OFFENSE DISAPPEARS AGAIN.
Ex-AstroMorton helps make sure his old club falls a game short of historic comeback
SAN DIEGO — After climbing from a hole that buried 37 other teams in a seven- game series, making Game 7 of the American League Championship Series felt like an accomplishment after such an average regular season.
But standards are higher in Houston. The five-man core of this club has played inmore postseason games than any five teammates in major league history. They convene each spring with only one objective.
“The only seasons I consider successes,” Alex Bregman said this week, “are the ones that end with a win.”
Saturday represented a failure. In the postseason only because of an expanded field, the Astros clawed back from the brink of embarrassment, only to watch the work fritter away across nine frustrating innings.
Theywon three straight games against the Rays with wonderful starting pitching and a couple of clutch hits. Neither came Saturday, and the Astros are home for the winter after losing 4-2 to Tampa Bay in the seventh game of the ALCS.
FanGraphs gave the Astros just a 6.6 percent chance of advancing after Tampa Bay became the 39th team in major league history to take a 3-0 lead in a best- ofseven series. Only two of those series even went to seven games. The Astros are now the first team to lose after winning three straight to force a seventh game.
The Rays, meanwhile, head to their secondWorld Series in franchise history.
Tampa starter Charlie Morton manhandled his former team across 52⁄ scoreless innings. The
3 righthander required just 66 pitches to get the game’s first 17 outs, and 13 of those hitters saw three or fewer pitches.
He needed just seven pitches to finish the third and six to finish the fifth, making Tampa’s threerun lead feel far larger.
Saturday’s loss was a microcosm of Houston’s season, one riddled with ineffectiveness, injury and turnover.
The lineup disappeared, as it
so often did during a 29-31 regular season. The Astros mustered seven singles and no extra-base hits against three Rays pitchers, and they stranded six baserunners in the final four innings.
Two were on when Bregman struck out as the go-ahead run to end the Astros’ most serious threat in the eighth.
Saturday’s two starters bookended Houston’s other most memorable Game 7.
Four Octobers ago, Lance McCullers Jr. started the Astros’ championship- clinching, 5-1 win at Dodger Stadium. Morton finished the game with four fabulous innings of relief, earning the win and an iconic hug from catcher Brian McCann on the pitchers mound.
Though he kept the Dodgers scoreless that night, McCullers got just seven outs. He hit four men and struck out three others. McCullers’ commandwas nonexistent, but Houston’s hodgepodge bullpen picked him up.
Saturday mirrored McCullers’ World Series appearance in almost every way.
The first pitch he thew hit Manuel Margot. He yielded two home runs. A baserunner reached in every inning McCullers began.
The Rays struck out seven times, but avoided chasing McCullers’ menacing curveball. He threw 36, and only five were swung on and missed.
Brandon Lowe chased a 2-2 curve for McCullers’ first out of the game. WithMargot at first because of McCullers’ first-pitch mishap, the series’ most magnificent player strode to the plate.
Outfielder Randy Arozarena has carried his club’s otherwise anemic lineup. He has hit seven home runs in the postseason, more than any rookie in major league history. The menacing Cuban slugger got to a 2-2 count against McCullers.
McCullers tried to put him away with a two-seam fastball. It
sailed low, and Arozarena annihilated it over the right field wall.
McCullers gestured in disgust at the moment Arozarena made contact. The showman slugger lost his helmet before reaching first base, and his dugout emptied in delirium. Arozarena leapt in celebration with teammates. The Rays were alive.
Morton ensured the Astros stayed down. He worked with remarkable efficiency, eviscerating the teamhe once led to a championship for his ninth straight postseason win.
His exit came in curious fashion. Manager Kevin Cash yanked him after Altuve’s two- out infield single in the sixth. Morton had walked nine-hole hitter Martin Maldonado to start the frame. He had thrown only 66 pitches.
Yet Cash stuck to Tampa’s organizational edict — aggressive usage despite circumstances. Closer Nick Anderson entered to face Michael Brantley, who represented the tying run. Anderson
tossed two pitches. Brantley bounced the second to Lowe in the shift, ending the threat.
Two more chances materialized.
Bregman and Tucker hit consecutive one- out singles against Anderson in the seventh, but Yuli Gurriel grounded into a double play. He finished the postseason 5-for-44.
After Anderson allowed two on in the eighth, Cash summoned Pete Fairbanks, a fireballing righthander with occasional control issues. Correa hit a tworun single against him, providing the Astros’ only life on an otherwise listless evening.
Bregman came up as the goahead run. Fairbanks fired four pitches, three of them reaching 100 mph. Bregman swung through the final one — a rising four-seamer high and outside — bringing another threat to a timid end.