ELLSBURY NAILED AT PLATE AS YANKS FALL
Astros nail Ellsbury at plate for final out to stymie Yanks’ comeback
Gary Sanchez had one thought when he singled to left with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and Jacoby Ellsbury on second.
“Once I hit it, I thought we had a chance,” Sanchez said through an interpreter after the Yankees lost 3-2 to the Astros on Thursday. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t score.”
Instead, Houston left fielder Jake Marisnick, inserted as a defensive replacement in the seventh inning, was able to throw out Ellsbury at the plate. Former Yankee Brian McCann made a lunging tag on the play to end the game as the rally against Houston closer Ken Giles fell short.
“You have to take that shot,’’ Joe Girardi said of third-base coach Joe Espada’s decision to send Ellsbury to try to tie the game after Aaron Hicks already had scored from third on Sanchez’s hit. “It took a perfect throw to get him. If there’s less than two outs you don’t do it, but that’s the right call and he made a perfect throw.’’
The way most of this season has gone, you could have expected an errant throw would have allowed the Yankees to tie the score at least, but Marisnick made sure that didn’t happen.
“I knew I had to take my time with it and not rush,” the left fielder said. “You’ve got a guy that can run [well], but I felt good about it.”
It was the Yankees’ second straight loss after a six-game winning streak got them to the top of the AL East standings.
And for the first half of the game, they seemed to have little chance of avoiding defeat.
That’s because Dallas Keuchel was on the mound for Houston. He entered the game with a 1.42 ERA in six career starts against the Yankees and then dominated them for the first four innings — needing just 43 pitches to get through four scoreless frames.
But he began to battle with his control in the middle innings and the Yankees rallied for an unearned run in the fifth, scoring a run on a bases-loaded catcher’s interference with Ellsbury at the plate.
Sanchez followed with a slow grounder to third, but Alex Bregman charged and made the play to end a 30-pitch inning for Keuchel.
The Yankees didn’t score again until the ninth, making it tough for starter Michael Pineda, who al-
lowed three runs in 6 2/3 innings in the defeat.
The matchup between the teams who came in with the best records in the majors started poorly for Pineda. Josh Reddick reached on a one-out double in the first when Didi Gregorius couldn’t get to a pop-up to shallow center and a charging Ellsbury failed to call the shortstop off to make the play himself.
Chase Headley made a nice play on Jose Altuve’s grounder down the third-base line for the second out, but Ellsbury’s bad play came back to haunt the Yankees when Carlos Correa crushed a two-run homer to right-center on a 2-0 pitch. It was Correa’s third homer in nine career at-bats against Pineda.
Pineda rebounded to retire 10 of the next 11 batters he faced before Houston scored again in the fifth to make it 3-0.
The offense had other chances against Keuchel. In the sixth, Matt Holliday and Starlin Castro ripped a pair of singles to open the inning, but were stranded when Aaron Judge, Headley and Gregorius all struck out on offspeed pitches.
Then in the ninth against Giles, Hicks drew a one-out walk and Ellsbury had a two-out single and stole second, to bring up Sanchez.
“I was going on contact,” Ellsbury said. “I saw they pulled the outfield in, which is the right play, and he charged it well and threw a strike — and unfortunately we didn’t push it across.”