Foltynewicz fans 10 in RedHawks' walk-off

Mike Foltynewicz watched Triple-A Omaha put up 16 runs over three games against the Oklahoma City pitching staff. When he got the ball for the fourth and final game of the series, he was well-prepared.

"Me and [catcher Carlos] Perez worked out a game plan. They hit the ball and they swing early," the Astros' No. 5 prospect said. "We wanted to pitch them backwards. When we had them down 1-2 or 0-2, we'd go with a changeup or a curve."

The strategy worked.

Foltynewicz piled up 10 strikeouts without issuing a walk and allowed a run on six hits over 7 2/3 innings on Friday night before the RedHawks ended a three-game slide with a 2-1 walk-off win.

The 22-year-old right-hander knows something about reversing a cold stretch. After posting a 4.88 ERA in April, he set a career-high with 12 strikeouts in his first start in May. Against Omaha, he lowered his ERA to 3.40.

"We've been working on a lot of stuff, like staying sideways through the delivery, and getting comfortable out there has a lot to do with it," Foltynewicz said. "We've made a bunch of little tweaks, working with the mechanical side of the game.

"The first games were frustrating, and I'm starting to be able to use all my pitches in all counts now. All of my pitches came through tonight."

MLB.com's No. 46 overall prospect retired the first eight Storm Chasers he faced and worked around a two-out single in the third. An inning later, he ran into trouble. Johnny Giavotella hit a leadoff double and scored on a base hit by rehabbing Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas.

Foltynewicz limited the damage by striking out Justin Maxwell and getting Brett Eibner to bounce into a double play.

"Me and [manager Tony DeFrancesco] were talking about getting into a mentality that if a guy gets on base, we're not going to let him score," he said. "After that single up the middle, I did get into that mind-set. Thank God for that double play."

Foltynewicz was perfect over the next three frames. The RedHawks threatened in the sixth as Perez doubled, but they still trailed, 1-0, when Foltynewicz struck out the side in the seventh.

"It was pretty huge because our offense had a couple of good innings before, so I wanted to get them back into the dugout quick," he said. "This offense can explode at any minute. The guys looked hungry. They wanted to go score some runs."

At that point, Foltynewicz had thrown 89 pitches and knew he wasn't going to be allowed to go much deeper.

"Me and Tony and [pitching coach] Steve Webber had a long conversation. They said, 'You've got 11 pitches, do you want to go out there?' I said, 'I'll try to get through the inning on 11 pitches.' It was huge for me just to go out there and try and I went and out did the best I could to get eight [innings]."

The Illinois native surrendered a leadoff double to Carlos Peguero, who was thrown out trying for third. Foltynewicz struck out the next batter, then allowed a single to Brian Bocock on his 102nd and final pitch.

"My fastball command was slipping a little at the end," he said, "but my other pitches -- the change and the curve -- were working better and I was throwing them more at the end of game."

Josh Zeid struck out the only batter he faced to end the inning and Alex White pitched a scoreless ninth, improving to 1-0 after Oklahoma City put up two runs in the bottom of the inning. The RedHawks walked off on a sacrifice by Perez.

"It was really exciting because the team needed to win," Foltynewicz said. "We had a good streak going before Omaha came into town, and this is a good team with great chemistry."

Storm Chasers starter John Lamb pitched 6 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing three hits and a walk while striking out two to lower his ERA to 4.06.