not a lot of guys that can actually do that over the course of the season. I kind of just like taking — I don’t wanna say a whiffle ball-in-the-backyard approach, but realistically, that’s what you’re trying to do. It’s just against the best players in the world.”
Over time, as the two-seamer paid dividends and was further incorporated into his pitch mix, Brown regained his confidence and began to understand the advice Verlander was giving him. Mindset isn’t just important, Verlander said. It’s everything. If a hitter gets jammed and flares a ball into the outfield, that’s not bad luck worth lamenting; it’s a reminder that process trumps outcome, and any sort of pitch that induces a weakly hit ball is a good one — and one that can be replicated to greater effect going forward.
Slowly, Brown cobbled together strong starts and began to live up to the nickname given to him a few years earlier, when he was at Triple-A. The team had gathered at the airport at 3:30 a.m. to return home, and Brown was pounding a drink loaded with caffeine. Why, his teammate Pete Solomon asked, would he do that in the middle of the night when their flight wasn’t scheduled to land until 8 a.m.?
“Hey, man,” Brown said. “You put diesel in, you get diesel out. I’ve got stuff to do today.”
On that day, Diesel was born — and Brown’s velocity numbers support the sobriquet. Only Hunter Greene, Skenes, Skubal and Jose Soriano throw an average fastball harder than Brown’s 97.4 mph. It’s almost a tick and a half higher than last season, a function, Brown said, of a more mature routine. In addition to offseason work on mobility and strength gained through Bulgarian split squats, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Brown relaxed his off-day weightlifting habit and ramped back his velocity in between-starts bullpen sessions from 92-to-94 mph to 86-to-88.
“His whole demeanor when he steps out there is different,” Pena said. “He shows up ready to dominate every time he’s about to take the mound. Every time he’s up there, you see him strutting around.”
It’s reminiscent of Verlander, whose cocksure mound presence is a defining feature. During Brown’s struggles, Verlander tried to remind him that his raw stuff was good enough to stop trying to execute perfect pitches and instead challenge hitters to hit his stuff in the strike zone. Brown’s walk rate this year is among the game’s best, and on pitches in the zone, hitters are batting .191/.200/.258 against him, good for the third-lowest OPS in the game.
“It goes one way or the other,” Hader said. “You feel sorry for yourself and play the victim or you figure out, ‘Hey, I got to do this to be where I want to be, and I want to stay here. I’ve got to be better.’ And that’s just the type of dude he is. I mean, go and look at the numbers over the last year.”
They remained sparkling Sunday during his first outing in Kansas City since the disasterpiece of 2024. Brown blitzed through six innings against the Royals, yielding one run and striking out seven, and solidified his case for AL Pitcher of the Month. Awards don’t really matter to Brown, though. This time last year, he worried about simply keeping his rotation spot.
No longer is that a concern. Diesel has arrived, carving lineups, snatching hitters’ dignity, writing one more chapter in the story of a naysayer-slaying, doubt-squashing triumph. Now, he’s learning to embrace something far more palatable than an ass whooping: success.
NEW YORK — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer each drove in a run, and eight Toronto pitchers shut down the New York Yankees in a 5-2 victory Wednesday night that sent the Blue Jays to the American League Championship Series for the first time in nine years.
Nathan Lukes provided a two-run single and Addison Barger had three of Toronto’s 12 hits as the pesky Blue Jays, fouling off tough pitches and consistently putting the ball in play, bounced right back after blowing a five-run lead in Tuesday night’s loss at Yankee Stadium.
AL East champion Toronto took the best-of-five Division Series 3-1 and will host Game 1 in the best-of-seven ALCS on Sunday against the Detroit Tigers or Seattle Mariners.
Those teams are set to decide their playoff series Friday in Game 5 at Seattle.
Ryan McMahon homered for the wild-card Yankees, unable to stave off elimination for a fourth time this postseason as they failed to repeat as AL champions.
Despite a terrific playoff performance from Aaron Judge following his previous October troubles, the 33-year-old star slugger remains without a World Series ring. New York is still chasing its 28th title and first since 2009.
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Jesse Rogers
CHICAGO — If the Chicago Cubs could just start the game over every inning, they might get to the World Series.
For the third consecutive game in their National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, they scored runs in the first, only this time it was enough to squeak out a 4-3 win and stave off elimination. All four of their runs came in the opening inning.
“I’m going to tell our guys it’s the first inning every inning tomorrow,” manager Craig Counsell said with a smile after the game. “I think that’s our best formula right now, offensively.”
The Cubs scored three runs in the first inning in Game 2 but lost 7-3. They also scored first in Game 1, thanks to a Michael Busch homer, but lost 9-3. Busch also homered to lead off the bottom of the first in Game 3 on Wednesday after the Cubs got down 1-0. He became the first player in MLB history to hit a leadoff home run in two postseason games in the same series.
“From the moment I was placed in that spot, I thought why change what I do, just have a good at-bat, stay aggressive, trust my eyes,” Busch said.
Counsell added: “You can just tell by the way they manage the game, he’s become the guy in the lineup that everybody is thinking about and they’re pitching around him, and that’s a credit to the player. It really is.”
Going back to the regular season, Busch has seven leadoff home runs this season in just 54 games while batting first.
The Cubs weren’t done in Wednesday’s opening inning, as center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong came through with the bases loaded for a second time this postseason. In the wild-card round against the San Diego Padres last week, he singled home a run with a base hit. He did one better Wednesday, driving two in on a two-out single to right. That chased Chicago-area native Quinn Priester from the game and gave the Cubs a lead they would never relinquish.
“I’m pretty fortunate in a couple of these elimination games to just have pretty nice opportunities in front of me with guys on base, and I think that makes this job just a little bit easier sometimes,” Crow-Armstrong said.
Crow-Armstrong is known as a free swinger, but batting with the bases loaded gives him the opportunity to get a pitch in the strike zone. He made the most of it — though that would be the last big hit of the game for the Cubs. The eventual winning run scored moments later on a wild pitch.
“I thought we played with that urgency, especially in the first — we just did a great job in the first inning,” Counsell said. “We had really good at-bats.”
The Cubs sent nine men to the plate in the first while seeing 53 pitches, the most pitches seen by a team in the first inning of a playoff game since 1988, when pitch-by-pitch data began being tracked.
“We had more chances today than Game 2 but couldn’t get the big hit [later],” left fielder Ian Happ said. “That’ll come.”
The Cubs were down 1-0 after an unusual call. With runners on first and second in the top of the first, Brewers catcher William Contreras popped the ball up between the pitcher’s mound and first base but Busch couldn’t track the ball in the sun. The umpires did not call for the infield fly rule as it dropped safely, allowing runners to advance and the batter reach first base. Moments later, Christian Yelich scored on a sacrifice fly.
“The basic thing that we look for is ordinary effort,” umpire supervisor Larry Young told a pool reporter. “We don’t make that determination until the ball has reached its apex — the height — and then starts to come down.
“When it reached the height, the umpires determined that the first baseman wasn’t going to make a play on it, the middle infielder [Nico Hoerner] raced over and he wasn’t going to make a play on it, so ordinary effort went out the window at that point.”
The Brewers chipped away after getting down in that first inning but fell short in a big moment in the eighth when they loaded the bases following a leadoff double by Jackson Chourio. Cubs reliever Brad Keller shut the door, striking out Jake Bauers to end the threat.
Keller pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning to earn the save and keep the Cubs’ season alive. They are down 2-1 in the best-of-five series. Game 4 is Thursday night.
“That was a lot of fun to get in there and get four outs and come away with a win,” Keller said. “That was such a team effort there. We’re looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.”
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Bradford Doolittle
DETROIT — For weeks, the Tigers have teetered on the edge of seeing their once promising season come to an abrupt stop. With an offensive breakout occurring just in time Wednesday, Detroit now finds itself in the position it hoped to be all along.
Javier Báez homered, stole a base and drove in four runs, leading a midgame offensive surge as the Tigers beat the Seattle Mariners 9-3 in Game 4 and evened the American League Division Series at 2-2.
Riley Greene hit his first career postseason homer, breaking a 3-3 tie to begin a four-run rally in the sixth that was capped by Báez’s two-run shot to left. Gleyber Torres also homered for Detroit, which had hit just two homers in six games this postseason entering Wednesday.
“I’m proud of our guys because today’s game was symbolic of how we roll, you know?” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s a lot of different guys doing something positive, multiple guys.”
After Seattle grabbed an early 3-0 lead, the Tigers plated three runs in the fifth to tie the score. Báez capped the rally with a 104 mph single a couple of pitches after he just missed a homer on a moon shot that soared just outside the left-field foul pole.
“We knew we had a lot of baseball left, a lot of innings left to play,” Báez said. “We believe, and we’re never out of it until that last out is made.”
Báez is hitting .346 in the postseason with a team-high nine hits, stirring memories of when he helped lead the Chicago Cubs to the 2016 World Series crown. These playoffs have been a high point of Báez’s Detroit career and continue a resurgent season after he hit .221 over his first three seasons with the Tigers.
“World Series champion all those years ago,” Torres said. “He knows how to play in those situations. I’m not surprised but just really happy. Everything he does for the team is really special.”
The Tigers flirted with disaster in the fourth inning when the Mariners loaded the bases with no outs after Hinch pulled starter Casey Mize, who struck out six over three innings, and inserted reliever Tyler Holton.
Kyle Finnegan came on to limit the Mariners to one run in the inning, keeping the game in play and setting the table for what had been an ailing offense. The comeback from the three-run deficit tied the largest postseason rally in Tigers history, a mark set three times before. The record was first set in the 1909 World Series.
Detroit entered the day hitting .191 during the playoffs, with homers accounting for just 17% of its run production. During the regular season, that number was 42%.
“I think hitting is contagious and not hitting is also kind of contagious, too,” said Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson, who chipped in with two hits and a run. “It’s a crazy game that we decided to play, but that’s why I love it so much.”
The deciding Game 5 is Friday in Seattle, and the ebullient Tigers rejoiced knowing who they have lined up to take the hill: reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, who has a 1.84 ERA with 23 strikeouts over 14⅔ innings in two starts this postseason.
After everything — the Tigers’ late-season swoon that cost them a huge lead in the AL Central and the offensive struggles during the playoffs that hadn’t quite yet knocked them out of the running — Detroit is one win from the ALCS, with the game’s best pitcher ready to take the ball.
“This is what competition is all about,” Skubal said. “This is why you play the game, for Game 5s. I think that’s going to bring out the best in everyone involved. That’s why this game is so beautiful.”
It’s the scenario the Tigers would have drawn up before the season, but even so, they know they can’t take Skubal’s consistent dominance for granted. Everyone can use a little help.
“We’re confident,” Torres said. “We know who is pitching that last game for us. But we can’t put all the effort on him.”
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