Shot in the arm

Yanks get ace-like performance to send ALCS back to Houston

With his team’s season hanging by a thread, James Paxton stepped up with an ace-like performance to force a Game 6 in Houston tonight.

AARON Boone talked amid the late-night despair after Game 4 about wanting to board a plane back to Texas. CC Sabathia, a sling holding his damaged left arm in place, mentioned before Game 5 he would go for an MRI exam “after we get back from Houston.”

The words were right, of course. And the words come first for rallying confidence, for building motivation. But they are rote. All teams in crisis know the script about not surrendering, about believing in themselves that they can come all the way back — whether they actually believe it or not.

Which is where deeds enter. And the Yankees’ first acts of Game 5 played like a sequel to the horror show that concluded Game 4. Both James Paxton and Gleyber Torres could not come up with George Springer’s leadoff grounder. Michael Brantley, lefty vs. lefty, walked. Gary Sanchez had both a passed ball and wild pitch scoot by him, the second putting the Astros up 1-0.

Game 5 had begun with cooler weather and a more subdued crowd than the night before. The fans needed to see a reason to believe. Instead, they witnessed more bad baseball. So boos filled the Stadium, interspersed with what felt inevitable now — the nearing end of the Yankees’ 2019 season. Especially since Justin Verlander was the opposing pitcher, and in October that is particularly awful for the Yankees.

But DJ LeMahieu homered on the second pitch of the bottom of the first and “woke up the building,” in the words of Houston manager A.J. Hinch. Aaron Judge singled, Gleyber Torres doubled. Second and third. No outs. But Giancarlo Stanton struck out.

The Yankees lost Games 3 and 4, in part, because they made the least of first-inning opportunities against Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke. Now there was a path for Verlander to escape, too. Aaron Hicks was 2-for-23 with 10 strikeouts in his career against the righty, and the dazed Sanchez was after that, and Hicks fell behind 0-2. But he rallied to a full count then hit the right-field foul pole.

The Yankees had managed two homers and four runs over 31 innings in their previous four postseason tries against Verlander. Now, they had two homers and four runs five batters into the first inning — astonishingly the first time in 405 postseason games the Bronx Bombers recorded two first-inning homers. That was it, though. Verlander expressed his ace-ness by yielding one more hit and no runs over seven innings.

So either Paxton countered effectively or there would be no flight to Houston.

“We needed a huge start from him, and he came through in a huge way,” LeMahieu said.

Paxton defied a growing pitch count and constant on-base traffic to limit Houston to just that first-inning run. The Yankees won 4-1 to avoid losing this ALCS by the same tally. So, they did get on that plane that Boone had spoken about, did delay Sabathia’s MRI exam. The task remains north of daunting. The Yankees have to win twice at Minute Maid, where the Astros constructed the majors’ best home record. Gerrit Cole is waiting if Game 7 is necessary, and Houston has won in his past 16 starts, including three this postseason.

But considering how Game 4 ended and Game 5 began, a slim chance is far better than none. The Yankees will have to construct a three-game winning streak to get to their first World Series since 2009. But they get to try because they avoided losing three straight days at home for the first time since August 2017.

“I was curious to see how we responded,” said Zack Britton, whose delivered five instrumental outs to make this a successful Yankees response.

Part of the problem the Yankees face in Houston is how they will get 54 outs (if the games stay in regulation) with so much pitching exhaustion, uncertainty and whatever is going on with Adam Ottavino. So every out Paxton provided not only helped the Yankees win Friday night, but upgraded the possibilities of pulling off the improbable.

Paxton threw 27 pitches in the unappetizing first, 29 more in the second. But he endured. The lefty said all the experience he gathered from problematic first innings all season and from his first two over-amped postseason starts when he lasted a total of just seven innings enabled him to “calm better and execute better.”

He found big outs. The Astros were hitless in 14 at-bats with men on base against him. The Yanks keep searching for another Sabathia, circa 2009. And Paxton offered that. He threw 112 pitches — the most by any Yankee this year. He got 18 vital outs without surrendering to the first-inning dread that gripped a stadium.

He helped the Yankees transition from positive words, to successful deeds when it came to survival. The road ahead remains treacherous. But there is road.

“I wasn’t ready to go home yet,” Paxton said.

There was a plane trip to Houston.