CLEVELAND — It was all special, something about the word that consumed the Astros’ clubhouse after another evisceration of a division-leading team on its home field.

Players playfully mandated teammates to use it in some form, describing either the efforts of their relentless offense or of Charlie Morton, the starting pitcher who will never paint himself with such adjectives.

“We got a special team,” said Morton, “and that win, for me, and being on the field for that game right there, with how it was just a complete team win is really rewarding for me.“

They played Thursday’s 8-2 win with the same carefree demeanor they exuded afterward. A calculated approach deconstructed Indians starter Mike Clevinger, who told Cleveland reporters last week after throwing against this Astros’ lineup that it’s “not that special.”

His departure signaled their assault on the Indians’ woebegone bullpen, turning a one-run game into a farce.

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Hitting the relievers with reckless abandon overcame a baserunning gaffe while the game hung in peril.

And when Jake Marisnick, the man who committed it, came to the plate in the sixth inning, George Springer’s dugout premonition came to fruition.

Picked off first base one inning earlier while down 2-0, Marisnick launched a three-run home run against Indians reliever Neil Ramirez in the sixth.

“George called that before the at-bat, which I give him credit,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Now, he calls a lot that doesn’t always work out that way, but I have to give him credit. We have to give props to Springer.”

This is an insight to the Astros’ world. It contains little stress, clubhouse and dugout levity pairing with proficient baseball. Whomever they insert into the lineup or bring up in an emergency delivers. They are 15 games over .500. Nine of their last 11 games are wins.

“For me, it was a special game to be a part of with the group,” Morton said.

By their — and his — standards, Morton turned in a subpar outing. He struck out five across six innings of two-run baseball. His 2.04 ERA trails only two teammates for the American League’s lowest. He pitched the sixth with a six-run cushion, afforded when Marisnick struck.

Marisnick was, for all intents and purposes, still scheduled to be in Class AAA. The hope was for the speedy center fielder to clear his head and attain regular at-bats. Josh Reddick’s leg infection quashed it, forcing Marisnick back and this sixth-inning situation upon him.

With two runners on and his team ahead by two, a 2-0 count morphed to 2-2. Marisnick was demoted, in part, because of a 41-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

“It was kind of like a reset button, kind of cleared the head,” Marisnick said. “Everything was there, it was just (in my) head, was thinking too much and it was just a chance to kind of cool off and kind of slow things down.”

Ramirez grooved a four-seam fastball on the outer half. Marisnick bludgeoned it to dead center field, 421 feet away. The three-run home run, his first since April 25, exited his bat at 108 mph and momentarily exorcised the demons with which his early season was cluttered.

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“Just a good feeling to put a couple more runs up there,” Marisnick said. “This is a special team.”

Scheduling silliness rendered this, the Astros and Indians meeting for the fourth time in six days. The turnaround is rapid and acquaintance fresh, not much hidden from either club.

In the interim, little has corrected inside the woebegone Indians bullpen. The 5.86 earned run average with which it entered Minute Maid Park is down to only 5.51. Andrew Miller’s back is healed. Cody Allen is a valuable closer. Two men, however, cannot extinguish the combustion around them and allow their dominant rotation much aid.

Four pitchers were required to get three outs in the sixth, the Astros battering whomever entered. They brought nine men to the plate during a five-run sixth inning, a byproduct of the patience they displayed against Clevinger.

Clevinger threw 104 pitches and the Astros took 24 called strikes. During a 20-pitch first inning, the Astros swung five times. The shaggyrighthander begins at-bats with softer velocities and returns with devastating putaway pitches.

“He’s not a guy that always executes, but he is a guy that has stuff that gets you out,” Hinch said. “You want to make sure you get a pitch to hit, so our patience was really good.”

He required 41 pitches to collect six outs. Consecutive double plays in the third and fourth lent Clevinger a reprieve after he ceded one-out hits. The fifth inning began to offer another he did not seize.

Clevinger yielded a one-out single to Marisnic. Nine-hole hitter Tony Kemp toiled at the plate. Clevinger threw over once to no avail. A second time nailed Marisnick. Two were out.

Kemp was behind 0-1 when the bases cleared. He took the 1-2 pitch off the shoulder blades. George Springer coaxed a four-pitch walk to bring Alex Bregman up. The count evened at two.

Clevinger hung a slider. Bregman annihilated it inside the left field foul pole, giving his team a lead it did not relinquish. Bregman watched the baseball soar. He flipped his bat. Twenty-five seconds later, he was home again.

“That’s one of the things that this offense does a very good job of, swinging at pitches to hit,” Bregman said. “When we did tonight, we drove in runs and it was special to see.”

chandler.rome@chron.com

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