San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Astros had their chances
just two hits in Friday’s 2-0 loss, the Astros stranded 11 baserunners and went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position on Saturday.
“There’s not a lot to be said,” Baker said in a postgame news conference. “We know what we have to do. We have to win tomorrow.”
Leading three games to one, the Braves are on the verge of their first World Series title since 1995, and they’re here because of a seventh-inning comeback that featured two mighty swings, the differencemaking moments in Game 4, coming courtesy of mistakes delivered by Cristian Javier.
First, a 95 mph fastball across the middle of the plate to Dansby Swanson, who hit a 359-foot, opposite-field homer that tied the score 2-2.
Next, an 80.6 mph slider that was hung on the inner half to Jorge Soler, who pulled the ball 372 feet over the left-field wall, making it 3-2.
The Braves will employ another bullpen game on Halloween night, meaning a whole bunch of relievers will try to maneuver through nine innings. It worked Saturday, though it didn’t begin particularly well.
Baker, 72, who has been at the helm in more games than any other manager who hasn’t won a World Series, and Brian Snitker, 66, both are old school, but not entirely. Baker batted his starting pitcher eighth Saturday, and Snitker didn’t even use a starting pitcher.
Reliever Dylan Lee was a peculiar choice as the Braves’ opener, the least experienced pitcher to ever start a World Series game. He had just two big-league innings to his name, plus 22⁄3 postseason innings. His first career start just happened to be in a World Series, and nobody else in history could claim such a distinction.
Snitker didn’t inform Lee he was starting until hours before the game and told him not to worry about innings as much as outs, and Lee tried all he could to simulate a relief appearance, including entering the field from the bullpen, not the dugout.
Well, Lee got all of one out. In fact, two pitches into the game, the Braves had Kyle Wright throwing in the bullpen. Four batters in, with the bags full, Lee was done, the shortest World Series start since the Yankees’ David Wells exited Game 5 in 2003 with back spasms.
Carlos Correa’s chopper to third scored a run, and Wright was a savior for pitching through the fifth inning and getting charged with just one run, Jose Altuve’s one-out homer in the fourth.
The Braves’ stadium ops folks thought it would be cute to blare over the sound system the Disney tune “It’s a Small World” before the Altuve at-bat, and the 5-foot-6 second baseman might as well have declared “I’ve got your small world right here” when he clobbered the ball 434 feet to center field.
Baker didn’t expect starter Zack Greinke to pitch deep into the game. The 38-year-old hadn’t thrown more than 37 pitches in any outing past Sept. 19, but he did as well as anyone could have expected Saturday, lasting four innings and 58 pitches.
Greinke, who handles the bat well for a pitcher, was the No. 8 hitter in part because catcher Martin Maldonado, No. 9, is such an offensive liability, and if Greinke wasn’t going to get deep into the game anyway, the 8 hole would be a nice spot to use a series of pinch-hitters.
As it turned out, Greinke was good enough to get two at-bats. He singled in the second and, after No. 7 hitter Yuli Gurriel was walked intentionally to fill the bases — in effect, the bat was taken out of Gurriel’s hands — grounded out to end the third.
It didn’t help that Baker was limited with his catching depth after backup Jason Castro, who played at Stanford and has roots in Castro Valley, was placed on the COVID-19 list Saturday and replaced by Garrett Stubbs, who hit .176 in the regular season.
Baker, who’s managing his first American League team after National League stints with the Giants, Cubs, Reds and Nationals, can’t use a designated hitter in NL parks. So he stuck his primary DH, Yordan Alvarez, in left field a second straight night.
Alvarez made a mistake by missing the cutoff man on Austin Riley’s RBI single in the sixth. As a result, Riley took second, and the Braves had two runners in scoring position. It wasn’t costly because Travis d’Arnaud struck out to end the inning.
In the seventh, Alvarez seemed to have a chance to catch the ball Soler hit over the wall for the tie-breaking homer. He pursued the ball on his backhand side but did little more than whack his knee into the wall. Would it have been a great catch? Sure. Could a seasoned left fielder have caught it? Decent chance.
“I thought Alvarez had a shot,” Baker said. “That would’ve been a fantastic play.”
Conversely, the Braves’ left fielder made a game-altering catch the next inning, Eddie Rosario expertly running toward the line to chase down Altuve’s drive on the warning track. It would have been a home run in Houston’s park. In Atlanta’s, it ended the inning. And, as it turned out, the Astros’ bid to tie the series.
“I thought Alvarez had a shot. That would’ve been a fantastic play.”
Dusty Baker, Astros manager, on Yordan Alvarez’s attempt to catch Jorge Soler’s home run