Big debut? No Sale
Houston controls Game 1
HOUSTON — The better team won.
And yesterday, the Houston Astros weren’t just a little bit better than the Red Sox.
They were miles better. Galaxies better. Light years better.
Game 1 of the American League Division Series went to the heavy favorites, who toppled the Sox in an 8-2 game that will test the mettle of John Farrell’s team.
It all started with Chris Sale, who was served an ice cold introduction to playoff baseball, giving up seven runs for just the second time this year.
How do the Red Sox bounce back from that?
“Don’t think for one second this team is going to give up,” Sale said. “We’ve got to keep fighting. This one is on me.”
Sale might have been tired from a long season — he led the league in innings (2141⁄3) and threw 3,428 pitches, second only to Astros starter Justin Verlander, who went six innings and gave up two runs — but his velocity numbers didn’t show it.
Sale touched 99 mph in the first inning and held it steadily, averaging 96 mph on his four-seamer, a tick above his season average of 95 mph. His two-seamer sat at 95 mph, two ticks up, and his slider near 83 mph, three ticks up.
If anything, he had too much velocity.
“I think everyone is amped up when you get to this point,” pitching coach Carl Willis said. “You just hope you’re not so amped up it affects your command.”
Sale’s slider was flat. The first one he threw to Alex Bregman, the second hitter Sale faced, was promptly lined out of the ballpark.
“Hey, he works extremely hard, but he’s pitched 215 innings,” Willis said. “A lot of workload prior to this season coming in. There are guys in the league who have pitched far fewer innings than him that maybe aren’t — you don’t feel in October like you feel in May.
“You’re probably apt to make a couple more mistakes this time than earlier on in the season. Early when you make them there’s more action, depth to the ball. But everyone is in the same boat. I’d take him again tomorrow if I could. As I said to him when he left the dugout, ‘You’ll see these guys again.’”
The Astros’ MVP candidate, Jose Altuve, put on a hitting clinic, though the Red Sox won’t need to do much video review to figure out what went wrong.
Three homers, three meatballs.
After Bregman took Sale deep in the first inning, Altuve went yard, crushing a fastball over the heart of the plate to left-center.
Altuve’s second long ball put the Astros up, 5-2, in the fifth inning. Again it was a fastball dead-center from Sale.
Altuve’s third blast was off Austin Maddox in the seventh inning and it put the nail in the coffin. Maddox threw a changeup that hardly moved and Altuve became the first player since Pablo Sandoval to hit three homers in a playoff game.
Sale tried everything. He took extra time to warm up before the second inning, in part thanks to Dustin Pedroia’s baserunning error to end the first inning. Sandy Leon had poked a two-out single to right to score Mitch Moreland from second base, but Pedroia was thrown out trying to go from first to third. The play was close enough that Moreland’s run was voided until a lengthy replay review changed the call.
But the extra warm-up time did nothing for Sale, who didn’t throw a single clean inning on the day.
“No excuses,” Sale said. “Bad time to suck.”
After he put two on to start the sixth, the Cy Young Award candidate was replaced by Joe Kelly, who gave up both of the runs on a two-out single to Brian McCann.
Offensively, the Sox put 10 guys on base but didn’t do a lot with their chances.
The Red Sox better hope this game was simply a wake-up call. A one-sided one, at that.
“It’s a five-game series,” Willis said. “Two really good ball clubs. I don’t think anyone is coming in expecting to sweep. So hey, we’re going to come in (today) and get after it. We have a pretty doggone good pitcher in Drew Pomeranz going after it. Turn the page.”