Astros, Braves deliver
Carlos Correa connects for a gameending home run as Houston beat Tampa Bay 43 in Game 5 to stay alive in the ALCS. In the NLCS, Atlanta rode a sixrun sixth inning to a 102 win over Los Angeles and a 31 series lead. Details,
SAN DIEGO — Before Houston’s Carlos Correa headed to the plate in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the AL Championship Series, he told Dusty Baker, “Walkoff.”
The 71yearold manager replied, “Go ahead, man,” and then said a quick prayer to his father and brother.
If the Astros had been forced to go extra innings against the Tampa Bay Rays, Baker thought, he’d have to burn Framber Valdez, his projected Game 6 starter.
Baker’s prayer was answered with a loud crack.
Correa homered with one out in the ninth, and the Astros beat Tampa Bay 43 on Thursday to close their deficit in the bestofseven series to 32.
Correa drove a fastball at the letters from Nick Anderson just past the palm trees to the right of the batter’s eye at Petco Park, watched the ball for a few steps and then flung his bat. He was greeted at home by his ecstatic teammates and had a long hug with Baker.
“I don’t mean no disrespect when I call my shot,” said Correa, who added that he went to the indoor cage after his second and third atbats to work with hitting coach Alex Cintrón and make adjustments.
“We felt it and it was like, ‘ Wow. This feels good,’ ” the shortstop said.
He passed on his positive view to teammate Jose Altuve after the eighth.
“I told Altuve walking off the field, ‘ I’m going to end it,’ ” Correa recalled. “I could feel that my swing was in sync, I could feel that my rhythm was good, I could feel that I wanted to drive the ball. When he threw me the fastball, I swung good and got exactly what I wanted.”
Correa is 3for18 in the series, but two of the hits are homers.
Houston won a second straight elimination game thanks in large part to starter Luis Garcia and four fellow rookies, who combined to hold the Rays to two runs and four hits for 62⁄ innings before Baker
3 turned to a veteran, Josh James. Ryan Pressly, the seventh Houston pitcher, got the victory.
The Astros forced Game 6 on Friday, a rematch of the first game started by lefthanders Blake Snell of Tampa Bay and Valdez.
In the ALCS for a fourth straight year, the Astros are trying to join the 2004 Boston Red Sox as the only teams to come back from a 30 deficit in a bestofseven series. The Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS and went on to win their first World Series in 86 seasons.
Otherwise, bigleague clubs leading 30 in a bestofseven postseason series are 371.
“Boy, that will go down as one of greatest games in history and hopefully go down as one of greatest comebacks in history after two more games,” said Baker, who is in his first year with the Astros and is the first manager to take five teams to the playoffs. “That’s as big a game as I’ve been involved in. That’s one of the reasons that I came back.”
With the Astros gettting on the board in the first when George Springer homered on John Curtiss’ first pitch and Correa finishing the game with his long ball, they became the first team with a leadoff and walkoff home run in a postseason game.
In between, they took a 31 lead in the third when Michael Brantley broke a tie — created by Brandon Lowe’s thirdinning home run — with a tworun single.
The Rays’ Randy Arozarena then continued his impressive postseason with a solo home run in the fifth. He has gone deep in two consecutive games, giving him three homers in the series and six in this postseason — tying the rookie record set by Tampa Bay’s Evan Longoria in 2008.
After Arozarena connected, teammate JiMan Choi tied the score with a homer leading off the eighth.
“You go from feeling pretty good about our chances to knowing the game was over a short time after that, Tampa Bay outfielder Kevin Kiermaier said.
Given two chances in about 24 hours to clinch their franchise’s second trip to the World Series, the Rays came up with just three runs and seven hits in each of their two losses. Tampa Bay went 0for6 with runners in scoring position in Game 5 after going 1for4 in Game 4.
“We’ve been streaky throughout the course of these playoffs,” Kiermaier said. “We’ve had some offensive outbursts a few games, and then we’ve been quiet for a lot of them. Our pitchers have been so good that if we squeak three or four across, we win a lot of these games.”
Now, the Rays will try Friday to finish what they started in the series. The Astros will do their best to send the series to Game 7.
“We get to play another day,” Baker said. “Tomorrow is huge. I mean, we’re one step closer to getting over that mountain, and that hurdle that seemed way off in the distance a couple of days ago.”