• SOLOMON: IT’S ALL ON VERLANDER IN GAME 2.
Down 1-0, Astros turn to pressure-proven Verlander again after Cole’s stunning loss
When Gerrit Cole pitches, the Astros win. That has been the case 16 straight times and in 19 of his last 20 starts.
So, obviously, with Cole on the mound to start Game 1, the Astros expected to take a 1-0 lead over the Nationals in the World Series.
But a couple minutes after the final out in Tuesday’s series opener, the echoing chant from a small group of fans in the upper reaches of Minute Maid Park wasn’t “Let’s Go Astros!” it was “Let’s go Nats!” Washington 5, Houston 4. There are no guarantees in baseball, so let’s not be overly dramatic, but this was a stunning result.
The expected pitchers’ duel never materialized, as Cole was as hittable as he has been this season. Matt Scherzer labored a bit, but held the Astros to just two runs on five hits.
Cole’s performance was particularly unexpected. He allowed five runs on eight hits with only six strikeouts, the fewest he has had since Aug. 1.
Juan Soto, a 20-year-old phenom, did the much of the damage, with a monstrous home run and a two-run double off the left-field wall.
“He has been so good for so long that there builds this thought of invincibility and that he’s impossible to beat,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “So, when it happens, it is a surprise to all of us because we’ve watched for months this guy completely dominate the opposition.”
On a night that Cole didn’t dominate, the Astros didn’t give him enough help.
Their Tiger Woods circa 2000 postseason operation is getting dicey. Offensively, they have played with their C-game throughout most of the playoffs and that was good enough to advance past the Rays and the Yankees. If they brought their A-game, it wouldn’t be much of a game.
They aren’t likely to get away with a third series of not delivering with runners in scoring position.
Now they must win a game that technically isn’t a must-win. While the Astros are good enough to come back from an 2-0 deficit, recovering from back-to-back losses in games Cole and Justin Verlander started would be asking a bit much.
The value in having double aces atop the pitching rotation is they can handle such situations.
Houston faced a similar circumstance in the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. Trailing 1-0 in the series after a home loss, Verlander held New York to just two runs in 62⁄3 innings and the Astros eventually won Game 2 on Carlos Correa’s walkoff home run in the 11th.
As spectacular as Cole has been, Verlander was made for games like this. He would be Hinch’s choice to save a season.
Despite the many pressure situations he has pitched in over the years, Verlander will still feel the heat before Wednesday’s start.
“I think you know what to expect out of the nerves and the anxiousness, but it doesn’t make it go away,” he said. “You know that the nerves are going to be higher. Your body knows it’s not a regular start. Going to sleep (Tuesday night) is not going to be the same as normal … but I know what to expect going into it.
“And having a routine does definitely help because it’s like, from the minute I wake up, I kind of start my routine and I guess that kind of helps calm the nerves just a little bit.”
Some of his teammates need to wake up. With runners in scoring position, Houston was 3-for-12 Tuesday and left 11 runners on base.
The loss increased the pressure significantly. The winner of Game 1 of the World Series has gone on to win it all 62.3 percent of the time, including 18 of the last 22.
Fourteen years to the day that they played in their first World Series game, a 5-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox, the Astros trailed 5-3 after the fifth inning.
So much has changed in the organization since then. New league, new owner, new uniforms even.
And much better Astros … when they play up to their standard.
The Minute Maid crowd was in World Series form, celebrating called balls and roaring at 3-2 counts as if every crucial pitch could produce something dramatic. The Astros didn’t match that.
A burst here or there — a Yuli Gurriel two-run double to get them off to a 2-0 lead in the first, and a George Springer homer in the seventh and RBI double in the eight — was hardly enough.
Cole had been so dominant, that the Astros almost certainly relaxed when they put up the two-spot in the bottom of the first.
The only other time this season that Cole lost a two-run lead was in his first start of the year, the Astros’ second game, March 29 at Tampa Bay. He had not allowed five runs in a game since May 22, a stretch of 25 starts, including three in the postseason. Only twice in those starts did he give up more than three runs.
Washington tied the game in the fourth, when Soto nearly clanked a towering blast off the Astros’ 2017 World Series banner, affixed to the steel beams leading to the rafters atop the left-field facade.
The ball came to rest on the train tracks, and Cole’s night was officially off the rails when he surrendered three runs in the fifth.
It didn’t seem possible, but it happened.
Now the Astros have gone from monumental victory with a walkoff in Game 6 of the ALCS to their season being on the brink in a couple days.
It doesn’t seem real, but it is.