PHILADELPHIA — Six outs stood between Spencer Arrighetti and history.
For seven innings on an uncomfortably humid Philadelphia afternoon, no Phillie recorded a hit off the Astros rookie. With his funky release angle, an “invisiball” heater and four secondary offerings, Arrighetti diced a vaunted veteran lineup into pieces.
But there is no history without good fortune. And the baseball gods, at least on this day, were not in Arrighetti’s favor.
On the first pitch of the eighth inning, outfielder Austin Hays tapped an 85.2 mph bounder to the left of substitute third baseman Shay Whitcomb. The ball — and the no-hitter with it — skipped past Whitcomb’s outstretched glove. Hays breezed past first base, his arms extended in relief. The fans at Citizens Bank Park, their club down 10-0, exhaled and cheered.
Arrighetti, six outs short, barely reacted.
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He stoically dispatched the next two hitters, Garrett Stubbs and Kyle Schwarber, for his 10th and 11th strikeouts of the day. A two-out, looping Trea Turner single on Arrighetti’s 103rd pitch brought manager Joe Espada out of the dugout. But the 24-year-old right-hander had one battle left to fight.
“He said, ‘Joe, I really want [Bryce] Harper,’” the Astros skipper told reporters postgame. “I said, ‘I know you do, son, but this is the end of the day. You get Harper some other time.’”
Arrigetti’s final line: 7 2/3 innings, 11 punch-outs, four walks, two hits and zero runs. He induced 19 swing-and-misses, nine of which came on his trademark heater. The long-haired Texan leaned on that fastball from the jump, attacking leadoff hitter Schwarber with three straight in-zone heaters. The imposing slugger, used to seeing a barrage of breakers, took the first two for strikes and swung through the third.
With that, Arrigetti was off to the races.
While this was easily the best start of his young career, Arrighetti has been a force for the past six weeks. In his past eight starts, the childhood Astros fan (he was at Game 5 of the 2017 World Series as a fan) boasts a 2.68 ERA in 50 1/3 innings with 65 strikeouts.
In April, a series of injuries to Houston’s rotation forced the unready Arrighetti into big-league action. He struggled mightily; after seven starts, his ERA was 7.16. Now, that feels a universe away.
Major League Baseball is a difficult endeavor. Arrighetti is a smart dude who learned from his missteps. His stuff, particularly the approach angle and shape on his fastball, was always compelling. Now he has better command of his arsenal and is seeing the results to match.
Arrighetti’s ascension leaves Houston — 3.5 games up on Seattle in the division entering play Thursday — with a problem most teams would kill for: too many good starting pitchers.
If the Astros, who have reached seven consecutive ALCS, outlast the Mariners, they’ll need four starting pitchers come October. Right now, they have six legitimate options: Arrighetti, Framber Valdez, Justin Verlander, Hunter Brown, Yusei Kikuchi and Ronel Blanco.
Valdez is the only absolute lock. He has made 15 starts during Houston’s historic run of October dominance. In 23 outings this season, he has a 3.27 ERA. He was one out away from his second career no-hitter a month ago. Expect the stocky lefty to get the ball in Game 1.
Verlander is the second-most likely option, even though he has made only two starts since returning from the neck issue that sidelined him for 10 weeks. His first outing was encouraging, his second less so. The future Hall of Famer has 37 career postseason starts but isn’t the overwhelming force he once was. Still, assuming Verlander shakes off the cobwebs, it’s difficult to envision not giving the 41-year-old a playoff start.
Then it gets hazier.
Brown turned his season around in late May after adding a sinker to his arsenal. Since May 22, the 26-year-old has a 2.23 ERA in 16 starts. He has the fifth-best strikeout rate in baseball over that span. If not for his abysmal April, Brown might’ve gotten Cy Young votes. He’s unproven in October, but there’s an argument that he’s one of the best pitchers in the sport right now.
Kikuchi was the prize addition of Houston’s deadline. The Astros shipped three highly touted prospects to Toronto for just a few months of the southpaw, who will reach free agency this winter. Kikuchi has turned his season around since then, posting a 2.89 ERA with more than a strikeout per inning across five starts in blue and orange. But is a month of success enough? The Japanese 33-year-old is homer-prone, particularly against a lineup with better numbers against lefties (Cleveland fits this bill).
Blanco has been a revelation his first full season as a starter. He opened the year with a no-hitter and has spent most of 2024 proving it wasn’t a fluke. The 30-year-old Dominican still has the fewest hits allowed per nine innings. But there are a few reasons Blanco is probably best suited to a bulk bullpen role come October. He (1) has already shot past his career high in innings, (2) has experience as a reliever and (3) walks too many hitters.
That’s Arrighetti’s problem, too. Even during his no-hit bid Wednesday, Arrighetti walked four. Only Michael Lorenzen and Luis Gil have higher walk rates among pitchers with at least 120 innings. Also, in general, rookies tend to be leaned upon less as the weather gets cold and the games become tense.
But if Arrighetti keeps pitching like he did against the Phillies, Houston might have little choice but to factor him into the October equation.
