Dominant Javier, Unstoppable Alvarez Push Twins to Brink of Elimination

After splitting the first two games in Houston, the Astros and Twins faced off in Minneapolis. But after Pablo López shut down the Astros’ bats in Game 2, it was Cristian Javier mowing down a lineup this time around, leading his team to a 2–1 series lead with a 9–1 victory over Sonny Gray and Minnesota.

Javier dominated the Twins for five innings, surrendering just one hit and striking out nine. He was wild at times, walking five and hitting a batter and throwing quite a few waste pitches, especially fastballs. He also wasn’t able to get his slider down as much as he would’ve liked, though that didn’t seem to matter for Twins hitters, who came up empty on 13 of their 16 swings against it. Javier’s gameplan when he was on can best be seen in his three matchups against standout rookie Royce Lewis, whose streak of incredible hits with runners on base came to a screeching halt.

The Twins got to a good start in the first, with a Jorge Polanco walk and Max Kepler double putting two runners in scoring position with one out for Lewis. Given his 237 wRC+ with runners in scoring position during the regular season and 155 mark overall, he seemed like a scary matchup for Javier. The right-hander started him off with a fastball nearly at Lewis’ eye level that he swung through. It was the pitch he was looking for — he slugged .962 against four-seamers from right-handed pitchers this season — but it was just out of reach of his plate coverage. Javier’s fastball also has far more perceived ride to it than most, sporting a 95th-percentile vertical approach angle with more induced vertical break than many fastballs even from over-the-top release points. In fact, no starter has both a lower release point than Javier’s 5.7 feet and more IVB than his 18.6 inches.

Ahead in the count, Javier pivoted to his slider. It’s not officially designated as a sweeper, but it does possess the hellacious horizontal movement associated with them and averaged 15 inches of sweep in his Game 3 start. Against Lewis, he threw a slider that started over the outside part of the plate and broke a few inches outside for a swing and a miss. So he decided to do it one more time, but just a few more inches off the plate for good measure, and for the third straight time, Lewis came up empty. Javier then ended the threat with a strikeout of Carlos Correa with nearly the same approach, this time finishing with a high fastball.

After a first-pitch flyout in his second at-bat, Lewis came up for the third time in a pressure-packed situation: bases loaded and two outs in the fifth. Javier got a generous strike one call on a slider high and outside, then came back with another slider in the same spot, only for it to be called a ball. He went to the fastball next, throwing one of his best-located pitches of the day, right on the top edge of the zone. Lewis, who has feasted on this exact pitch all year, was just a bit late on it. This wasn’t a case of Lewis chasing like in his first at-bat; Javier beat him with pure power located exactly where he wanted it. The same can’t be said of the two-strike pitch that followed, as Lewis waved through a slider low and away to leave multiple baserunners in scoring position for the second time on the day.

While Javier put together one of his best performances of the season, Gray performed significantly below his typical standard of excellence. His 2.79 ERA and 0.39 HR/9 placed second and first among qualified AL pitchers, with the latter mark almost half that of second-place Kyle Bradish. The numbers, though, said that his elite home run prevention wasn’t sustainable; he outperformed his xERA by nearly a full run, and his 5.2% HR/FB rate was the lowest by any pitcher in a full season since 2014, the year that prompted MLB to introduce the juiced ball. In this start, a few mistake pitches led to two homers allowed, his first multi-homer outing this season.

From the start of the game, it was clear the Astros were sitting on Gray’s secondaries. In the first inning, he struck out two batters looking on sinkers that came back to the plate. Unfortunately for him, what happened in between those plate appearances is what put the game away before the Twins even had a chance to bat. Jose Altuve led off the game with a single on a sweeper below the zone, which might have caught him off-guard if Gray hadn’t just thrown him three sweepers in a row. After a strikeout of Alex Bregman, Yordan Alvarez hit a ball down the first base line (perhaps a sign of things to come), reaching on a two-base error by Alex Kirilloff. On the next batter, Gray threw a changeup that was left high enough for Kyle Tucker to hit a sharp ground ball for an RBI single, putting Houston on the board.

Up to the plate came José Abreu. His debut season with the Astros was defined by major power outage early in the year, as he didn’t hit his first homer until his 51st game. While he regained the power stroke later in the year, his 86 wRC+ and -0.6 WAR marked career worsts. Abreu took three sinkers in a row to run the count to 2–1. Then Gray went to the sweeper, an offering he used 20% of the time in the regular season but which comprised the plurality of pitches in Game 3. While he has typically been excellent at keeping his breaking balls off the plate to his glove side, this one hung right in the middle of the zone. A curveball or bullet slider left down the middle is dropping by a considerable amount as it crosses the plate, but a sweeper like that is right on plane with a line drive swing — like this one:

Gray allowed another home run, this one to Bregman in the fifth, on another sweeper that was even more down the middle, but by that point, the game was essentially over, especially with Lewis and company unable to cash in on the opportunities that Javier’s control issues created. But this recap can’t end without bringing up the heroics of Alvarez, who has torched Minnesota pitching all series. In his second at-bat, he ripped a line drive into right field at 112 mph for a two-base hit. He would add another double off Gray in his third trip to the plate before finishing the day by taking Bailey Ober deep for his second homer of the series. Despite collecting three extra-base hits, his slugging percentage for the series actually decreased, though I’m sure he’s content with his 2.205 OPS over the past three games.

Both teams finished the game using just one of their high-leverage relievers (Bryan Abreu for Houston, Emilio Pagán for Minnesota). With their season on the line, the Twins will turn to Joe Ryan to keep them alive, though his leash will be short given his second-half struggles and a rested bullpen. The Astros will turn to José Urquidy, who’s coming off a year that featured his highest home run rate and lowest strikeout rate — a tasty proposition for a Twins offense that led the AL in homers but whose only weakness was their tendency to whiff. The Astros are now 82% favorites to advance to the ALCS, per ZiPS, but the Twin aren’t out of chances just yet.