Astros top Yanks, force Game 7
HOUSTON — At a few seconds before midnight on Aug. 31, the final signatures were secured, the official documents were routed electronically to Major League Baseball’s Manhattan offices, and Justin Verlander became a Houston Astro.
Fifty days later, on a Friday night that pushed two teams’ seasons to their breaking point, Verlander ascended the mound at Minute Maid Park, rescued the Astros from the abyss and ensured there would be baseball in Houston for at least one more night.
With seven scoreless innings in a 7-1 win over the New York Yankees in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, Verlander pitched the Astros to a deciding Game 7 on Saturday night.
The Astros would almost certainly be finished without Verlander on their side. He shut down the Yankees in a complete-game victory in Game 2, then followed it up with Friday night’s gem. All told, he has thrown 16 innings in the series, allowing just 10 hits, two walks and one run while striking out 21 batters.
On Friday night, Verlander’s performance veered from overpowering at the beginning to crafty and gutsy — with a heaping measure of good fortune tossed in — at the end. His toughest inning by far was his last, when he put the first two batters of the seventh inning
on base with a walk and a hit-by-pitch. But he struck out Aaron Hicks on a 3-and-2 slider at the end of a 10-pitch duel, then became a spectator like everyone else as his epic night hung on the outcome of a fly ball to deep center.
Todd Frazier’s deep blast carried, carried, carried, and George Springer drifted, drifted, drifted, until Springer sprung from the warning track and met the ball at the apex of his jump, just in front of the wall — a spectacular catch that robbed Frazier of extra bases and prevented two runs from scoring.
Verlander’s night was over; he departed with a 3-0 lead, with all the Astros’ runs to that point coming in the fifth inning on an RBI double by Brian
McCann and a two-run single by Jose Altuve.
Verlander ended the second, third and fourth innings with strikeouts, getting Aaron Hicks on a change-up, Aaron Judge on a slider and Greg Bird on another change-up, respectively. The changeup was a pitch he used only twice in Game 2, but brought out of hibernation Friday night to give the Yankees’ hitters a new look. He ended the fifth by getting Frazier to make a feeble, ungainly swing at a curveball.
Judge hit a home run in the eighth, but the Astros answered with four runs in the bottom of the inning to put the game away.
Yankees starter Luis Severino retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced, firing fastballs that topped out at 101 mph.
But he issued three walks in the fifth inning, and the Astros made him pay, with McCann, 0-for-11 in the series to that point, lashing a 98-mph fastball into the right-field corner for an RBI ground-rule double, and Altuve crushing a first-pitch hanging slider to left for a two-run single.