IT’S WINNER TAKE ALL
Astros win third in a row over Rays to force seventh game
Tampa Bay brought in closer Diego Castillo to protect a one-run lead Friday night against Houston in Game 6 of the ALCS.
In the fifth inning? For any other team, such a move smelled of desperation.
For Tampa Bay, it qualified as unconventional wisdom.
Only it backfired against the Astros, who suddenly seemed destined after themselves being desperate just three days ago at
Petco Park.
Houston used a fourrun f ifth-inning — all four runs scoring after Castillo entered the game — to spark a 7-4 victory over Tampa Bay and even the ALCS at three games apiece.
“Pretty gut-wrenching feeling, but that’s the way it goes when you’re making those decisions,” said Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash, adding, “I trusted that Diego could come in there and basically do what he’s done all season long. They got the better of us.”
The Astros are on the brink of completing a comeback that only the 2004 Boston Red Sox have realized, overcoming an 0-3 deficit to win a seven-game series.
Teams are 1-37 when faced with such an insurmountable task.
Houston already has joined Boston in one regard: Of the 39 teams that have dug themselves an 0-3 hole, Boston was the only team to force a Game 7. Now there are two.
“You love this
team,” Houston manager Dusty Baker said. “Well, some people hate this team, but you gotta respect this team.”
Added Baker: “I’m thankful and grateful to be in this position to have a Game 7. In my past, it was Game 6 that would haunt me. ... I think we’ve turned a lot of people, whether they like us or not, into baseball fans.”
Houston and Tampa Bay meet today to decide which team represents the American League in the World Series, which begins Tuesday in Texas.
The Astros, bidding to reach the Series for the third time in four years, either equal history or become the latest footnote to it.
After winning the first three games of the ALCS primarily with outstanding defense and clutch pitching, Tampa Bay has watched Houston take control similarly. The difference being that the Astros also have included a solid dose of hitting along with it.
“We’re relentless and when we said we didn’t want to go home, we really meant that,” said Houston shortstop Carlos Correa, who won Game 5 on Thursday with a walkoff homer. “We want to keep playing baseball, and we don’t want this to be the end of our season.
“We took care of these three games and now we’ve got to take one more. If we don’t win that game then it’s all meant nothing. We’ve got to go out there tomorrow and get that win. It’ll be great.”
Tampa Bay was seemingly in control through the first half of the game.
Rays starting pitcher Blake Snell had allowed only two hits through four innings while being staked to a 1-0 lead on a second-inning run
When Snell allowed a
walk and a single to open the fifth inning, however, Cash called on Castillo.
It wasn’t an unprecedented move.
Castillo entered one regular-season game this year in the third inning and two other times took the mound in the fifth.
During the opening game of the postseason, Castillo came in against Toronto in the sixth. In last year’s AL Division Series, he entered in the fourth inning of Game 2 and was the opener in Game 4.
Apparently, not everyone agreed with the move.
As he walked from the mound to the dugout, Snell could be seen saying: “What the (expletive) are we doing?”
“I was confused for sure,” said Snell, who was at 82
pitches when he was pulled. It was the 19th straight start in which he did not go six innings, the longest active streak in the majors (not counting openers).
Cash said Snell’s pitch count was “manageable,” but the bottom line was “I wanted to get the ball into Diego’s hand.”
It was understandable. Opposing hitters were 1for-22 with runners in scoring position this year (including the playoffs) against Castillo, who had never allowed a run in 13 postseason innings.
In fact, the Rays bullpen had not allowed any of the 21 postseason runners it had inherited to score.
So much for that. The first batter Castillo faced was Astros catcher Martin Maldonado, who
sacrificed the runners to second and third.
George Springer then brought them home with a single hit to the spot left vacant by Rays second baseman Mike Brosseau on the shift
With a 1-0 lead now a 2-1 deficit, Castillo forged ahead and Houston followed with Jose Altuve’s RBI double and Correa’s RBI single to make it 4-1.
Castillo left after the fifth, but Houston wasn’t done, expanding its advantage to 7-1 over the next two innings.
Tampa Bay managed a run in the second inning when Willy Adames split the gap in left-center for a twoout double that scored teammate Brandon Lowe from first base.
.But that was the best the Rays could do against
Astros starter Framber Valdez, who allowed only three hits and struck out nine over six innings.
He left after throwing 101 pitches, the last one a 95 mph fastball that Lowe grounded to second. base for an inning-ending double play.
Tampa Bay sliced a sixrun deficit in half thanks to Manuel Margot, who had a solo homer in the seventh and a two-run homer in the eighth.
Rays catcher Mike Zunino summed up the team’s frustration when he broke a bat over his leg after a strikeout, but said the team remains confident.
“We take it as a one-game series now,” Zunino said. “We’re still in this thing.”