Stros barrel way to Gm. 7
After falling into 3-0 series hole, Houston pushes Rays to the limit
ASTROS 7 RAYS 4
The lovable underdogs, America’s team, the scrappy fan favorites, are headed to a Game 7. The Houston Astros pounded the Rays’ vaunted pitching staff for a third straight win in San Diego, setting up a winner-take-all game on Saturday night.
For the first three games, it looked like the Rays’ formula of a deep bullpen and defensive excellence had shut down the Astros’ hot offense. Even their two wins on Wednesday and Thursday were tense, low-scoring affairs. But the Astros’ deep lineup finally exploded on Friday night, making the Rays’ “stable” of hard-throwing relievers look mortal. Blake Snell struggled with his control, walking four in four innings, forcing Tampa to go to star reliever Diego Castillo in the fifth. The Astros jumped all over Castillo, with George Springer, Jose Altuve, and Carlos Correa knocking in four runs.
Kyle Tucker salted the win away with a solo homer in the sixth and a sac fly in the seventh.
The Astros’ 7-4 win was nearly unprecedented in baseball history. Even getting to a Game 6 is shockingly rare: only three MLB teams had ever forced a sixth game after losing the first three. Before Friday, the 2004 Red Sox were the only team ever to force a Game 7 after falling behind 3-0. The Astros will try to join them as the only teams to win a Game 7 in those circumstances. Manager Dusty Baker showed Astros players videos from the 2004 ALCS before Game 5 to fire them up.
“You gotta love this team, well some people hate this team, but you gotta respect this team,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said Friday.
Like ’04, Saturday night will be a bitter pill for Yankees fans no matter what happens. The Astros eliminated the Yankees in the 2017 and 2019 ALCS, and the Yankees players spent much of the precoronavirus spring training lamenting what they saw as insufficient punishment for the Astros hitters who were part of one of the most brazen cheating scandals in sports history. Gary Sanchez implied that Jose Altuve was wearing a wire for his ’19 ALCS-clinching homer; Aaron Judge openly said that he wasn’t over the Astros’ cheating.
But the Yankees’ hate for the Rays might burn even hotter. The Rays eliminated the Yankees in last week’s ALDS, the latest chapter in a yearslong feud between the teams that has outlasted near-complete roster turnover on both sides. The Rays claimed to not take any special pleasure in bouncing the Yankees from the playoffs; blaring “New York, New York” after Game 5 says otherwise.
So that’s what’s at stake for Yankees fans in Game 7. On the one hand, one of their most vile rivals will be headed to the World Series while the Yankees are at home for the 11th straight year. On the other, one of them will lose.
Ironically, the Rays and Astros are learning to hate each other. Rays infielder Yandy Diaz began barking with Astros starter Framber Valdez and catcher Martin Maldonado in a bizarre scene after a sixth-inning walk. Correa had to calm down and refocus Valdez. “Your job is not to go out there and be the bigger man, your job is to help us win this ballgame,” Correa said he told Valdez.
For an Astros pitching staff that lost Gerrit Cole to free agency, Justin Verlander to Tommy John surgery, and nearly every reliever to injury, Valdez has been their savior. Valdez gave up one run and struck out nine in six innings on Friday night, lowering his postseason ERA to 2.25. He’s given up five runs in 24 playoff innings this fall.
Houston’s beleaguered bullpen kept the Rays in the game, but they were spotted a big enough lead to survive. Manny Margot, who is having an outrageous ALCS, homered in the seventh and then hit a towering bomb in the eighth to cut the Astros’ lead to 7-4.
He only hit one homer in the regular season and now has five in 12 playoff games, plus the catch of the year in Game 3.
But that came in happier times for the Rays, when it looked like five games against the Yankees would be their stiffest test en route to a welldeserved World Series berth, their first since 2008. Now they’re on the verge of authoring one of the biggest playoff collapses in American sports history. At 40-20, the Rays had the best record in the American League. At 29-31, the Astros joined the Brewers as the second and third teams in MLB history to make the playoffs with a sub-.500 record. But that isn’t evidence that the Astros are frauds who could luck into a World Series trip after cheating into two in the last three years. It just means that the Astros are a supremely talented team, one that did what it took to made the playoffs and was able to turn it on when they got there.