Jung’s two homers aren’t enough vs. Astros’ Javier
ARLINGTON — Josh Jung doesn’t want to go back to Houston.
Well, he didn’t say that verbatim. But, listen: He’s originally from San Antonio and went to Macarthur High School, played college baseball in Lubbock, and now he has a cushy job in Arlington. Isn’t that enough Texas cities to account for?
Let’s just assume that Jung — and the rest of the Rangers — would like to avoid that 40minute plane ride south for a potential Game 6 or 7 of the American League Championship Series. Can’t blame ’em. Actions speak a whole heck of a lot louder than words, though.
Jung, in Game 3 of the ALCS against the Houston Astros on Wednesday at Globe Life Field, certainly brought the action with a pair of two-run home runs and one third of the Rangers’ base hits. The only issue was that Astros starting pitcher Cristian Javier — who’d certainly love a momentous return trip to Houston — did his part, too. The Rangers’ worst collection of postseason pitching yet didn’t help, either.
“The kid did a great job of getting us back in the game a couple of times,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “We weren’t doing much with Javier.”
For quite a while, too. Javier took a no-hitter into the fifth inning Wednesday, picked apart Texas’ lineup with his fastest pitch and neutralized the hottest team in baseball in an 8-5 win. The Rangers, who lead the series 2-1, had won seven consecutive games to open the playoffs (tied for the fifth-longest winning streak in postseason history) and can still theoretically clinch a World Series berth at home with Games 4 and 5 in Arlington.
Javier, a 26-year-old right-handed pitcher with a career 2.08 ERA in the playoffs, just made that task a bit trickier.
In 52⁄3 innings of tworun ball, Javier attacked a Rangers weakness: high fastballs. His specifically — which averages 2.6 more inches of vertical movement than the average in baseball — brought trouble. Javier threw 54 of them against the Rangers and induced swings on 32 of them, but just one (a Nathaniel Lowe single in the fifth inning) fell in for a base hit.
“We didn’t execute our game plan,” said designated hitter Mitch Garver, who went 0-for-3 with a ninth-inning walk. “We didn’t get on top of his fastball, and it was playing up a bit tonight. Everybody was just missing underneath it.”
Said catcher Jonah Heim, who went 0-for-4: “Our game plan was to try and get on top of some heaters and hit ’em hard. He made some good pitches, and we missed under a little too much tonight.”
The Rangers’ first seven batters were done in by fastballs before a slider low-and-inside froze Jung for the second out of the third inning.
But, hey, you can’t call Jung a slow learner.
In the rookie’s next
Stacy Revere/getty Images at-bat, after a Lowe twoout single in the fifth inning provided the Rangers their first base hit, Jung pounced on a rare Javier misstep — a slider across the heart of the strike zone — for a two-run home run in the following at bat to pull the Rangers within three runs.
Then in the seventh inning following another Lowe single (this one off of a Hector Neris slider), Jung drove a high fastball 429 feet into center field for his second home run of the game. He became just the 12th rookie in MLB history with multiple home runs in a single playoff game; his fifth-inning shot made him the first Rangers rookie in franchise history with multiple home runs in a single playoff game.
“I feel good,” said Jung, who had struck out five times in Games 1 and 2. “I’m just trying to have quality at bats every time I step in the box. I think they’d struck me out six out of seven times there, so I was just trying to move the ball forward.”