By Yours Truly
Craig Kimbrel seems to have developed the habit of making things a little too hair-raising in the ninth inning lately. It’s a habit that could have put the Red Sox up against a pair of elimination games before getting the American League Championship Series back to Fenway Park.
It’s a habit Red Sox left fielder Andrew Benintendi sent a powerful message on behalf of breaking, and fast enough. Especially with Alex Bregman, the Astros’ arguable most clutch hitter of late, checking in at the plate, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.
Kimbrel served Bregman something that was so meaty an Astros kangaroo court might have fined their third baseman if he kept his bat on his shoulder. Especially with Benintendi playing him almost against the warning track in front of the left field scoreboard. And sure enough, Bregman swung.
He hit it right on the meat but not as hard as it looked. On a medium-low line into left that began to sink at the right spot to fall in for a game-tying hit at minimum. On any other night it hits the grass and hops away, maybe even enough to win the game.
Except that Benintendi pumped his gas pedal on contact. He shot in with all cylinders firing, dove like he was Michael Phelps hitting the water for yet another gold medal, and snapped the ball into his glove about a second before it would have hit the grass, his glove arm extended full length, landing on his belly and sliding about four feet before coming up howling in triumph.
Carlos Correa was on second cheating toward third when Bregman swung. “I was just trying to score,†he said after the Olde Towne Team went up 3-1 in this ALCS. “And then I just heard the fans go, ‘Ahhh’.â€
In that “Ahhh†moment, the “ahhh†being the moment Correa knew Benintendi had the ball and the game in his glove, Benintendi was Willie Mays in the 1954 Polo Grounds, Sandy Amoros in Game Seven of the 1955 World Series in Yankee Stadium, and the Flying Wallendas Mets outfield of the 1969 World Series in Shea Stadium.
“I thought I got a good jump on it,†Benintendi said after he saved the Red Sox’s 8-6 win with maybe the single most important play of their season to date. “It wasn’t hit really hard. I thought I could catch it. I timed it up well. I definitely knew it was do or die. I wouldn’t have [dived] if I knew there was any chance it would’ve bounced. It was close.â€
“If that gets by him,†said Astros backup catcher Brian McCann, “it’s trouble. Hats off to him. He made a great play.â€
An inning before that, Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts looked like he’d made the defensive play of the game, when he fielded Tony Kemp’s base hit and fired right through the bull’s eye to nail Kemp trying to stretch it into a double. Only nobody but Red Sox Nation was going to give him his props for the play, considering he’d spent every inning since the first as Houston’s Public Enemy Number Two.
The evening’s right field umpire, Joe West, had the number one slot after his first inning ruling in which Betts played the co-starring role. The other co-star was Jose Altuve, the Astros second baseman who’s unashamed of playing the game as though he’s still a happy hungering Venezuelan kid.
Altuve batted with Astros center fielder George Springer aboard on a one-out single. Red Sox starter Rick Porcello threw him a four-seam fastball on 2-1. Altuve drove it parabolically toward the right field seats. Betts drew a bead on the drive and ran back to the fence and leaped. He snapped his glove closed without the ball he was sure he would catch in it.
“When he jumped up to reach for the ball,†West said after the game, “the spectator reached out and hit him over the playing field and closed his glove . . . Here’s the whole play. [Altuve] hit the ball to right field. He jumped up to try to make a catch. The fan interfered with him over the playing field. That’s why I called spectator interference.â€
Betts himself said he felt something happen when he jumped. “I felt like somebody was kind of pushing my glove out of the way or something,†said Betts after the game, having a reputation equal to Altuve’s for speaking honestly. “I got to see a little bit of the replay. I guess they were going to catch the ball and pushed my glove out of the way.â€
The fan who most likely made any contact with Betts’s glove, Jared Thomanek, could only be sure he had competition among four other fans for who would end up catching Altuve’s likely home run. “The ball was coming hard,†Thomanek said. “We wanted to catch it.â€
Altuve himself was gracious about the call and the fan in question. “I don’t have anything against him,†the ebullient second baseman said after the game. “He’s another Astros fan rooting for us. Appreciate he was trying to help me.†The Yankees probably felt that way about Jeffrey Maier succeeding in helping Derek Jeter to a home run in Game One of the 1996 ALCS.
Assorted available television replay angles didn’t conclude anything one or the other way. Let it be said that West has his critics, and scores of them, including this writer, but Game Three analysis showed West behind the plate for the game missed only one pitch all night. There’s plenty of evidence that West likes to make games about himself, but nothing truly concluded that that was the case for Game Four.
It’s going to be one play analysed to death whenever Houston baseball is opened to debate in the future, especially if the Astros don’t pick themselves up, dust themselves off, start all over again, and remind themselves of plenty enough other Game Four opportunities lost.
They’d tied the game in the third when Springer leading off ripped Porcello’s first pitch into the right field seats and—two outs after Altuve doubled to the back of left field—Josh Reddick sent Altuve home with a quail into short center. And they took a 4-3 lead in the fourth when Kemp with one out sent an 0-1 slider not far from where Springer’s third-inning bomb ended up. They also re-took the lead, 5-4, in the fifth, when Carlos Correa singled to left to send home Yuli Gurriel, who’d doubled with one out to start the inning.
But the Red Sox cashed in more and better. The Astros were slick at scoring with two outs; the Red Sox were better more often. Except for shortstop Xander Bogaerts’s RBI double to left scoring Benintendi in the third, every Red Sox run came home with two outs.
There was third baseman Rafael Devers’s two-run single in the first to Bogaert’s RBI single (again scoring Benintendi) in the fifth to re-tire the game; from Jackie Bradley, Jr., whose name was probably mud already in Houston off that Game Three salami, hitting a two-run homer in the sixth, to Brock Holt walking with the bases loaded in the seventh and J.D Martinez driving in Betts with a single up the pipe in the eighth.
Bradley’s bomb followed a play that could have been and one Springer probably wishes he had back. With Astros reliever Josh James on the mound, Springer ran down Red Sox catcher Christian Vasquez’s tracer to the right center field wall, and just missed grabbing the ball, leaving Vasquez with a double. Up stepped Bradley and, on James’s next pitch, Bradley sent a monstrous drive into the right field seats.
The Astros had enough reason to be a little on edge going into Game Four. Starter Charlie Morton hadn’t pitched in what seemed a small eternity—his last sighting on the mound was 30 September—and he was chased in the third. They have more reason to be a little on the edgy side after their remarkable bullpen got punctured for five of the Red Sox’s eight Game Four runs while the Red Sox bullpen, considered so suspect before the series began, has mostly pitched almost equal to the Astro pen when it matters the most.
And if the Red Sox figure out how to handle and overcome Justin Verlander starting Game Five, the Astros’ success in defending their 2017 World Series championship will go back to Fenway Park hanging by a slender enough thread. The numbers are in their favour—Verlander has a 1.21 ERA in five career postseason elimination games, and he has 24 scoreless innings over his last three elimination game starts.
“When Verlander’s on the mound,†Correa said, “we feel like we’re going to win the game.†They’ll need to act on that feeling to survive. The Red Sox will have to find a way to puncture that invincibility if they want to end the ALCS earlier than was expected of either team when it began.
They may even need Benintendi to channel his inner man on the flying trapeze again.
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