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Valdez has the rosin bag in hand. He’ll face Detroit’s Matt Vierling to start things off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ahead of Tuesday’s Game 1 of the\u00a0American League wild card series, Astros General Manager Dana Brown discussed Alex Bregman’s impending free agency and the framework for negotiations with the third baseman’s agent, Scott Boras.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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“Ultimately we want Bregman to stay, he’s done a lot of good things here in the orgaization,” Brown said Tuesday at Minute Maid Park. “I’ve had some conversations with Boras and we’ve talked about meeting up at the end of the season and having some good conversations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“We’d love for [Bregman] to stay. We hope we can get it done.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Houston Astros\u00a0are back in the playoffs after a wild, uneven regular season that at point saw the team\u00a010 games out of first place\u00a0in the\u00a0American League West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A red-hot second half of the season, however, has changed the calculus for Houston, which clinched its division last week and now enters Game 1 of the American League wild card series as significant favorites against the Detroit Tigers. Astros left-handed ace\u00a0Framber Valdez\u00a0will take the mound for Houston on Tuesday. He faces off against likely American League Cy Young winner\u00a0Tarik Skubal\u00a0in what could be one of the hottest pitching battles of the 2024 postseason.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Skubal, also a lefty, brings 18 wins and an AL-best 2.39 ERA to Minute Maid Park. The Tigers’ 27-year-old pitching phenom will have to contend with a dangerous Houston lineup bolstered by the return of lefty slugger\u00a0Yordan Alvarez, who will line up in the two hole for Houston on Tuesday following week-plus absence due to a knee injury. Alvarez ended the season with a team-leading 35 home runs and a mighty .308 batting average.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Houston made other adjustments ahead of Tuesday’s game, the most notable being the exclusion of veteran starting pitcher\u00a0Justin Verlander\u00a0from the team’s wild card series roster. The 41-year-old has been on the injured list twice this season, and so far, his performances haven’t measured up to that of a three-time Cy Young Award-winner, posting an 8.10 ERA through 33 1\/3 innings across his past seven starts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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First pitch for Game 1 of the AL wild card is slated for 1:32 p.m. CT Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Live Review: Astros take on Detroit Tigers in AL wild card Game One Vierling grounds out | Top 1 Matt Vierling dribbles one to first on a broken bat swing for Valdez’s first out of the game. Framber Valdez takes mound | Top 1 Valdez has the rosin bag in hand. He’ll face Detroit’s Matt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-300x200.webp",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-768x512.webp",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false],"jnews-360x180":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-360x180.webp",360,180,true],"jnews-750x375":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-750x375.webp",750,375,true],"jnews-1140x570":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-960x570.webp",960,570,true],"jnews-120x86":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-120x86.webp",120,86,true],"jnews-350x250":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-350x250.webp",350,250,true],"jnews-750x536":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-750x536.webp",750,536,true],"jnews-1140x815":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false],"jnews-360x504":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-360x504.webp",360,504,true],"jnews-75x75":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-75x75.webp",75,75,true],"jnews-350x350":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-350x350.webp",350,350,true],"jnews-featured-750":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960-750x500.webp",750,500,true],"jnews-featured-1140":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp",960,640,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Newssoccer","author_link":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Blog<\/a>","tag_info":"Blog","comment_count":"0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ratio3x2_960.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}