Yordan Alvarez Continues Campaign of Terror Against Mariners in Game 2 Win

There were two big stories coming into Game 2 between the Astros and Mariners. The first was Yordan Alvarez, hero of Game 1, destroyer of both baseballs and worlds. Before the game, TBS reported that Scott Servais had borrowed a line from Ted Lasso, encouraging his players to be goldfish and forget Tuesday’s heartbreaking defeat. Goldfish or no, the Mariners definitely remembered to be terrified of Alvarez. They also continued their strategy of throwing him sinkers, failing to understand that there is no such thing as the right pitch to throw Yordan Alvarez.

The second story was the pitching matchup. Luis Castillo was coming off a masterful start against Toronto in the Wild Card Series. Framber Valdez had a breakout 2022, including 25 consecutive quality starts. Weak pulled contact is his strength; per the broadcast, the Mariners spent batting practice working on shooting the ball the other way in preparation.

The matchup lived up to the hype. Together, Castillo and Valdez set down the first 10 batters of the game, though the former had a couple of bad misses in the first inning, yanking two pitches in a row against Jeremy Peña and sailing a four-seamer up and away against Alvarez. None of the rest of his pitches to the latter that at-bat touched the strike zone, but that was by design. Here’s what he saw in all three of his plate appearances:

Kyle Tucker kicked off the scoring in the second inning, pulling a slider that caught too much of the plate for a 370-foot home run to right. The solo shot had a launch angle of 43 degrees, which would’ve tied for the 18th-steepest regular-season homer of 2022.

Seattle threatened in the top of the third, when J.P. Crawford managed to get under a Valdez pitch and lifted a two-out double off the left field wall. Julio Rodríguez nearly brought him home with a ground ball up the middle, but Jose Altuve made a fantastic backhanded stop and jump throw to beat Rodríguez by an instant at first.

After Castillo struck out the side in bottom of the third, the Mariners’ offense delivered in the top of the fourth. Eugenio Suárez worked a one-out walk, then moved to third on a double by Mitch Haniger. Valdez induced a soft chopper from Carlos Santana, charged off the mound to snare the ball, then spun and threw toward home to try to nab Suárez, only to send it past Martín Maldonado, handing Seattle its first run. Haniger moved to third, but Santana ended up caught in a rundown between first and second.

The next batter, Dylan Moore, drove the first pitch he saw into right field for a single, giving the Mariners a 2–1 lead.

The two starters settled in from there, and at one point in the sixth, both Castillo and Valdez had retired six batters in a row, with the former having set down 11 of his last 12 hitters faced. But the sixth proved to be the end for Valdez. With two outs in the top of the frame, Haniger walked to snap the streak, then moved to third on a Santana double. A walk to Moore to load the bases finished Valdez’s night at 5.2 innings with three walks and six strikeouts, and on the hook for the loss. Héctor Neris came in from the bullpen, though, and threw Cal Raleigh four straight splitters below the zone, inducing a weak grounder to end the threat.

In the bottom of the sixth, Peña dropped a two-out bloop single into shallow center, bringing the go-ahead run to the plate in the imposing form of Alvarez. It was a big night for the rookie shortstop — 2-for-3 with a double and a walk — that most importantly meant that Alvarez came to the plate three times with a runner on base. That was his job, he said after the game: get on base and “pass it to the big man.” (Someone needs to put that on a t-shirt immediately.)

Castillo stuck with the strategy of not throwing anything in the zone with Alvarez at the plate. Luckily for the Astros, Alvarez remembered that the strike zone is just a theoretical construct. That little white box on your TV screen? It’s not real, man. On a 1–0 count, Alvarez extended his arms and sent a 98-mph sinker off the edge of the plate 371 feet into the Crawford Boxes in left field. 3–2 Astros.

To the Mariners, it likely feels impossible to get Alvarez out no matter how you attack him, and that may be true. On pitches outside the zone this year, he posted a .364 wOBA, or the same figure Andrés Giménez put up on the year overall. That .364 wOBA would’ve been 18th-best among all hitters in 2022 in terms of total production. He also had a wOBA of .462 on pitches in the zone. Nowhere is safe.

Castillo added a scoreless seventh to finish his night, pitching around a two-out double by Aledmys Díaz, but the sixth ended up being his downfall. He threw 104 pitches over those seven frames, striking out seven and walking none. His only real mistakes on the night were the hanging slider to Tucker and not throwing that sinker to Alvarez two or three feet outside instead. As with his start against the Blue Jays, Castillo’s velocity was a tick above his league average on all four of his pitches; Sarah Langs noted that he threw 76 pitches at 97 mph or higher, the highest one-game total in the pitch-tracking era.

Houston held on from there. Bryan Abreu and Rafael Montero combined for two walks but no runs in the top of the seventh. Montero stayed on to pitch a scoreless eighth for the Astros, though narrowly; after a walk by Santana, pinch-hitter Jarred Kelenic just missed a go-ahead home run, ripping a fly ball 96.4 mph to Tucker on the warning track.

The bottom of the frame brought Alvarez up one more time, this time against Andrés Muñoz, who had walked Peña with two outs. Servais finally flushed his inner goldfish and ordered an intentional walk, but even that didn’t work, as Alex Bregman followed by turning around a 101.4-mph four-seamer for a line drive single to right. Haniger bobbled the ball slightly, and his throw to the plate was a bit too late and a bit too far up the line to catch Peña, who slid in safely to make it 4–2 Astros.

Ryan Pressly came on to close and walked leadoff hitter Adam Frazier on four pitches, but the threat didn’t last long, as Crawford hit a weak liner right at Yuli Gurriel, who stepped on first to double off the helpless Frazier. Seattle again put a runner on with a Rodríguez double into the left-center gap, bringing Ty France to the plate as the tying run. But Pressly struck France out swinging with nothing but sliders, and that was the game.

The teams will head to Seattle with the Astros one game away from the ALCS. How the Mariners try to stop Alvarez is anybody’s guess.