DETROIT — Bat met ball and, under his breath, Astros manager Joe Espada muttered an expletive. The Detroit Tigers’ winning run stood at first base in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 3-3 game when Matt Vierling’s line drive seemed destined for the left-center field gap in Comerica Park’s expansive outfield.Playing defense here tests athleticism and ability like few other ballparks in the sport. A converted infielder still conquered it. Making his 60th major-league appearance as an outfielder, Brice Matthews made a wonderful read on Vierling’s 328-foot fly ball, used his 82nd-percentile sprint speed to get into the gap and made a sliding catch to preserve Houston’s chance at a fifth consecutive series victory.Josh Hader, Hunter Brown, Christian Walker and Isaac Paredes teamed to secure Sunday’s series-clinching 7-5 win, but that is their expectation. All four are premier players on this top-heavy team — a quartet the Astros need to win games.Hader survived a laborious outing to strand the bases loaded in the ninth, Paredes tied the game with a solo home run in the eighth and Walker won it with a three-run shot in the 10th. Those are the sort of heroics Houston needs to maintain its place in a mediocre American League. Winning on Sunday left the Astros just a half-game back of the league’s final playoff spot.Matthews’ catch is the type of contribution that can propel this club to something higher. Depth has long been the biggest concern for a team that boasts an American League MVP candidate, a reigning Cy Young finalist and a six-time All-Star closer.The team can address some of its deficiencies at the trade deadline, but the Astros don’t have the prospect capital — or perhaps the financial appetite — to fix all that ails them. That reality makes players like Matthews invaluable, even if he sports a 32.7 percent strikeout rate and a .566 OPS.Matthews is part of an outfield that is producing almost nothing offensively. That it is still blossoming into one of baseball’s best defensive units is important. Teams with depth deficiencies must maximize everything on the margins and search for every possible advantage. Matthews, and the rest of Houston’s outfield, provides one on defense.According to Baseball Savant, 34 major-league outfielders entered Sunday worth at least two outs above average. The Astros employ three of them: Matthews, reigning Gold Glove finalist Cam Smith and Jake Meyers. Smith’s stupendous catch started an inning-ending double play Wednesday in Toronto helped preserve a tenuous two-run lead and secure that series win. Meyers has long been one of the sport’s most underrated defensive center fielders.Among American League teams, only the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays have outfields worth more outs above average than the Astros. According to Sports Info Solutions, the Astros are turning 69.8 percent of balls hit in the air into outs. The major-league average is 67.9 percent. Just three outfields have a 70 percent conversion rate. For an Astros pitching staff that surrenders the third-highest fly-ball rate of any team in the sport, this matters.“All the small, little plays just to give us an opportunity to hit or hand the baton to somebody else. It matters,” Espada said Sunday. “When you’re trying to win games, we need contributions from everyone.”