A big sock for Sox
Rookie prevails in lefty-on-lefty matchup with go-ahead homer
Rookie Rafael Devers prevails in a lefty-on-lefty matchup, homering to put Boston up for good in its 10-3 win.
BOSTON — Rafael Devers, the 20-year-old lefthanded-hitting third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, accumulated 240 plate appearances in his rookie season. Only 57 came against lefthanders. But in those 57, Devers mashed.
So when Astros manager A.J. Hinch pulled righthanded starter Brad Peacock in favor of inconsistent lefthander Francisco Liriano in the third inning Sunday, it qualified as a questionable move. When Liriano hung an 0-and-1 slider over the plate and Devers clubbed it 430 feet to right-center field, the decision became the misstep that loomed largest in a 10-3 Astros loss in Game 3 of their American League Division Series with Boston.
Devers’ swing put the Red Sox ahead 4-3, a score that represented their first lead of a to-that-point onesided ALDS. It was a lead the Red Sox wouldn’t relinquish, extending the bestof-five series to a fourth game Monday at 12:08 p.m. The Astros will start righthander Charlie Morton in their second attempt to clinch. The Red Sox will counter with righthander Rick Porcello.
On Sunday at Fenway Park, the Red Sox broke open a tight game with a six-run seventh inning. David Price emerged as their hero on the mound, pitching four scoreless innings of relief. A vaunted Astros lineup that romped for eight runs in each of the team’s Game 1 and Game 2 victories was silenced for the final eight innings of Game 3.
“Price was really good today,” Astros shortstop Carlos Correa said. “You’ve got to give credit to the guy when he pitches the way he pitched today. His cutter was very sharp, and he was working off of that. He did his part. You’ve got to tip the hat.”
While Price dominated for the Red Sox, Lance McCullers Jr. matched him for three of those four innings in his first career relief appearance. In the seventh inning that doomed the Astros’ chances at a comeback, McCullers allowed the first two runners to reach base before an uncharacteristic meltdown by Chris Devenski.
Devenski allowed two singles and a double, the latter of which came off the bat of Hanley Ramirez and plated two runs. Ramirez, whom the Red Sox benched in Game 1 in favor of Eduardo Nunez, went 4-for-4 with three RBIs in the game.
Devers also drove in three runs and had two hits, none bigger than his home run off Liriano.
Pivotal decision
In his 57 regular-season plate appearances against lefthanders, Devers batted .400 with a 1.074 OPS. Liriano held lefthanders to a .247 average and .655 OPS in 100 regular-season plate appearances. If Hinch was set on pulling Peacock, Devenski and his .111 average and .414 OPS against in 157 plate appearances versus lefthanded hitters seemed the best option at the time.
When he got his chance later, though, Devenski didn’t even record an out. Hinch summoned Joe Musgrove to try to clean up the mess. Musgrove allowed a three-run homer to nine-hole hitter Jackie Bradley Jr, who got an assist off the outstretched glove of right fielder Josh Reddick.
“The ball kept curling over. I had enough time to get over, I thought, and timed the jump pretty well. Just in and out,” said Reddick, who was robbed of a three-run homer in the second inning by Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts.
“It’s just one of those things where it doesn’t go your way, and it is very unfortunate for myself and the team. But nothing you can do. You get one taken away from you, and you give one right back. It’s just one of those things where it doesn’t go your way.”
In all, the Astros’ bullpen was charged with seven of Boston’s runs. Three were charged to Devenski, two to McCullers and one apiece to Liriano and Musgrove. Peacock was charged with the other three. He completed only 22⁄3 innings.
Hinch pulled Peacock after a two-out double by Mitch Moreland and a runscoring single by Ramirez on which the Boston designated hitter took second on an error by left fielder Marwin Gonzalez. Hinch called on Liriano, who had a 4.40 ERA in 141⁄3 innings of relief for the Astros in the regular season despite September improvements.
The Astros liked the matchup of Liriano’s power fastball and slider against the bottom of the Red Sox order: Devers, the switch-hitting Sandy Leon, and the lefthanded-hitting Bradley. But after spotting a 94 mph two-seamer down and in for strike one, Liriano left an 87 mph slider over the plate.
“That pocket down there at the bottom, we felt pretty good about Liriano, the way his power should work against the bottom of the order,” Hinch said. “He hung a slider, which didn’t work.”
Devers, who turns 21 on Oct. 24, became the youngest player in Red Sox history to hit a postseason home run and joined Mickey Mantle, Andruw Jones, Miguel Cabrera, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper as the only players to homer in the playoffs before their 21st birthday.
Said Liriano: “I didn’t execute the pitch, and it stayed right down the middle. He put a good swing on it.”
Through a half-inning, it appeared the Astros would trounce the Red Sox as they had in the first two games of the series.
Promising start
Two batters and two minutes into the game, they led 1-0 on singles by George Springer and Reddick, with a Doug Fister wild pitch mixed in. Correa, the fourth batter of the game, made it 3-0 with a blast to dead center field on a full-count curveball Fister left up in the zone.
The homer signified Correa’s second of the series and already the 23-year-old’s fourth in his postseason career. Only Carlos Beltran (eight), Lance Berkman (six) and Mike Lamb (five) have ac- counted for more postseason home runs in Astros history.
Red Sox manager John Farrell afforded Fister only the first time through the Astros’ order before he replaced him with Joe Kelly, who recorded the next five outs, one on the deep fly ball off the bat of Reddick that would have cleared the three-foot right-field wall had Betts not snagged it.
Then came time for Price, the $217 million man and former Cy Young Award winner who has yet to surrender a run in his short and temporary tenure as a Boston reliever.
“I don’t think there are a ton of secrets,” Hinch said. “I don’t think there’s a ton of strategy change other than I like the way we jumped out ahead. Obviously, we could have jumped out even further ahead if we had two more feet on Reddick’s ball or if he hits the ball in the corner a little bit more.
“But our attack plan’s going to be the same. We’re going to be fine. We’ll bounce back out of this and come back and play hard. But this is playoff baseball. If anybody thought the Red Sox were going to lay down, probably rethink it.”