ARLINGTON, Texas — To the baseball world outside of Texas, Hunter Brown remains a relative unknown. He makes the major-league minimum salary, is still awaiting his first major award, sports a common surname and shares a clubhouse with such established superstars that this soft-spoken Michigander may be easy to miss.
Brown has no flair for boasting or braggadocio. He has stayed out of the spotlight for so much of his major-league career, but found it shining upon him on Thursday night. The biggest stage May can afford awaited him at Globe Life Field. Jacob deGrom, an ace with all of the aforementioned attributes Brown lacks, loomed to oppose him.
“That bulldog mentality that he brings to the mound with him is how you compete with guys like that,” Houston Astros first baseman Christian Walker said after a 1-0 loss to the Texas Rangers in which both starters went eight innings. “I don’t see him getting overwhelmed by any moment. It’s not about being cocky or arrogant, but when he steps on the mound, you know it’s going to be a battle for the hitters that night.”
DeGrom’s prime coincided with Brown’s collegiate days at Wayne State University. Ten years and tens of millions in salary separate the two pitchers, but those who watched on Thursday would be hard pressed to notice.
Brown’s duel with deGrom was the perfect punctuation to a prolific calendar year. Across the past 365 days, only Paul Skenes has a lower ERA than Brown, the bulldog right-hander who has completed an ascension into acehood.
Hunter Brown, 96mph Fastball and 83mph Knuckle Curve, Overlay. pic.twitter.com/HeRTNuvNBr
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 16, 2025
“He keeps getting better and better every day,” Houston manager Joe Espada said. “We feel like we’re going to win every day he gets on the mound.”
When the Astros do not, it stings as a squandered chance. Brown threw perhaps his best game as a big leaguer but left saddled with a loss, subduing what should’ve been a coronation inside Houston’s postgame clubhouse.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Jacob deGrom or anybody else,” Brown said. “When they’re putting up zeroes, your job as a starter is to do the same thing. You try to keep the guys in a position to win the game.”
Brown matched deGrom’s dominance and, at times, even exceeded it. He toyed with Texas’ tepid lineup, striking out nine and surrendering three hits. That one of them landed in the Rangers’ bullpen decided the game: the type of minuscule margin for error that aces around the sport often combat.
Jake Burger’s sixth-inning solo home run was the first Brown had allowed in a span of 50 2/3 innings. The cutter he clubbed caught too much of home plate, but Brown still deemed it a decent pitch selection. He threw one other one all game.
“For me, on the night, just that one, I didn’t execute it,” Brown said. “That’s just the way it goes.”
Eight otherwise immaculate innings lowered Brown’s ERA to 1.43 after his first nine starts of the season. Only Max Fried and Kodai Senga have lower ones. Only Zack Wheeler has thrown more innings than the 56 2/3 Brown has finished.
Wheeler, Tarik Skubal and MacKenzie Gore are the only qualified starters with more strikeouts than Brown, who boasts a lower FIP than any starting pitcher in the sport. His 2.00 FIP is the lowest by any American League pitcher through his first nine starts since Skubal’s 1.97 mark last season.
“Today was deGrom’s best stuff of the whole year and (Brown) went toe-to-toe,” Astros second baseman Mauricio Dubón said. “It’s going to be an exciting future for him. He’s going to be a dog for a long time.”
Houston’s flawed lineup flailed against the peak version of deGrom, the newest entrant into this intrastate and intradivision rivalry. The Astros had never faced deGrom in a regular-season game, though familiarity existed from countless Grapefruit League games during deGrom’s tenure with the New York Mets.
Still, only three members of the Astros’ 26-man roster awoke on Thursday with a regular-season at-bat against deGrom. His platoon splits screamed for balance that the Astros are unable to create, again prompting questions about the viability of this curious setup.
Right-handed hitters entered Thursday with one extra-base hit and a .448 OPS in 71 plate appearances against deGrom. Houston sent eight righties and a switch-hitter to face him, accentuating the flawed roster construction that has hamstrung their offense.
Asked before the game if he is pursuing a left-handed hitter, general manager Dana Brown said his front office is not “pounding the table for one, but we’ve had some discussions.” That Yordan Alvarez remains on the injured list further complicates matters, but imbalance is still a problem even at full strength.
Backup catcher Victor Caratini, the only member of Houston’s lineup able to hit left-handed, collected two of the Astros’ five hits against deGrom, who wielded a four-seam fastball that touched 99.2 mph and a slider that bumped 92.1. Thirty of the 90 sliders and four-seamers deGrom threw were either swung through or called strikes.
Brown touched 98.2 mph with both of his fastballs, a four-seamer he fixated at the top of the strike zone and the two-seamer that transformed his career and, on Thursday, kept Texas’ five right-handed hitters in hell.
Both deGrom and Brown began their nights with a three-pitch punchout of a surging shortstop. deGrom spotted a sublime slider at the bottom of Jeremy Peña’s strike zone. Brown bullied Josh Smith with an elevated four-seamer that carried above the strike zone and through Smith’s swing.
Brown required 38 pitches to procure his first 12 outs, efficiency that arrived almost entirely due to his aggression. Twenty-one of his first 26 pitches were strikes. Of the first four strikeouts he collected, three required three pitches.
“He comes after you. He’s not messing around,” Espada said. “That’s what you do: You come after the hitters. You go out there, you got stuff and you have confidence in your stuff, have good defense behind you. This kid’s got something.”
DeGrom demonstrated his dominance, but still required two terrific defensive plays to dodge danger. Adolis García stole extra bases with a wonderful diving catch on Isaac Paredes’ sinking line drive during the fourth inning. To start the fifth, Evan Carter caught a 341-foot missile into the right-center field gap from Jake Meyers.
The 22 balls Houston struck in play off deGrom carried a .233 expected batting average with an average 90.7 mph exit velocity. Those hit off of Brown had a .211 xBA and an 85.6 mph average exit velocity, again accentuating the dominance Brown displayed — even if the outcome did not reflect it.
“That one just stings,” said Brown, a pitcher uninterested in postgame plaudits or pats on the back.
“You want to come out on top in those games and it just didn’t fall our way tonight.”
(Photo of Hunter Brown and Jose Altuve: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)