Ortiz, Red Sox top Astros in 11 innings
After tying game with triple in 9th, Ortiz wins it with double in 11th
›› Still slugging at 40, David Ortiz hits a tying triple off Luke Gregerson in the ninth, then gives Boston a 6-5 win with an RBI double off Michael Feliz two innings later.
BOSTON — Jason Castro trotted to the mound for a meeting with his pitcher, Michael Feliz. The count was even, two balls and two strikes, andwith the red-hot David Ortiz at the plate and first base suddenly open, the Astros catcher told the 22-year-old righthander he could afford to waste a couple pitches outside the strike zone.
But on his next pitch, Feliz missed high with a changeup intended for closer to the dirt, and Ortiz, the 40-year-old Boston legend, pummeled it to the base of the center-field wall at Fenway Park. The home dugout emptied as Ortiz rounded first base, having walked off a 6-5 Red Sox win against the Astros in 11 innings Sat- urday afternoon.
If not for Ortiz, who in his final season continues to torch major league pitching, the Astros (15-23) would have entered Sunday’s series finale with a chance to win three games of an important four-game set. Instead, after a crushing loss, they will try Sunday for a split against the Red Sox.
Ortiz finished Saturday a single shy of the cycle, sending the game to extra innings with a two-out run-scoring triple off closer Luke Gregerson in the ninth before winning it with his double in the 11th. Ortiz’s third-inning home run off Collin McHugh was the 513th of his illustrious career, moving him past Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews for 22nd all-time.
500/600 club
His 11th-inning double made Ortiz one of only three players in baseball history with 500 home runs and 600 doubles. Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds are the others.
Perhaps the Astros should have just walked him.
“Yeah, I think it’s easy now (to say that),” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “You walk a guy with two strikes, and the odds are still in your favor, the percentages are still in your favor that things are going to go fine. If you’d like to replay it (now knowing the result), I’d happily walk him, sure.”
The key ninth-inning pitch from Gregerson was an 0-1 sinker down and away, out of the strike zone. Ortiz was ready for it. The triple was his first since 2013.
For Gregerson, the blown save was his second in his last three opportunities. Aone-out walk to Jackie Bradley Jr., who scored on Ortiz’s triple, came back to bite the Astros closer.
“Just a little frustrated right now,” Gregerson said. “I’ve given up a few runs lately, and they’ve all been on pitches that I’ve executed. Sometimes you look back and you didn’t make a pitch, or you put it in the wrong spot and got beat that day because you just didn’t execute. And lately, I feel like I’m putting the pitches pretty much exactly where I want them, and I’m still getting beat.
“So it’s been just one of those times where I’m trying not to get mad, because I’m doing what I want to do, and the results just weren’t there.”
Ortiz’s heroics spoiled another big swing from New England native George Springer and a mammoth home run from Carlos Correa that cleared not only the Green Monster but the seats atop it. Springer, who grew up a Red Sox fan and is playing his first series at the team’s historic ballpark, belted a grand slam over the Green Monster in the second inning, his second consecutive game with a home run and four RBIs.
2 slams for Springer
Springer’s bases-clearing shot was the second of his career and the team’s second off Boston’s Clay Buchholz in three weeks. Both of Springer’s grand slams have come in the first six weeks of this season, one at Yankee Stadium and the other at Fenway Park.
Springer is one of four major leaguers with two slams in 2016. The Nationals’ Bryce Harper, the Orioles’ Manny Machado and the Rangers’ Bobby Wilson are the others.
The Astros failed to score after Springer’s grand slam. Jake Marisnick reached second base in the 11th on a two-out double that bounced off the glove of Hanley Ramirez in shallow right field, but the Astros outfielder was stranded when Springer popped out to end the threat.
That sent the game to the bottom of the 11 th, where Feliz needed only three pitch es to record the first two outs. Xander Bogaerts slapped a two-out single to right field. First base was vacated on the fourth pitch of Ortiz’s at-bat, when Feliz’s slider in the dirt bounced away from Castro for a wild pitch.
On the fifth pitch of the at-bat, the game ended.
“This was our game to win,” Hinch said. “We had every chance to win the game.”