Walk-off homer keeps Astros alive.
After calling his shot, Correa makes it a series again with walk-off homer
AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ASTROS 4, RAYS 3 Tampa Bay leads series 3-2
SAN DIEGO — A playoff stage changes Carlos Correa from superstar to superhuman.
The Astros are alive because of their shortstop, a man who ignores what most of the outside world believes and barks back when their vitriol inevitably arrives. Correa craves the moment, continues to seize it, and lets few forget the ease of his extraordinary exploits.
The Astros’ season hung in the balance Thursday, and Correa came to save it.
When he ran from the field in the ninth inning of a tied game, Correa told Jose Altuve he was “about to end it.” He repeated the prediction to manager Dusty Baker before going on deck.
Correa felt a walk-off home run before bludgeoning the baseball to dead center field. He visualized Nick Anderson’s four-seam fastball and its 20 inches of hop. He kept his stance open and his hands free.
“I don’t mean any disrespect when I call my shot,” Correa said.
When he delivered, Correa
flipped his bat higher than any baseball purist can stomach. He yelled the entire way around the bases. He put his hand to his ear as he touched third base, welcoming the noise froma frenetic group of teammates at home plate.
“I lose it every single time. I don’t know. I black out. I hit the homer, and it’s not prepared,” Correa said.
Correa produced another indelible image in his heroic playoff album and made the American League Championship Series competitive again. His walk-off home run sent Houston to a 4-3 win, though the Astros still trail Tampa Bay 3-2 in the American League Championship Series.
Once down in the series 3-0, the Astros are staying afloat like few teams before it. Just three other clubs that fell behind 3-0 in a seven-game series have ever forced a sixth game. Theastros are now the fourth.
“That was as big a game as I’ve ever been involved in,” said Baker, the firstyear Houston skipper still seeking his first World Series championship. “That’s one of the reasons why I came back.”
Correa joins David Ortiz and Bernie Williams as the only three men in major league history with multiple walk-off home runs during the postseason. He now has six home runs in these playoffs. He had five during the 60-game regular season, one wrought with frustration and speculation on whether his power had been sapped.
Correa dismissed the decline as a small sample size. He readjusted his hand position and stance during a late-september hitting session with coach Alex Cintron.
Confidence grew with each game. He supplied the game-winning solo shot to sweep the Minnesota Twins in the wild card series. He launched mammoth moonshots in Los Angeles against the A’s.
Thursday’s home run meant more than any. Bak
er had cycled through his entire bullpen. Extra innings meant Framber Valdez would enter the game. If he did, the Astros could not have started him today in Game 6.
“I’m just so glad we didn’t use Framber,” Baker said.
The manager used almost everyone else. His path to survival seemed daunting. The Astros depleted most of their trusted pitching depth in the first four games of the American League Championship Series, leaving only the undependable underbelly at full strength for a do-or-die Game 5. All of them delivered.
Baker gave the baseball to a rookie to start — and then didn’t stop. He and pitching coach Brent Strom wore out the land between the third-base dugout and pitchers mound.
The team ran out of mound visits in the ninth inning, indicating the sort of stress each plate appearance brought. Seven pitchers teamed to hold Tampa to seven hits and three solo home runs.
Houston’s first five hurlers were rookies, tying the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals for the most ever deployed in one postseason game. Tampa hit two solo home runs against them, but also stranded a small army.
Closer Ryan Pressly procured the final four outs for the Astros, stranding the go-ahead run at second base in the ninth inning of a tied game.
“We’re pretty happy in there right now , but we’re not finished,” Pressly said. “We still got a lot of work to do. This team is pretty resilient, and we show that day in and day out. You push our backs against the wall and we’re going to fight you.”