Yankees slug their way to Game 6 of ALCS
NEW YORK — DJ LeMahieu drove Justin Verlander’s second pitch of the game over the wall. Then Aaron Hicks sent the home crowd at Yankee Stadium into a frenzy with a three-run homer off the foul pole later in the first inning.
And just like that, the Bronx Bombers were back — in the game and in this matchup of American League powerhouses.
A day after a brutal loss and with little margin for more errors, the New York Yankees played like a team that indeed won 103 games in the regular season. James Paxton chilled Houston’s bats, and the bullpen followed with shutdown relief to beat the Astros 4-1 on Friday night, cutting New York’s deficit in the best-of-seven AL Championship Series to 3-2.
“I wasn’t ready to go home yet,” said Paxton, a 30-year-old Canadian who played for the University of Kentucky, “so I wanted to go out and give my team everything I had and just battle away.”
The rush was on to Texas, where the series resumes tonight without a day off. With pitching plans disrupted when Game 4 was pushed from Wednesday to Thursday because of rain, both
teams are expected to take a bullpen approach in Game 6. Gerrit Cole, 19-0 since May, looms as the Astros’ starter on Sunday if New York manages to extend the series to the limit.
Paxton, a fishing aficionado born outside Vancouver in Ladner, British Columbia, wore three-quarterlength sleeves on a night with a first pitch temperature of 52 degrees. That was the coldest for a Verlander start since last year’s ALCS opener in Boston — he had on long sleeves, and half of Houston’s fielders wore hoodies or balaclavas.
After lasting just 2 1/3 innings in Sunday’s Game 2, Paxton struck out nine batters in six innings, allowing four hits and four walks. Punching his pitching hand into his glove after big strikeouts, he saved his biggest emotion for his 112th and final pitch. Yankees manager Aaron Boone had just made a trip to the mound, unsure if he would make a change.
“He just said, ‘Are you ready? Do you have anything more left in the tank?’” Paxton said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go. I want this.’”
Robinson Chirinos hit a firstpitch fastball Brett Gardner caught in front of the left-field scoreboard with a runner on.
“When it first left the bat: ‘Oh, no!’” Boone remembered thinking to himself.
After Tommy Kahnle allowed George Springer’s one-out single in seventh and walked José Altuve, Zack Britton retired Michael Brantley and Alex Bregman. Britton struck out two in a perfect eighth, and Aroldis Chapman finished with a 1-2-3 ninth for the save.
Paxton outpitched Verlander, an eight-time AllStar and former AL MVP and Cy Young Award winner. Verlander allowed a pair of first-inning homers for the first time in 28 postseason starts and gave up four runs in an inning for the first time since Houston acquired him from the Detroit Tigers in August 2017.
“Fastball command wasn’t very good, and the slider was just hanging,” said Verlander, who retired 10 in a row after Hicks’ homer and wound up allowing five hits in seven innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.
A night after the Yankees made four errors in one of their messier games of the season during an 8-3 loss, Paxton fell behind after 14 pitches. Springer reached on an infield hit, took second on Gary Sánchez’s passed ball, advanced on a groundout and scored when Paxton bounced a breaking ball off Sánchez’s glove for a wild pitch.
“A lot of nerves,” Paxton said. “I was just overthrowing a little bit early.”
New York came out swinging against Verlander, who had been 4-0 with a 1.85 ERA against the Yankees in seven postseason starts.
LeMahieu fouled off a pitch, then drove a fastball 355 feet to right-center for New York’s first leadoff homer since Derek Jeter in 2009 ALCS against the Angels.
“LeMahieu took a couple big swings, hits the homer and woke up the building,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said.
Aaron Judge singled and Gleyber Torres doubled. Verlander struck out Giancarlo Stanton, who went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts after missing three games with a strained right quadriceps.
Hicks, sidelined for more than two months by a right elbow injury that made his wonder whether he would need Tommy John surgery, made a surprise return for the ALCS and re-entered the starting lineup for Game 3. He fell behind 0-2, took three straight balls and sent a chest-high slider down the right-field line. It clanked off the pole for his first home run since July 24.