It’s a slam dunk for Houston
WASHINGTON — The Houston Astros spent the summer in a race to win more games than any other team in baseball to secure home-field advantage throughout the postseason — only to squander it in stunning fashion by losing the first two games of the World Series.
But facing the possibility that their season could end in bleak disappointment this weekend, the resilient Astros went on the road, of all places, and took that advantage back.
Behind an unexpectedly dominating performance by starting pitcher Jose Urquidy, a rookie from Mazatlán, Mexico, and a grand slam by Alex Bregman that blew the game open in the seventh inning, the Astros beat the Washington Nationals, 8-1, in Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday and sent a wave of dread through the nation’s capital.
The best-of-seven series is now tied, two games apiece, with Game 5 scheduled for Sunday in Washington. Then it will shift back to Houston, where the Astros won 60 games in the regular season and are 5-3 in the postseason.
But perhaps it does not even matter in this Series, since the road team has won all four games.
Game 5 will feature a rematch of the Game 1 duel between Gerrit Cole of Houston and the Nationals’ Max Scherzer, a pair of aces who are expected to dominate whenever they take the mound. But Urquidy, a 24-year-old right-hander who had never played above Class A until this year — and did not pitch in the majors until July — was just as good.
With his team in need of a command performance — or at least four strong innings before handing things over to the bullpen — Urquidy gave the performance of his life.
When he took the mound in a stadium packed with loud, expectant fans dressed in Nationals red, Urquidy became only the third pitcher born in Mexico to start a World Series game, joining Fernando Valenzuela in 1981 and Jaime Garcia in 2011.
But with the aplomb of a veteran molded in the crucible of postseason play, he withstood a hostile environment and shut down a team that had scored 12 runs in Game 2.
He used a variety of pitches and speeds to perplex his opponents over five innings and walked off the mound with a 4-0 lead, having allowed only two hits with no walks and four strikeouts.
Then it was Bregman’s turn. The Houston third baseman had been fighting his way through a challenging postseason. Heading into Game 4, he was batting .208 in 14 postseason contests, with just one hit — a homer in Game 2 — in the World Series.
In Game 3 on Friday he went 0 for 5 and stranded six runners on base.
Worse, the Nationals walked Michael Brantley intentionally in that game to load the bases in order to pitch to the struggling Bregman, and he made an out.
Game 4 was different for him from the beginning. Bregman laced a run-scoring single in the first inning to give Houston a 1-0 advantage, and in the seventh he came to the plate with the bases loaded once again and the Astros looking to extend a 4-1 lead.
This time Bregman delivered, crushing a sinker from Fernando Rodney into the seats in left field. As his teammates jumped and shouted, Bregman rounded the bases in a stadium full of stunned fans, so silent that the cheers from the players in the Astros’ dugout could be heard in the upper deck.
Bregman finished 3 for 5 with five RBI and stranded only one runner.
The rest of the Astros pounced, too, and early, scoring twice in the top of the first inning off Patrick Corbin, Washington’s left-handed starter, to dissipate much of the energy that had been building before the game at the park.
It was a resumption of their approach in Game 3. After losing the first two games, the Astros players spent much of their time on Thursday’s flight to Washington discussing the importance of a more-measured approach at the plate, rather than grunting out all-or-nothing swings for the fences.
But they still hit home runs. Robinson Chirinos, the catcher who had homered in Game 3, hit a two-run shot in the fourth inning Saturday, and Urquidy refused to give any of it back.
Urquidy used a combination of his high fastball, change-up and slider, and occasionally dropped in a bottom-heavy curveball for big swings and misses, like the first pitch he threw to Ryan Zimmerman in the fifth inning. But he was also unafraid to challenge the hitters with power, as he did with Zimmerman in the same at-bat, finishing him off with a 95-mph fastball.
As the previously unheralded rookie vexed the frustrated Washington hitters, Nationals manager Dave Martinez paced in the dugout. His players had performed so well in the first two games, but after Game 3, in which Washington went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position and stranded 12 batters, he had lamented that they were too aggressive on bad pitches.
“I don’t mind our guys being aggressive, but I want them to be aggressive in the strike zone today,” he said before Game 4. “We were one or two big hits away from blowing that game open, so hopefully we get those today.”
They did not, and now the World Series is essentially a bestof-three affair, with the home teams still looking for a win.