Everyone has a blast in 6th
Back-to-back-to-back HRs send crowd into a frenzy
George Springer slapped the dugout railing. Tony Kemp rose beside him, hand on head in incredulity. Jose Altuve trotted up the first-base line, the solo home run he launched still nowhere near its final resting place somewhere among the throngs of people populating the Crawford Boxes.
“You kind of can’t believe it’s happening when he hits that third one,” Springer said. “It’s a fun time.”
Altuve high-fived firstbase coach Alex Cintron. The second baseman slowed to a jog. The stadium around him ignited. A postseason roar emanated from Minute Maid Park on a nondescript Wednesday night against a team that will not play beyond late September.
They were drawn here with replica World Series rings, a promise from the Astros that each fan who entered the park would receive one. So 43,409 came, overflowing the railings in left-center field that soon would serve as a launching pad.
In a span of seven sixth-inning pitches,
Springer, Alex Bregman and Altuve hit three consecutive home runs against Rays starter Nathan Eovaldi, a feat no trio had accomplished in an Astros uniform since 2008.
It turned a tense, tied game into one the Astros would not lose. Their 5-1 win captured the series and made them the first major league team to reach 50 wins.
“It was awesome to get the place rocking,” Bregman said. “Springer (with a) big swing got us going and we kind of just fed off George right there, Jose and I. It’s pretty cool when that happens. I’d never been a part of something like that.” Odd power outage at home
This was the largest regularseason crowd to occupy Minute Maid Park since opening day in 2015, all to witness a sight 10 years in the making and the explosion of a formidable offense that, for the most part this season, was stifled inside this ballpark.
A .384 home slugging percentage in the 35 games preceding this one was puzzling. Fiftyfive of the team’s 98 home runs came away from this park, long known as a hitter-friendly palace with such a tantalizing short porch in left field.
“Solved that issue, didn’t we,” manager A.J. Hinch quipped.
Bregman and Altuve each sent their sixth-inning shots to the Crawford Boxes. Altuve deposited a fourth-inning solo shot well above it, too, onto the train tracks — the second of three extra-base hits he scalded at Eovaldi’s expense.
“It’s been like this for me all season long,” Altuve said. “To have Springer and Bregman hit in front of me so I get to see them hitting every single time, that creates some momentum to me and gets me going.”
Opponents knocked four home runs against Eovaldi in his first 231⁄3 innings. The Astros equaled that with their sixth-inning theatrics, accomplishing what had not been done since May 2, 2008. That day, Miguel Tejada, Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee hit consecutive home runs in the sixth inning against Brewers pitcher Carlos Villanueva.
Ten years later, Eovaldi realized Villanueva’s ignominy. He threw three different pitches and each faced the same fate.
An 0-2 four-seam fastball, the fifth pitch he offered to Springer, bisected home plate. Springer deposited it near the gas pump in left-center field 417 feet away. Two pitches later, Bregman mashed an elevated 0-1 slider into the Crawford Boxes.
Altuve arrived already with a double and home run to his credit. Eovaldi hung a slider in the fourth inning that Altuve put on the left-field train tracks. His third at-bat saw no offspeed offerings. It mattered little.
“I fell behind him,” said Eovaldi, who faced a 2-1 count against the reigning American League MVP. “Threw him two cutters in a row and on the third one, he didn’t miss it. A screaming drive
The blast exited his bat at 112.3 mph, Altuve’s hardest hit ball inside Minute Maid Park since Statcast began tracking exit velocity, allowing the venue to come unglued for a third time.
“I don’t think I saw any of them,” said Astros starter Charlie Morton, who was underneath the dugout conversing with Astros pitching coach Brent Strom.
“I saw one ball leave the park and it was like, ‘Should I go back up?’ ”
His night was over and a ninth win now ensured. Morton again operated without precise command, continuing a troubling trend. He walked four and hit another batter, ineffectiveness his defense was — for the most part — able to erase.
Still, he managed six innings without allowing an earned run. Eovaldi matched him early, pairing a four-seam fastball that reached 98 mph with a cutter that generated nine called strikes.
Through five innings, just Altuve reached scoring position against him, on a first-inning double and his fourth-inning home run.
“It just felt like the game was going to kind of be a make or break type game of who was going to come up with the big hit,” Hinch said. “Then in the span of a few pitches, it was a pretty electrifying crowd. That is a huge inning for us.”