Astros’ walk off shuts down Yankees
HOUSTON — The 10.2 seconds that transpired between the crack of Carlos Correa’s bat and the slap of Jose Altuve’s hand on home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning Saturday evening at Minute Maid Park seemed to go by in slow-motion, for all but the three desperate New York Yankees trying to stop Altuve from scoring from first base with what would be the winning run of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. For right fielder Aaron Judge, shortstop Didi Gregorius and catcher Gary Sanchez, those seconds went by in a heartbeat in a blurry, twitchy, terror-filled blink of the eye.
The play that produced the walk-off run in the Houston Astros’ unforgettable 2-1 victory seemed to bend time in both directions.
It went by slowly enough to etch into memory each distinct segment — the 99-mph fastball from Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman that Correa smashed into the gap in right-center, Judge’s quick reaction to cut the ball off in front of the wall, the throw toward second base, Gregorius’s obstructed relay home over Correa’s right shoulder, the short-hopped throw that Sanchez failed to gather, Altuve’s curling slide with the winning run.
But it went by so fast, all the mind could absorb at the end was the mass of white-jerseyed Astros gathering in a teeming scrum near home plate to celebrate a win that will be remembered for as long as there is baseball played in Southeast Texas — a win that gave the Astros a 2-0 lead in the bestof-seven series, which shifts to Yankee Stadium for Game 3 on Monday night.
It went by so fast, you could, in that moment, forget about Justin Verlander.
But let’s not allow that to happen - because without Verlander, the 34-year-old ace who arrived in Houston six weeks ago looking to bring himself and this city a long-awaited championship, none of it was possible. It was Verlander who climbed the mound nine times Saturday and refused to let anyone else in white have a hand in a game he saw as belonging to him alone. His was a legendary performance: nine innings, 124 pitches, one run, 13 strikeouts.
“Big moments,” Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said, “are meant for big-time performers.”
No other starter this postseason had so much as pitched into the eighth inning. But taking Verlander out was never a serious consideration.
You would not have wanted to even try.
“He asked after the seventh inning,” Verlander said of the dugout conversation with Hinch, with the score tied at 1. “And I probably wasn’t the nicest guy to him, just like, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ And then there was no conversation after the eighth. It was mine to win or lose.”
And there was more to this game than just Verlander’s start and the dramatic finish.
Minute Maid Park isn’t old enough or storied enough to have its own ghosts, the way the old parks do, but strange things were occurring all over its expanses Saturday, things that sometimes defied other explanations and conspired to keep the score at 1-1 until deep into the proceedings.
A ball off the bat of Yankees third baseman Todd Frazier got lodged in a seam of the outfield fence in left-center, possibly costing him an extra base.
At one point, when Correa reached out and poked a 99-mph fastball from Yankees starter Luis Severino toward the wall in right in the fourth inning, a small boy, looking like nothing less than the ghost of Jeffrey Maier, but now wearing a retro Astros jersey, reached out with his glove above the wall and redirected the ball. But a replay review confirmed the kid did not interfere with the ball, and the Yankees this time — 21 years after Maier’s moment of infamy at Yankee Stadium — got no fortuitous break. It was a home run for Correa, who had broken his bat while fouling off the previous pitch.
In the third, Yankees leadoff man Brett Gardner tried to stretch a double into a triple, and the ball suddenly materialized either by dark magic or two perfect throws from the corner - on the third base bag to tag him out. It was the second straight game in which the Astros needed to make a perfect play to nail a Yankee on the base paths at a critical moment, and got it.
And the perfection of that 9-6-5 putout by the Astros would stand in stark contrast to the would-be 9-6-2 play the Yankees botched, with everything on the line, six innings later.
About that play: the Yankees would have had Altuve pegged — perhaps easily — with anything resembling a competent relay, of the sort that teams begin practicing in Arizona and Florida in late February just so they can pull it off seamlessly and machine-like in September and October. When Astros third base coach Gary Pettis greenlighted Altuve, who had lined a 100-mph fastball for a single off Chapman one batter earlier, it looked like a suicide mission that might end with Altuve out by 10 feet.