RED SOX HANG ON
Red Sox avoid ALDS elimination with 10-3 comeback win
Boston avoids sweep with 10-3 destruction of Astros
The Boston Red Sox held off the New England winter for at least another day, pummeling the Houston Astros 10-3 at Fenway Park on Sunday afternoon to avoid a sweep in their American League Division Series.
Rookie Rafael Devers hit the go-ahead two-run homer in the third. But it was David Price who saved the day for the Red Sox.
Price, Boston’s $30 million-ayear lefty, has been the center of much controversy this season. But Sunday he was exactly the pitcher the Red Sox needed.
Price entered in the fourth inning and pitched four scoreless innings with the Red Sox holding a precarious one-run lead against an Astros offense that scored eight runs in the first two games of this ALDS.
He gave up four hits and a walk with four strikeouts. Price had runners on base in each inning, but he kept the Astros off the scoreboard as Boston tacked on six seventh-inning runs. Price threw 57 pitches, 37 for strikes. It was the most pitches by a Red Sox reliever since Tim Wakefield threw 64 in Game 3 of the 2004 AL Championship Series against the Yankees.
Game 4 is Monday afternoon at Fenway Park.
The most trouble Price faced was in the fifth, when Houston’s first two batters — Josh Reddick and Jose Altuve — reached on consecutive singles. But Price retired the next three batters — Carlos Correa, Marwin Gonzalez and Alex Bregman — to hold the Astros in check.
“David Price took over from the mound today,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said. “We talked about how much he could give us before the game, and he had mentioned, I’ve got 80 pitches, which is a little bit of a surprise.
“But after the second inning, he came back in and he said, ‘I’ve got it, I feel great.’
“If (the bottom of the seventh) was a quick inning, he was going back out. After (the Astros) made a couple of pitching changes, we score a couple of runs, that was more than enough at that point.”
It was a difficult season for Price, including missing 93 games with two stints on the disabled list. He was also at the center of some off-field controversy, most notably his tiff with Red Sox broadcaster Dennis Eckersley.
Sunday was Price’s biggest game of the season.
“It feels good to put up zeros in the playoffs,” Price said. “That’s why I signed here. I knew we had a good team; I knew we would have a good team for a long time. And this is the second year I’ve been here, and to win back-to-back AL East titles, we’re moving in the right direction. And I think we all understand how good of a team we have in this clubhouse and just focus on today.”
But Price has unfinished business.
“I throw well out of the bullpen, that doesn’t mean anything,” Price said. “I got to do this as a starter. I know that, y’all know that, y’all write it and it will be talked about. I mean, I want to help this team win right now. That’s, if it’s coming out of the ’pen, I’m going to do it.
“If it’s playing center field, I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter to me. I want to win. That’s why I came here. Whatever the team asks me to do, that’s what I’m going to do. They know I want to start; they know I want the ball.”
The Astros jumped on Doug Fister in the first inning, as they did with Boston starters Chris Sale and Drew Pomeranz in Games 1 and 2. Fister faced six batters in the first, giving up three runs, including a two-run homer to Correa. Fister lasted 11⁄ innings.
But the Astros failed to score again on as the Red Sox scratched back until the seventh-inning deluge.
Boston scored a run in the second and three in the third to take the lead.
Boston knocked Astros starter Brad Peacock from the game in the third inning. With two outs and no runners on, Peacock gave up a double to Mitch Moreland and a run-scoring single to Hanley Ramirez, ending Peacock’s day.
Left-hander Francisco Liriano replaced him to face Devers. On Liriano’s second pitch, Devers launched a two-run homer to give Boston the lead. It was Devers’ first postseason homer, as he became the youngest Boston batter — at 20 years, 349 days — to homer in the postseason.
“Brad did a good job getting through,” Astros manager A.J. HInch said. “We had traffic in the second, had traffic in the third. Then that pocket down there at the bottom, we felt pretty good about Liriano, the way his power should work against the bottom of the order. He hung a slider, it just didn’t work. But in these games, with the small margin, Brad having to fight through the second inning obviously led to some trouble in the third as well.”
Boston piled on the runs in the seventh, with a two-run double by Hanley Ramirez and a threerun homer by Jackie Bradley. Liriano took the loss.
The victory was Boston’s first postseason win since Game 6 of the 2013 World Series after it was swept by the Cleveland Indians in 2016.
The Astros failed to accomplish what had never been done in the team’s 56-season history — sweep a postseason series.