McCullers, Astros handle White Sox in Game 1 of ALDS
Lance McCullers Jr. was terrific. Yordan Alvarez delivered, and Jose Altuve scored on a nifty slide.
The Houston Astros sure love October.
McCullers pitched scoreless ball into the seventh inning, and the host Astros beat Lance Lynn and the Chicago White Sox 6-1 in Game 1 of their AL Division Series on Thursday.
Michael Brantley added two hits and two RBI as the AL West champions showed off their playoff experience in an impressive opening performance. McCullers allowed four hits in 6 innings in his eighth career postseason start.
While Houston is in the playoffs for the fifth straight season, winning the World Series in 2017 and making it to the AL Championship Series last year, Chicago is making a second straight playoff appearance for the first time in franchise history. It lost to Oakland in the first round in 2020.
Game 2 of the best-of-5 series is Friday in Houston. The teams also met in the 2005 World Series, with the White Sox sweeping the Astros for the title.
McCullers, playing the role of staff ace after the Astros lost Gerrit Cole in free agency and Justin Verlander to injury in recent years, struck out four and walked none.
He set career highs with 13 wins, a 3.16 ERA and
185 strikeouts during the regular season, but he also led the AL with 76 walks.
The 28-year-old McCullers
didn’t allow a hit until Yoan Moncada singled with one out in the fourth.
The right-hander left to a standing ovation after giving up consecutive singles with two outs in the seventh.
He waved to the cheering fans just before entering the dugout.
Alvarez hit an RBI double in the third and a solo homer in the fifth. Altuve wowed the crowd of 40,497 when he slid home and slapped the back of the plate just ahead of Yasmani Grandal’s tag in the third.
Lynn was making his first playoff appearance since 2018 after posting a career-low 2.69 ERA this season. But the burly righthander relies on his fastball, and the Astros are one of the majors’ best fastballhitting teams.
Lynn was tagged for five runs and six hits in 3 innings. Five of the six hits that he allowed came off his four-seam or cut fastball.
Rookie Jake Meyers had two hits and drove in a run for Houston. Brantley chased Lynn with a tworun single.
Chicago got on the board on Jose Abreu’s two-out single in the eighth. But Kendall Graveman retired Grandal on a liner to center for the final out.
Abreu was in the lineup after dealing with flu-like symptoms for the past few days. He did not travel with the team to Houston, instead arriving Wednesday night after multiple tests showed his illness wasn’t COVID-19-related.
LATE WEDNESDAY
Dodgers 3, Cardinals Chris Taylor hit a tworun homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift host Los Angeles over St. Louis in the NL wild-card game.
The 106-win Dodgers advanced to a best-of-5 Division Series against the NL West champion Giants, who won 107 games to barely hold off rival Los Angeles for the division title. Game 1 is Friday night in San Francisco.
“That’s gonna be fun. Yeah, two of the best regular-season records of all-time. We’ve been battling all year, so I expect a hard-fought series,” Taylor said.
The sellout crowd of 53,193 hung on every pitch as the tension of a tie game built from the fourth inning on. Fans waved blue towels, futilely urging out the few balls launched into the outfield only to see them caught in a winner-take-all matchup between two of the most storied and successful National League franchises.
Cody Bellinger drew a two-out walk from T.J. McFarland and stole second in the ninth, when nearly every fan was on their feet, waiting to see if the defending World Series champions could pull off a win. Alex Reyes came in to face Taylor, who sent a 2-1 breaking ball into the leftfield pavilion, triggering an explosion of cheers.
“Honestly, I was just trying to hit a single. Not trying to do too much,” Taylor said after hitting the fourth walk-off homer in Dodgers postseason history. “And he gave me a good slider to hit and I was able to get it up in the air.”
Both teams had runners on in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, but couldn’t push a run across.
St. Louis finished 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position, stranding 11 overall.
Dueling aces Adam Wainwright of St. Louis and the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer struggled with their control early in just the second winner-take-all game in postseason history with two starting pitchers aged 37-plus. Wainwright is 40; Scherzer is 37.