By Yours Truly
Fenway Park wasn’t quite as chilly as the night before, and in more ways than one. Game time temperature was about five or six degrees warmer. So were the Red Sox, who had no intention of going to Houston in the American League Championship Series hole 0-2, and proved it with a 7-5 win Sunday night.
You could point to any number of Game Two moments in which the Olde Towne Team drove that lack of intent home emphatically, but you probably couldn’t do better than point to Jackie Bradley, Jr. in the bottom of the third.
Both teams got a bit of a shake in the inning when Astros left fielder Marwin Gonzalez—whose two-run homer in the top of the inning put the Astros ahead 4-2---had the wind knocked out of him hitting the Green Monster scoreboard and then the ground after making a try for Steve Pearce’s high liner, which set up second and third before Astros starter Gerrit Cole walked Rafael Devers on four pitches to load the bases before striking out Ian Kinsler.
Gonzalez survived and stayed in the game. After Kinsler was dispatched, up stepped Bradley. The same Bradley who’d been maybe the American League’s best center fielder never yet to win a Gold Glove but hit for an extremely modest .717 OPS during the season. The same Bradley who was so futile at the plate at times during the summer that he’d been benched, and who’d hit .133 with four punchouts in fifteen trips to the postseason plate until Sunday night.
The same Bradley who’d had a platinum opportunity to fatten a 2-0 Red Sox lead in the bottom of the first—thanks to Mookie Betts’s leadoff double, Andrew Benitendi’s first-pitch-swinging RBI single to follow immediately, Cole’s errant throw off Xander Bogaerts’s grounder, and a four-pitch walk to Steve Pearce to nudge Betts home—and stranded the bases loaded with a modest ground out to second.
That was then. Now, on 2-1 Bradley caught hold of Cole’s four seamer and drove it high the other way, down the left field line, bouncing off the low side of the Monster inside the foul pole, and bounding off a sidewall to elude Gonzalez enough to send all three runners home and the Red Sox to a 5-4 lead.
So far as Red Sox bombardier J.D. Martinez was concerned, Bradley’s rip was the whole game. His words. “That was huge,†he told reporters afterward. “That was a big, big hit, man. That relaxed everyone. Gave us some breathing room. That just changed the game. Biggest hit of the year. So far.â€
Emphasis on “so far,†Martinez, his teammates, and Red Sox Nation hope devoutly.
Bradley himself was slightly amazed by the hit, admitting he’d never seen a ball take such odd caroms even off Fenway Park’s mythological left field wall or the sidewall. “I’ve never seen it ride the top of that little edge like that before,†he said. “It’s pretty unique.â€
Given a resuscitation with the re-taken lead, Red Sox starter David Price—whose postseason resume to that point made Clayton Kershaw’s resemble Sandy Koufax’s—held on admirably if not necessarily brilliantly, until things got a little dicey for him in the fifth. He’d already pitched respectably if not brilliantly, his only blemishes really being George Springer’s then-tying two-run double down the right field line in the second and Gonzalez’s two-out blast over the Monster seats in the third.
“Baby steps, baby steps,†Price said after the game. “I expect to win. We won.†He called it his postseason team win. Men who show greatness or at least above-average regular season performance will take it where they can get it after long enough runs of postseason futility.
But now in the fifth Price was out-wrestled for a one-out, full count walk to Alex Bregman, who took second on Yuli Gurriel’s bouncer to third with an extra hop enough to keep Devers playing third from thinking double play, and a four-pitch walk to Tyler White. That was enough for Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who brought in Matt Barnes. And Barnes struck Gonzalez out for the side.
The Astros saw a second Red Sox reliever, Ryan Brasier to start the seventh, before the Red Sox saw anyone out of the Astro bullpen, Astros manager A.J. Hinch possibly trying to save his pen men for the Houston leg despite Cole pitching into and out of trouble and in the hole 4-5 until Hinch sent Lance McCullers, Jr. out to start the Red Sox seventh.
And that’s where things turned surreal for the Astros. You could fault McCullers for walking Betts on four pitches to lead off the bottom of the seventh, and for the wild pitch that struck out Benitendi while allowing Betts second on the house. But you couldn’t blame McCullers when one of his big breaking balls escaped catcher Martin Maldonado allowing Betts to third on the passed ball. Or, when another big breaker to Xander Bogaerts missed up and away and past Maldonado’s mitt to let Betts dive across the plate with the sixth Red Sox run.
A mid-season pickup from the Angels, Maldonado is considered an excellent defensive catcher who can neutralise baserunning threats but who did commit thirteen passed balls on the regular season. “Looked like Martin either lost it in the people in center field or just got a little bit . . .†Hinch paused before continuing. “I don’t want to say lax back there, but just had a tought time.â€
Still, Hinch took no chances. He brought in Josh James, who finished the walk to Bogaerts that McCullers began before getting Pearce to end the inning on a grounder to shortstop. And James in his first postseason gig ever began the bottom of the eighth by shaking off Devers’s leadoff single with back to back strikeouts of Kinsler and Bradley.
But pinch hitter Mitch Moreland shot a grounder into right for a single and Hinch reached for Hector Rondon. Up stepped Betts, with incoming Red Sox catcher Sandy Leon running for Moreland, and on a line into right center went Betts’s RBI single, before Hinch brought in lefthander Tony Sipp to get the lefthanded Benitendi to fly out to Springer moving toward left center for the side.
As he did in the division series, Cora reached for Rick Porcello, normally a starting pitcher, to work the eighth and a spotless one at that, though it might prompt the Red Sox skipper to have to re-think his coming pitching alignments considering he might originally have had Porcello in mind to start either Game Three or Game Four.
And late during Game Two broke the news that the Red Sox’s Game One starter Chris Sale was hospitalised with a stomach ailment that might have been the key reason why the righthander was so lacking for command and control before coming out after four innings en route the 7-2 loss. Sale is still scheduled to start Game Five but if his ailment proves more serious Cora’s going to have to perform some serious mental gymnastics with his pitchers.
Prying a run out of Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel in the top of the ninth—Springer hitting a two-out double off the Monster and Jose Altuve rapping a single high off that wall to send Springer home—wasn’t quite enough for the Astros, as Bregman flied out to Benitendi in left for the game.
Hinch isn’t quite as big on bullpenning as some other teams, not with his stellar starting pitchers, and if there’s been one fresh theme emerging from this ALCS it’s that the Red Sox bullpen may not be quite as weak as advertised coming in even if the Astros’ pen isn’t quite as invincible as they’ve been advertised at times.
But some might have wondered why—since he had men warming up as early as the first, with Cole looking almost nothing like the same pitcher who smothered the Indians in the division series—Hinch didn’t reach for his pen men sooner than he did.
Had Bradley hit safely instead of striking out to strand the bases loaded in the first, would Hinch have turned to Collin McHugh, who’d begun warming up just before Cole went to work on Kinsler?
Getting innings out of righthander Cole was one thing, but with Bradley and that .133 postseason batting average checking in at the plate with the bases loaded Hinch—who spoke after the game about doing his best to try finding the matchups with his pen, and who’s usually adroit about working them when he has to—had no lefthander ready to face Bradley to protect that 4-2 Astro lead.
He didn’t start his bullpenning until the seventh. Of course, he had no idea that Maldonado would channel his inner Yasmani Grandal, either. But Bradley did his big damage well before that. And it helped make sure this ALCS is still within either team’s reach. With the prospect for surreality still very high.
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