Miami Marlins at Houston Astros

No more talk about the Triple Crown and how he feels about his chances to win it in the American League this year. Yordan Alvarez prefers to let his powerful bat make his case, and it’s making a very strong one with the way he’s been crushing baseballs. He did it again in the eighth inning of a tied game Wednesday night against the Marlins, sending a pitch from ace Sandy Alcantara over the left-center-field wall for a two-run homer that sent the Astros to a 5-2 win and a three-game sweep of the Marlins at Daikin Park. The homer was Alvarez’s Major League-leading 34th of the season. He also leads MLB with 77 RBIs, while leading the AL in the final Triple Crown category, hitting .328. “I’m just focused right now on playing ball,” Alvarez said. “There’s more than two months remaining in the season, so I’m not going to talk anymore about the Triple Crown. I don’t want to answer any more questions about the Triple Crown.” The sweep of the Marlins came on the heels of the Astros getting swept at home by the Orioles, which dropped them to seven games under .500 and raised questions about whether the club should even be buyers at the Trade Deadline. Star shortstop Jeremy Peña challenged the team publicly, saying it was time to make a run. By sweeping the Marlins, the Astros moved back within two games of the first-place Rangers in the AL West heading into a weekend series against the AL Central-leading White Sox in Chicago. “You get swept, you sweep somebody back, right?” manager Joe Espada said. “That’s a good bounceback win. That was good stuff. We bounced back very well against a good Marlins team. Beat one of the best pitchers in the game. I think our players, our team reacted very well after the way we played against Baltimore.” Peña, who went 3-for-4 on Wednesday and homered in his third consecutive game, said nothing was said privately between the players in the clubhouse following the Baltimore sweep. Everyone already knew the season could be slipping away, and it was time to respond. “The expectation is to win,” Peña said. “How do we get there? Everyone is showing up every single day, everyone is trying to figure it out.”