Dramatic déjà vu
Garcia’s walk-off hit saves day after team falls behind twice
The first inning should have been a clue that the Astros were in for a dramatic night.
The Angels had runners on the corners with one out against Astros starter Zack Greinke when the righthander fielded a bunt and beaned Jared Walsh with the throw to first base. The hit runner should have allowed the Angels runner on third to score, but the umpire ruled Walsh was outside the base path, costing the Angels a run and an out.
It was not the Astros’ only close shave as they rallied back from a two-run deficit to beat the Angels 5-4 in extra innings on Friday at Minute Maid Park courtesy of a walk-off hit by Robel Garcia in the 10th.
Greinke sizzled on the mound, and the Astros turned a season-high three double plays — one initiated by Greinke — to lay the foundation, but it was a late rally at the plate that sealed the victory and a 2-0 series lead.
After the Angels used a fourhit inning to take a 2-0 lead in the fifth, Astros infielder Yuli Gurriel crushed a slider 380 feet into left field for a game-tying two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh.
Astros pitchers Ryne Stanek and Ryan Pressly combined for two shutout innings to give the Astros one last opportunity to win it in the ninth. The Astros put two runners on base with
two outs but couldn’t get the job done, necessitating their first extra innings game of the season.
That the Astros were able to hang around so long was thanks to Greinke, who 10 days earlier disavowed his slider but brought the pitch back into the mix Friday with some added velocity. It appeared to stump Angels hitters, who swung at 70 percent of Greinke’s sliders.
But the Astros struck out nine times and managed just one hit (a first-inning single by Bregman) against Angels ace Andrew Heaney through six innings.
While the Astros struggled to even get on base, the Angels drew first blood in the fifth inning. After base hits by Scott Schebler and David Fletcher, Shohei Ohtani belted an RBI double for a 1-0 lead. With two on and two out, Walsh sliced an infield hit through the left-side gap for another RBI. Astros nemesis Albert Pujols came up with runners on the corners, but Greinke served up five off-speed pitches to send Pujols down swinging and work out of the jam.
Greinke exited after seven innings, but not before grabbing Fletcher’s ground ball on a high hop and firing it behind him to Almedys Diaz for a 1-4-3 double play. Greinke left with a final line of 10 hits, two runs and six strikeouts. His 107 pitches were a season high for an Astros starter.
Meanwhile, the Astros had back-to-back 1-2-3 innings at the plate before Yordan Alvarez led off the seventh with a standup double. Then Gurriel stepped up for his game-tying home run, which gave him six RBIs in his last three games and gave the Astros a lifeline after their slow start at the plate.
Stanek held it down in the eighth, striking out two of the three batters he faced. Upon striking out Pujols to end the inning, Stanek clenched his fist and strutted off the mound, his blond mane framing his face as he yelled in triumph.
The Astros weren’t in the clear yet. Jose Rojas hit a leadoff double against Pressly to put the winning run aboard for the Angels, but then made a costly baserunning mistake and got tagged out by Bregman. The Angels still had Jose Iglesias in scoring position, but Pressly forced Schebler to ground out and struck out Anthony Bemboom to retire the side.
In the bottom of the ninth, Michael Brantley laid down a leadoff bunt and elicited roars of approval from the feverish home crowd. After back-to-back flyouts by Bregman and Alvarez, and with Chas McCormick in to pinch-run for Brantley, Gurriel smacked a base hit into right field. But Kyle Tucker extended his 0for-4 streak and struck out to send the game to extra innings.
Because of MLB’s extra innings rule, the Angels started the 10th with a runner on second. They capitalized immediately when Fletcher drove in a run with a leadoff RBI single to make it 3-2. Two outs later, Astros manager Dusty Baker signaled Pressly to intentionally walk Walsh to bring up Pujols, who knocked in another run before Rojas struck out to end the inning.
The Astros added one run as Myles Straw hit an infield single to score Tucker, beating the throw to first base to represent the tying run. Jason Castro doubled down the line, which could have scored Straw, but the ball bounced out of play and was called a ground-rule double to hold Straw at third base. Straw slid home on Carlos Correa’s sacrifice fly, setting up Garcia’s heroics.