FAMILIAR FEELING
Altuve, Alvarez and Verlander come through in franchise’s latest playoff push
Postseason pedigree populates this Astros roster that for so much of the year was only partial. Houston played more than 70 games without its leadoff man and almost 50 without its most fearsome slugger. The ace tabbed to lead it into this year’s playoffs spent the first half of the season in a different organization.
Saturday, those familiar pieces aligned to lift the Astros in the opener of their latest playoff push. Justin Verlander, reacquired from the Mets at the trade deadline for games like this, authored six scoreless innings. Yordan Alvarez hit two home runs and Jose Altuve another. And the Astros withstood a bullpen hiccup to win 6-4 over the Twins in Game 1 of the ALDS.
Houston has not dropped a Game 1 in eight division series since joining the American League in 2013. The Astros have won their last 12 division series games at Minute Maid Park. They will send Framber Valdez to the mound Sunday aiming to take a 2-0 lead in the best of-five series.
“Always, winning the first one is a kind of relief,” closer Ryan Pressly said. “You don’t have to pressure yourself after that. But we’ve been there and done that so many times with this team. It just comes natural to us, I guess.”
Verlander met a stubborn Twins lineup in the first inning. Their hitters refused to chase. Verlander threw just 10 of 23 pitches for strikes. Three of his first four hitters reached base, two by walks. Edouard Julien drew one to open the game. Jorge Polanco singled.
It echoed the start of Game 1 of the 2022 ALDS, when Seattle jumped Verlander for six runs. Verlander avoided a repeat. By his own admission, Verlander rarely pitches for a double play. He induced just eight in 162 1/3 innings this regular season. Royce Lewis, the Twins’ star rookie, grounded into five in 58 games.
Verlander forged a 2-2 count and challenged Lewis with a 96 mph fastball. Lewis chopped it to shortstop Jeremy Peña, who started a pivotal double play. Minnesota did not score in the inning. A sellout crowd at Minute Maid Park simmered as Verlander made his escape. Altuve needed one swing to ignite it.
Altuve was a nonfactor in last year’s ALDS against the Mariners. He went 0for-16 in Houston’s threegame sweep. He took 62 plate appearances in the 2022 postseason and did not drive in a run. Though his bat stirred in the World Series, the Astros’ sparkplug hit .190 in the playoffs.
Twins starter Bailey Ober opted to challenge him. Doing so involves inherent risk. Altuve hit .415 when putting the first pitch of an at-bat into play this season. Of his 209 career regularseason home runs, 55 were hit on the first pitch, though that included only one this season.
Ober opened with a 92.4 mph fastball at the top of the zone. Altuve pounced on it. His arcing drive left his bat at 106.3 mph and traveled 377 feet, striking the façade below the train tracks. It gave Altuve 24 career playoff home runs, second in MLB history to Manny Ramirez’s 29, and Verlander a lead.
“For him to go out and do that just kind of helps you settle in a little bit and know that my margin for error is not razor-thin anymore,” Verlander said. “If you make a mistake, give up a solo homer or something, we’re still tied. So that allows me to be a little more aggressive and hopefully find my mechanics a little bit that were lacking in the first inning.”
Verlander still labored. Carlos Correa and Ryan Jeffers struck singles against him in the second. A firstpitch fastball to Michael A. Taylor generated another 64-3 double play.
“He made good pitches,” Altuve said of Verlander. “Peña making good plays and giving me good throws, and we ended up turning two big double plays that stopped the momentum they were creating at the moment.”
Julien drove a leadoff double in the third. Verlander struck out Polanco after falling behind 3-1 in the count. Lewis hit a sharp grounder to third baseman Alex Bregman, who alertly saw Julien straying and tagged him out in a rundown. Max Kepler struck out swinging at a curveball.
The Twins mostly laid off Verlander’s breaking pitches in the first inning. They began to offer at more as the game progressed. Verlander forced it by landing curveballs for called strikes and induced swing-and-misses against his slider. His advantage grew in the third.
Ober retired Altuve on a popup but plunked Bregman with a breaking pitch. Alvarez had struck out swinging on three pitches in his first at-bat, seeing one changeup. Ober threw another at 1-0 in the third and left it in the middle of the zone. Alvarez hammered it into the right-field seats.
“Yordan, he was great, as usual,” manager Dusty Baker said.
The Twins opted to start Ober over Joe Ryan, who was tougher on lefthanded hitters this season but had two shaky outings against Houston. Ober lasted three innings. Minnesota turned to Kenta Maeda for the fourth and saw its deficit grow an inning later.
At its best, Houston’s offense is not overly reliant on home runs. The fifth offered an example. Bregman struck a leadoff single against Maeda. Alvarez worked a walk. Two batters later, José Abreu skied a flare down the left-field line. Matt Wallner, giving chase, raised his glove as the ball descended.
Wallner was not that close. Bregman, with a sharp read, got a good jump and scored. Chas McCormick’s two-out single scored Alvarez, with thirdbase coach Gary Pettis not hesitating to test Wallner’s arm. His throw was cut off, and Abreu was nailed at third, but not before the Astros stretched their lead to 5-0.
Verlander, meanwhile, vexed the Twins with his pitch sequences in the middle innings. He threw just 13 fastballs on 42 pitches in innings three through five, notching five of his six strikeouts in that span. Facing the middle of order for a third time, he dialed up nine fastballs on 15 pitches in the sixth.
“You just adapt and do whatever you can to be successful, I think,” Verlander said. “What feels really good is when you start off struggling and are able to make some adjustments and find it. And the third, fourth and fifth, obviously was able to have some things click and make some better pitches and get some easier outs.”
Verlander did not allow a hit to the final 14 batters he faced. He departed after the sixth at 93 pitches. It marked his first scoreless start in the playoffs since Game 1 of the 2019 ALDS. Houston is 7-1 in the eight times it has sent Verlander to the mound for the opener of a postseason series.
Including his last two regular-season starts, Verlander has allowed one run over his last 19 innings. An Astros bullpen that thrived last October drew its first assignment to finish Verlander’s gem. Its debut in these playoffs marked perhaps the sharpest pivot possible.
Hector Neris, who posted a 1.71 ERA this season, drew the seventh. He hit Wallner with his second pitch. Jeffers struck his next for a single. Neris thrives on skirting trouble. Only one qualified reliever stranded baserunners at a higher rate this year. Two strikeouts put Neris on the precipice of escaping.
Polanco did not allow it. Neris threw a 2-0 fastball that Polanco crushed to the second deck in right field. Lewis then laced a drive around the left-field foul pole. Not since 2018 had Neris allowed multiple home runs in an outing.
Bryan Abreu finished the seventh. Alvarez then offered some breathing room. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli summoned his lone lefthanded reliever, Caleb Thielbar, in the seventh to face Alvarez and Kyle Tucker. Thielbar held lefthanded hitters to a .128 average with zero home runs during the regular season. Among lefthanded hitters with at least 100 plate appearances against lefties, Tucker ranked fourth in OPS and Alvarez sixth.
Thielbar threw Alvarez two fastballs, then a slider low and away. Alvarez pulled a 384-foot drive off the right-field foul pole.
Abreu returned to the mound for a scoreless eighth, navigating a leadoff double by Correa, the former Astros shortstop. Pressly shut the door in the ninth, using 16 pitches. The last was an elevated 97 mph fastball that Pressly fired past Lewis, who has three home runs in three games this postseason.
“He’s a hot hitter right now,” Pressly said. “So you’ve got to be careful with him, but you don’t want to be too careful. I just wanted to go attack him. He’s a dangerous hitter, so you don’t want to leave anything over the heart of the plate. Just try to go out there and make quality pitches.”