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HOUSTON — The Houston Astros enjoyed their share of luck and made some of their own during their 12-game winning streak Jihad Ward Color Rush Jersey , but on Monday against the Toronto Blue Jays, they tasted regression.

Well, at least right fielder George Springer did. Already mired in a miserable slump dating back one month, Springer had a potential game-tying, three-run home run snagged by Toronto right fielder Randal Grichuk with no outs in the ninth inning of the Astros’ 6-3 loss. Grichuk shifted from center field to right in the ninth to make way for standout defender Kevin Pillar.

Instead of pulling the Astros even at 6-all, Springer finished 0-for-5 with a strikeout and three runners stranded. He entered the series with a .196/.322/.353 slash line since May 26, the first game after he improved his OPS to .894 with a robust .305/.367/.527 line through 50 games.

“It sucks,” Springer said. “There’s not really anything else to say about it. It’s tough. It is what it is. They win.”

Despite opening Monday tied with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox for the best record in the majors, the Astros (52-28) have been a bit unlucky in close, low-scoring games. While their pitching staff has performed splendidly in the first half of the season, the Astros are just 8-14 in one-run games and dropped to 7-19 when scoring three or fewer runs. Houston has run roughshod over opponents on the road, but the loss to Toronto dropped the Astros to a modest 23-17 at home.

“Baseball can be pretty cruel,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “That’s a tough one. Right off the bat, I thought George got one. It carried and carried and carried and looked like he (Grichuk) had to go pretty deep into the stands to get it. George delivered a great swing. Cruel sport.”

Right-hander Charlie Morton (9-1 Authentic Joseph Noteboom Jersey , 2.74 ERA) will start on Tuesday for the Astros. Morton is 1-0 with a 2.77 ERA over two career starts against the Blue Jays, with both coming last season. He has scuffled in June, going 2-1 with a 4.29 ERA while issuing 15 walks and posting six hit batsmen over 21 innings.

Toronto (37-41) will counter with left-hander Ryan Borucki, who will make his major league debut. The Blue Jays’ top pitching prospect, Borucki made the climb from Class A Dunedin to Triple-A Buffalo over the past two seasons. He was 6-5 with a 3.27 ERA over 13 starts with the Bison, recording 58 strikeouts in 77 innings. Borucki was scratched from his start on Sunday.

Selected by Toronto in the 15th round of the 2012 draft, Borucki missed the 2013 season following Tommy John surgery. He slowly reclaimed his strength, logging 135 2/3 innings in 2016 and a career-high 150 1/3 innings last season. Blue Jays manager John Gibbons coyly refused to confirm published reports that Borucki would make his debut, but the secret is out.

“We’ll have the young kid going (Tuesday) so hopefully he gives us some innings,” Gibbons said in response to concerns over his fatigued bullpen. “Nice way to debut.”

When pressed that he accidentally revealed his hand, Gibbons quipped, “You don’t know what young kid. Could be one of three or four of them.”

Body camera video showing police using a stun gun on an NBA player over a parking violation is just the latest setback for efforts to improve relations between Milwaukee officers and the city’s black population.

The confrontation involving Sterling Brown of the Milwaukee Bucks also represents the first major challenge for new Police Chief Alfonso Morales, who took the job in February promising to restore public trust in a department besieged in recent years by excessive-force lawsuits.

”Milwaukee has all the ingredients to be a great city, but each time an incident like this occurs Jim Thome Jersey , we are reminded of how much work we still have to do,” the city’s Common Council said in a statement Thursday.

Morales, a lifelong Milwaukee resident born to Mexican immigrants, pledged to be more transparent with cases of police misconduct, and he’s already faced TV cameras twice this month to apologize for his officers’ actions. The other case involved four officers caught on video kicking and punching an African-American man while he was restrained on the ground.

The Jan. 26 video of Brown showed how a simple interaction quickly escalated after an officer approached him about parking in a handicap spot around 2 a.m. at a Walgreens drug store. When their conversation became tenser, the officer called more squad cars for help. As Brown is surrounded by four officers, he’s asked to take his hands out of his pockets and a scuffle ensues. Within seconds, one officer yelled ”Taser! Taser! Taser!”

The video became public after the department finished its internal investigation.

The officers were disciplined because they ”acted inappropriately,” Morales said. Brown was not charged with anything.

The chief did not name the officers or say how they were disciplined. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, citing unidentified sources, said three officers received suspensions ranging from two to 15 days.

”I am sorry this incident escalated to this level,” said Morales, who left a news conference Wednesday without taking questions.

The police department did not identify the races of the officers, but most of them in the video appeared to be white. Brown is black.

A 2017 analysis by the Journal Sentinel found that black officers made up about 18 percent of the department Authentic Jason McCourty Jersey , in a city that is roughly 39 percent black.

Morales’ predecessor, Edward Flynn, had a combative relationship with some city officials during his decade on the job. The Common Council became so frustrated with him that members passed a resolution asking the state to empower the council to fire him. On Thursday, a council member repeated that request, saying change in the department can only happen if the chief is accountable to city leaders instead of a civilian commission appointed by the mayor.

”We can have all sorts of community meetings and groups and say all these wonderful things. But ”at the end of the day, the police chief can do whatever he wants without any consequences,” Alderman Tony Zielinski said.

Morales’ spokeswoman said he was not available for an interview.

Brown has indicated he will file a lawsuit against the police. If he does, the complaint will add to a long list of litigation the city has faced over officer misconduct.

Last year, Milwaukee paid $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of Dontre Hamilton, a mentally ill black man fatally shot by a police officer after the officer roused him from a park bench downtown.

In 2016, the city paid $5 million to settle a lawsuit by 74 black residents who said police illegally strip-searched them between 2008 and 2012. The American Civil Liberties Union in Wisconsin also has a pending lawsuit alleging the department has for years targeted black and Latino residents by stopping and questioning them without cause.

”It’s just another black eye for the city of Milwaukee on a national level,” Alderman Khalif Rainey said.

A day before the Brown video was released, Morales posted a short video on YouTube that showed him walking through neighborhoods, talking to residents and emphasizing his desire to restore trust in the department.

Rainey bashed the video Larry Bowa Jersey , saying it’s not enough.

”First and foremost, it’s going to require something more than a video, a nice fluffy PR effort,” he said. ”So it’s really going to require the police to get out here in the community and really get integrated in neighborhoods and build a rapport with actual people on a first-name basis.”

Jonathan Safran, a Milwaukee attorney who worked on the Dontre Hamilton case and lawsuit over illegal strip searches, said he’s optimistic that settlement discussions in the ACLU lawsuit could lead to changes in how officers behave during traffic and pedestrian stops.

”The issue in my mind going forward, and this is a good example,” he said, referring to Brown’s case, ”is should officers act as warriors or should they should they act as guardians?”

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