Astros Strike First and Last in ALCS Game 5 Victory Over Rangers

If you came into Game 5 hoping for a pitchers’ duel between Justin Verlander and Jordan Montgomery, then this was your lucky night, for a while. The two starters traded blows for the first five innings, allowing a solo homer apiece, but otherwise made short work of the opposing lineups. Then the sixth inning rolled around and the narratives entered a tumble dryer. The game featured a little bit of everything: lead changes, defensive plays both great and terrible, bloops, blasts, backspinning bunts, and benches-clearing beanballs.

Asked about his gameplan on Thursday, Montgomery gave one of the best quotes of the entire postseason: “I mean obviously you want to not give up runs, so, I mean… yeah, it’s important.” He induced groundouts from Jose Altuve and Mauricio Dubón on the first and second pitches of the game, but said gameplan didn’t survive Alex Bregman, who staked the Astros to an early lead by depositing a sinker 416 feet away in the left field bleachers. Bregman may be accustomed to taking advantage of the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid Park, but he didn’t need any help from a short porch on this one.

Montgomery settled down and induced a groundout to get out of the first inning, then retired the side in the second inning on three more groundouts. His 43.2% groundball rate was 22nd among qualified pitchers this season, and eight of his first nine outs on Friday came on the dirt. In the fourth, he mixed things up by retiring Bregman on a line drive to right field and striking out both Yordan Alvarez and José Abreu.

Verlander, whose 16.5% infield fly ball rate led MLB, went in literally the opposite direction from Montgomery. Given that 1–0 lead in the first, the future Hall of Famer came out of the gate with a simple plan, firing four-seamers at or above the top of the zone and inviting the Rangers to hit them in the air. They obliged, popping out seven times and flying out five times against the right-hander. After throwing his four-seamer 50% of the time during the regular season, Verlander was at 62% on Friday night. He recorded just two groundouts, both rockets hit over 100 mph. The Rangers didn’t reach base until the third inning.

Things started to get weird in the fifth. Kyle Tucker led off with a single on a soft liner to right field. With one out, Jeremy Peña hit a chopper to short, but Marcus Semien couldn’t squeeze a perfect toss from Corey Seager, leaving runners on first and second with one out. Martín Maldonado flew out to right, moving Tucker to third and bringing Altuve to the plate for the third time. Despite being one of the greatest hitters in postseason history, Altuve tried to drop down a bunt single; it’s hard to explain the thought process, unless he just wasn’t feeling comfortable against Montgomery. The bunt didn’t look terrible off the bat, but instead of rolling toward third base, it hit the ground and improbably spun straight backwards, dying right in front of home plate. Jonah Heim had no problem throwing Altuve out at first for the third out. “The ball checked up, said Dusty Baker. “People would pay for that in golf.”

The Rangers finally got to Verlander in the fifth. Nathaniel Lowe stayed with an outside fastball, sneaking it just over the left field wall to tie the game at one. It wasn’t a bad pitch, and Verlander buckled down to retired the side without any further drama.

Now would be a good time to talk about the times through the order penalty. And well, they call it a penalty for a reason. One way to look at the sixth inning is that two old school managers let their cruising starters face the top of the lineup for a third time, and both starters repaid that trust by getting rocked. Another way to look at it is that two sabermetrically-savvy managers checked the numbers and saw that when facing the starting pitcher for the third time, Houston’s 98 OPS+ was the fourth-worst in baseball this season, and Texas’s 92 OPS+ was the absolute worst. Either way, things didn’t go well.

Despite Bregman’s first inning homer, Montgomery had cruised through the first four innings. The fifth was a struggle, and he was now about to face the heart of the Houston lineup for a third time. The fact that the Rangers had used six pitchers on Thursday night must have weighed on Bruce Bochy as he decided to let Montgomery pitch the sixth.

After striking out Dubón on a curveball, Montgomery approached Bregman carefully, eventually walking him. Alvarez followed by sneaking a single past a diving Lowe, putting runners on the corners with one out. Abreu hit a line drive to short that caught Seager on an in-between hop and ate him up; what would have been a sure-fire double play to end the inning instead kicked up and into center field, scoring Bregman. The play was somehow ruled a hit but was clearly the second big mistake made by the Texas middle infield, giving the Astros a 2–1 lead.

Montgomery stayed in to face the left-handed Tucker, but his night ended after a four-pitch walk to load the bases. In his third time through the lineup, Montgomery went bunt out, strikeout, walk, 108.6 mph single, 96.7 mph single(ish), walk. Bochy turned to Josh Sborz, who needed just three pitches to get out of the jam. That also closed the book on Montgomery, who went 5.1 innings, allowing two earned runs on two hits, two walks, and three strikeouts.

Verlander returned in the bottom of the sixth to face the heart of the Rangers lineup for the third time and started by hanging a slider to Seager, who ripped it for a double into the right field corner. Evan Carter shot a grounder past Bregman into left field, and now it was the Rangers with one out and runners on first and third. Adolis García immediately capitalized, launching an inside fastball for his fourth home run of the postseason and 43rd of the year, a 108-mph blast into left-center field that gave the Rangers a 4–2 lead.

García took his time admiring the shot and stomped on home plate emphatically. Asked after the game about the celebration, Maldonado said, “The worst thing he did was wake up the Houston Astros.”

The blast didn’t end Verlander’s night, but a bloop did, as Josh Jung plopped a single into left field, leading Baker to come get his starter. Despite a walk to Lowe, Hector Neris induced a flyout from Mitch Garver to end the inning. Verlander’s final line: 5.2 innings, four earned runs, six hits, one walk, and three strikeouts. Four of those hits came on his third time through the order.

Sborz returned in the top of the seventh, putting the Astros down quietly despite breaking just about every unwritten rule in baseball by walking both the leadoff man and the worst hitter in the lineup in the person of Maldonado. Neris returned as well, retiring the Rangers in order in the bottom of the inning.

With Houston’s big lefties coming up, Aroldis Chapman came in to pitch the top of the eighth. He quickly fell behind 3–0 to Alvarez on a 101-mph fastball dangerously close to the slugger’s head, a pitch clock violation, and a regular old ball, then flipped the switch, painting a fastball on the outside corner and a slider on the inside corner and getting Alvarez to chase a fastball up and away for strike three. Abreu flew out, but Chapman couldn’t complete the inning as Tucker flipped a double into the left field corner. That brough the right-handed Chas McCormick to the plate; once again, Chapman’s night was done, and once again, José Leclerc, who hadn’t notched a single save of more than three outs in the regular season, was asked to come in for a four-out save. He got pinch-hitter Michael Brantley to pop up to end the frame, and then he sat on the bench for a long, long time.

The game ground to a screeching halt in the eighth. Bryan Abreu came in for the Astros, walking Carter to lead off the inning. That brought García back to the plate, and Abreu sent his first pitch, a 98.9-mph fastball, sailing in at his ribs, catching him flush on the arm. García immediately turned to Maldonado, incensed. “In that situation, he could’ve hurt me, he could’ve injured me,” García said through an interpreter after the game. “I let him know that’s something that just shouldn’t happen there.” The benches cleared, then the bullpens, and it was the Sharks and the Jets in and around the home plate area.

Alvarez took it on himself to encourage his fellow Cuban to play it cool. If you didn’t already love Alvarez, I can’t really help you, but maybe the image of him simultaneously calming García and using his 6-foot-5 frame to usher him toward first base will change your mind.

After things settled down, both Abreu and García were thrown out of the game; Abreu for hitting García intentionally, and García for not appreciating it. Naturally, this unsettled things, and Baker earned his own ejection for arguing that there’s no way on earth his pitcher would intentionally put a second runner on base with no outs in the bottom of the eighth down two runs. Bregman expressed a similar sentiment after the game, saying, “I know Abreu, and he’s not trying to hit anybody in a two-run game in the postseason.” When the game finally restarted, Ryan Pressly retired three straight Rangers to end the inning.

Things got unsettled once more in the top of the ninth. Back on the mound after the extremely long layoff, Leclerc allowed a single through to Yainer Diaz, pinch-hitting for Peña. Next, he walked Jon Singleton, pinch-hitting for Maldonado. With no outs and runners on first and second, Altuve strode to the plate. To that point in the game, he was 0-for-4 and had only seen five pitches, and he had not looked remotely confident on any of them. But after taking a slider for a strike, he golfed a changeup just over the left field wall to give the Astros a 5–4 lead. The Houston dugout erupted onto the field to celebrate, with Verlander at the head of the pack.

Asked after the game where this home run ranked out of his 26 in the postseason, Altuve gave an extremely sensible answer: “Number one, because it was tonight, it just happened.” Maldonado described his feelings about Altuve even more simply, telling the Fox postgame crew, “He goes, we go.”

After his own long wait, Pressley came back out for the ninth inning, now in line for the win in what has to be one of the odder appearances of his career. He immediately stepped into yet more trouble. Garver sent Pressly’s second pitch into left field for a single, then left in favor of pinch-runner Josh H. Smith. Heim followed with a line drive off the glove of a diving Altuve, though Smith was forced to stay at second after waiting to make sure the ball got through the infield. No outs, runners on first and second, winning run at the plate. Semien ripped yet another line drive up the middle, one that looked all but certain to score Smith, but defensive replacement Grae Kessinger lived up to his job description and made a leaping grab at shortstop. Seager flied out to just shy of the warning track in center, and for some reason Smith didn’t tag up on the play, remaining at second. With two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth, Carter struck out on a curveball below the zone to end the game.

After jumping out to a two-game lead, the Rangers have now lost three straight. They will head into Houston on Sunday the victims of a crushing ninth-inning loss. Their top two relievers have both faltered in the biggest moments of the series. Their leadoff man, who led the American League in hits, has just one in his last 13 plate appearances. Plus, García will likely have a big bruise on his arm. On the other hand, the Astros really do seem to have been awakened. They’ve scored 23 runs in their last three games. Their biggest stars came up huge on Friday, with home runs by Altuve and Bregman, and two hits apiece from Alvarez and Tucker. But if they want to win the series, they have a seemingly insurmountable task ahead of them: win a game at home.