Underdogs show mettle, fight back after early assault
HOUSTON — Understand who the Astros were this postseason through three innings of Game 1 of the 118th World Series:
They were a team that had not lost since Oct. 3, in the regular season. They had played seven games this postseason, and had won all seven. They were a machine excelling in every facet and, in the moment, it was possible to see the opening three innings Friday night as their tour de force.
The starting pitching had been excellent, Justin Verlander at his Cy Young apex. Nine up. Nine down. Just 36 pitches. He was, in a word, perfect.
And he was being supported by an Astros offense that had the rare ability in 2022 to blend long at-bats and long balls — to swing for the fences, yet swing and miss less than all but one other team in the majors. So in the third inning, Jeremy Peña could go from 1-2 down in the count, foul a ball off and double. Alex Bregman could navigate from 0-2 down to walk. That put two on in front of Kyle Tucker, who battled from his own 0-2 ditch to a full count to a three-run homer.
His second homer in as many innings — both off Philadelphia co-ace Aaron Nola — gave the Astros a 5-0 lead and provided a sense that the Phillies might just be punching out of their weight class. After all, the 19game discrepancy in regular-season win totals between the Astros (106) and the Phillies (87) was the second greatest ever. And three innings into the game, Houston’s status as prohibitive favorites felt mismatch proper.
“There is a never a doubt with this club that we will come back,” Philadelphia reliever David Robertson said.
So this is the moment to note that the most recent loss by the Astros, on Oct. 3 was against the Phillies. That clinched Philadelphia’s first playoff berth in 11 years. Ending that drought, so many around the team have noted, considerably eased the tension on a franchise and a clubhouse. Loose and confident, the Phillies have become undeterred underdogs in October — even when seeming hopelessly behind a machine.
“We keep playing all the outs,” Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber said. “And then we see what happens.” What occurred in Game 1 was a credit to the resoluteness of the players, who stormed Verlander for five runs between the fourth and fifth innings, and the resourcefulness of manager Rob Thomson. He appreciated the magnitude of the game and deployed one of his best late-game assets, lefty Jose Alvarado, to attack lefty monster Yordan Alvarez in the fifth inning. He used his potential Game 3 starter, another lefty Ranger Suarez, to go after Alvarez in the seventh. In all — ending with a shaky, but not broken Robertson — Thomson orchestrated 52/₃ scoreless innings from his pen and J.T. Realmuto’s 10th-inning homer provided a 6-5 steal for the Phillies. “That’s really why I went to Alvarado in the fifth inning, which I haven’t done all year, because I thought that the momentum changed there was so important to keep that momentum, get through those guys, and we’ll figure out the rest later,” Thomson said.
The Phillies’ belief system that they could storm from being the 12th and last qualifier for these playoffs to a parade has only grown. Helped in this moment — in this football hotbed — by some Friday Nights Blights by Houston. Verlander simply can’t win a World Series game. He now has started a record eight without a victory while toting a 6.07 ERA — the blemish on an otherwise no-doubt Hall-of-Fame career. And the Astros can’t win a Fall Classic opener. They are now 0-5. They lost this time in the first World Series to open on a Friday in 107 years. The Phillies also won that one, over the Red Sox, behind their own Hall of Famer, Grover Cleveland Alexander. And you have to go even further back, to 1906, when the 116-win Cubs took on the 93-win White Sox, to find the only larger gap between World Series opponents than this one. The White Sox shockingly won that championship. In 2022, the underdog Phillies are now three victories away from an upset that would rival that one.