RED SOX EVEN SERIES. C2
Shaky start, inability to get to Boston bullpen prevents 2-0 series lead
BOSTON — One club fought for its life behind a maligned pitcher. Another took solace and enjoyed an advantage in two acclaimed acquisitions.
Gerrit Cole, the remade righthanded fireballer, threw to Martin Maldonado — obtained because he’s one of baseball’s best defensive catchers. They formed an Astros battery that did not play to its potential.
Never before had two former No. 1 overall draft picks pitched against each other in a playoff game. Neither David Price nor Cole will remember the occasion fondly. They teamed to yield nine runs, morphing the night into a bullpen battle Boston — finally — won.
Four relievers — including potential Game 3 starter Rick Porcello — threw 3⅓ innings of one-run ball, backing Price to seal a 7-5 Game 2 win beneath 37,960 boisterous bodies in Fenway Park.
No team has ever lost the first two games of a League Championship Series at home and come back to win the series. Before Game 2 of the American League Championship Series at Fenway Park, Boston’s rookie skipper did not dim the implications.
“We’ll let you guys know after the game,” manager Alex Cora said when asked for a Game 3 starter. “We’re all-in tonight.”
Porcello pitched a sublime eighth inning, striking out two of the three men he encountered. Closer Craig Kimbrel allowed a ninth-inning run on two hits, retiring Alex Bregman as the tying run at the plate.
“We just couldn’t find the hits until the ninth inning,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “We had pressure on them a lot tonight and it felt like a game where you were going to have to capitalize on more opportunities because of the nature of the game.”
The Astros finished 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position. After Marwin Gonzalez’s monstrous third-inning home run against Price, they did not strike a hit until George Springer’s two-out, ninthinning double against Kimbrel.
Jose Altuve drove Springer in with a two-out single which caromed off the Green Monster. Bregman stranded Altuve with a flyout to the left-field warning track, ending the game.
“I knew I missed it,” Bregman said. “If I got it, it would have been on the street behind Fenway Park.”
In Price’s 10 postseason starts preceding this one, he produced a 6.08 ERA. Teams for which he pitched were 0-10. Price posted an 0-9 individual record, ineptitude which welcomes the angst of a ravenous fanbase with far loftier expectations.
Against the Yankees in the American League Division Series, the bearded lefthander languished for 1⅔ innings. Fans booed him from the field after two walks and two home runs sullied his start.
Sunday, after 4⅔ frightening frames, they stood in recognition of progress. Price did not dazzle. More critically, he did he implode. Gonzalez’s two-run home run and Springer’s broken-bat double in the second were the extent of the Astros’ production.
“I thought David did a good job of throwing fastballs to both sides of the plate,” Bregman said. “He’s tough, he’s a really good pitcher, one of the best that they have. It’s never easy to face a guy like that, but I think we did a good job of putting together good at-bats and getting traffic on the bases.”
Seven Astros were left aboard. Five got on while Price pitched. The $217 million southpaw permitted a baserunner to scoring position in all but one inning he worked.
Walks to Bregman in the first and fifth disrupted Price’s momentum. Tyler White coaxed a four-pitch free pass in the fifth, bringing Cora from the Boston dugout. Price exited one out shy of his first playoff win.
Matt Barnes struck out Gonzalez to strand two baserunners. The Astros mustered just two others across the final four frames.
“We scored a couple runs, wasn’t enough,” Gonzalez said. “The pen came in and shut us down.”
Strong finish for Cole
Boston clung to a 5-4 lead entering the seventh. Cole grinded through six innings, finally harnessing command of his secondary stuff in the final three.
Cole did not return for the seventh. The top of the Red Sox order was scheduled to make its fourth plate appearance.
Lance McCullers Jr. was summoned. Pitching on consecutive days for the first time since he moved to the bullpen, McCullers allowed Mookie Betts aboard with a six-pitch leadoff walk. Two of the three curveballs he threw missed the zone.
Against Andrew Benintendi, McCullers concluded a strikeout with a curveball.
Catcher Martin Maldonado, acquired solely for his defensive dominance, did not block it. Betts scurried to second on the wild pitch. He went to third when Maldonado could not corral a 2-2 curveball against J.D. Martinez. Still, McCullers notched a strikeout. He yelled into the air. Only Xander Bogaerts stood between an escape.
On the first pitch, Maldonado crossed up signs with McCullers. A second passed ball was the result, allowing Betts to score. Maldonado had three total in his previous 40 games as an Astro.
“It’s disappointing,” Maldonado said. “It’s really hard when you get crossed up and you have a guy with that kind of spin on the curveball and when you get crossed up, you have no chance to catch it. On the other one, I straight missed it. It hit my glove, I should have caught it.”
Betts finished 2-for-4 with two doubles. His seventh-inning run was unsightly insurance compounding Cole’s ugly night.
Unlike any 2018 start
In the first three innings he worked, Cole ceded five runs — more any of his 32 regular season starts. Houston activated its bullpen during a 25-pitch, two-run first inning.
Jackie Bradley, Jr. annihilated a three-run double in the third, punishing a fastball which creeped more toward the middle than Cole intended, erasing the lead the Astros on obtained on Gonzalez’s home run a half-inning earlier.
“Obviously we wanted to win this one,” Cole said, “and I wasn’t able to shut them down there after we answered back for the second time against Price.”
He was behind 2-1 to Bradley after spiking a changeup. Early command of Cole’s secondary pitches was shoddy. Of the 45 he threw, only six were swung upon and missed. Ten others were called strikes.
The imprecision left Cole reliant on his four-seam fastball. Careful control is vital against Boston’s burgeoning lineup. Both Hinch and Maldonado said Cole was over-throwing to begin his outing, too, compounding the conundrum.
“I was just not able to really find the zone with (my secondary pitches) and put pressure on them with those offerings,” Cole said. “I just found myself without leverage and with traffic. I had to make some pitches. I did the best I could in those situations, but when you’re facing some of the best hitters in the world, they do their job as well.”
Betts bludgeoned his fifth pitch of the game off the wall in center field. Benintendi banged the sixth into right. Not once in 32 regularseason starts did Cole allow two hits in the first inning. Here, a double and single sent him to an early deficit.
A fatal throwing error crippled any chance he possessed to escape it.
After Benintendi’s single, Martinez lined into the shift for Cole’s first out. Two pitches later, Bogaerts chopped a four-seam fastball back to Cole for what should have been the second.
The pitcher leapt from the mound, fielded the baseball and checked second base. Cole said he felt his back foot slip on the grass, causing a throw far too high for Yuli Gurriel to gather. It bounced into a camera well adjacent to the Red Sox dugout.
Bogaerts bounded to second and Beinintendi to third. A fourpitch walk to Steve Pearce loaded the bases. Rafael Devers loomed.
On a 2-2 count, Cole tried a fourseamer. It sat up for the lefthanded hitting Devers. He shot it to the opposite field for an RBI single. Benintendi scored, an unearned run Cole created on a forgettable night.
“You put yourself in that position,” Cole lamented..