» RED SOX TAKE 2-1 LEAD IN AL SERIES
HOUSTON — Nathan Eovaldi didn’t enter October on most people’s list of potential postseason difference makers.
The former Yankee is on it now, maybe at the top.
The hard-throwing right-hander, the second-most famous pitcher to come from Alvin, Texas (Nolan Ryan retired the trophy on that one), pitched six strong innings Tuesday in leading the Red Sox to a critical 8-2 victory over the Astros in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series at Minute Maid Park.
The win gave the Red Sox a twogames-to-one lead in the best-of-seven series and returned to them the homefield advantage they lost in Game 1. Game 4 is Wednesday night.
Steve Pearce broke a 2-2 tie with a solo homer off reliever Joe Smith in the sixth inning and Jackie Bradley Jr.’s grand slam off Roberto Osuna, who was suspended for 75 games earlier in the season while with Toronto for violating MLB’s domestic abuse policy, capped a five-run eighth that made it 8-2 and sent many of the 43,103 in the building starting for home.
The 28-year-old Eovaldi, whose brilliant seven-inning performance against the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALDS helped swing that series in Boston’s favor, allowed two runs and six hits over six innings Tuesday. Three of the hits came in the first inning and one of the runs should have been unearned. That run scored on an Alex Bregman double in the fifth that scooted under the glove of third baseman Rafael Devers, who should have been charged with an error. Ryan, still an Astros adviser and in attendance, watched Eovaldi, who has added an effective cutter to complement his high-90s fastball, walk two and strike out four.
Houston lefty Dallas Keuchel allowed two runs and four hits, three of them to the first three batters of the game, over five innings.
Eovaldi, a free agent after the season, was the victim of some good-natured trolling by Bregman, the Astros third baseman who put on another Gold Glove display in the field, on Monday. Bregman posted an Instagram video of Eovaldi’s last start in this building, June 20 while a member of the Rays, when he allowed back-to-back-to-back homers.
The pitcher shrugged off the video, which Bregman deleted later in the day, saying “I’m a completely different pitcher” than he was in June.
Some Red Sox, including Pearce, weren’t as nonchalant about it.
“We do our talking on the field,” Pearce told a reporter from Boston’s WEEI on Monday. “If he wants to run his mouth now we’ll see who is talking at the end of the series.”
The Red Sox quickly jumped on Keuchel. Leadoff man Mookie Betts lined a 1-and-2 pitch to center for a single and Andrew Benintendi slashed a single to left. J.D. Martinez, off to a 5for-21 start to the postseason, including 0-for-7 in the first two games of this series, took a 2-and-1 fastball opposite field down the right-field line, the RBI double making it 1-0. Xander Bogaerts’ groundout to short brought in Benintendi to make it 2-0.
The Astros cut their deficit in half in the bottom of the first, a 26-pitch inning for Eovaldi, on an RBI single by Marwin Gonzalez, who homered off David Price in Game 2.
Keuchel retired eight straight after Martinez’s double, a streak snapped when Martinez walked with two outs in the third. Bogaerts walked as well and Pearce followed with a towering drive to left that Tony Kemp made a terrific catch on as he jumped and crashed into the wall. The Red Sox challenged that the ball scraped the wall before Kemp caught it, but the call was confirmed on video review.
Eovaldi retired seven straight after a Bregman walk in the third before walking Jose Altuve with two outs in the fifth. Bregman came next and sent a hard chop to third. The ball skidded under the backhand attempt of Devers, who pinch ran for Eduardo Nunez in the fourth, and into the leftfield corner, the play somehow scored a double. Altuve, who has been bothered by a sore knee, chugged around from first to score, tying it at 2.