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BOSTON – On the first night of the October playoffs in the Northeast, in the most comfortable and intimidating baseball building, in the first game of a series of championship American League pitting two of the best teams of the recent vintage, there was a problem to grasp. nerves to break. Two of the best baseball pitchers and a parade of smaller players have lost all sense for the attack zone. The outs were thrown away. A discreet and good-natured manager fell angry. A catcher at the second stop of an umpire.
Without the impressive work of the Houston Astros Editor-in-Chief, perhaps the only unit on either side to be respectable, the first ALCS match at Fenway Park would have been utterly disappointing. In this case, the defending World Series champions held up well and exploded late for a 7-2 win over the Boston Red Sox in a match that did not keep its promises, but managed to entertain in a strange and curvy.
[ALCS Game 1 box score: Astros 7, Red Sox 2]
A four-run Astros attack in the ninth, featuring home runs by Josh Reddick and Yuli Gurriel, sent many spectators out of the total of 38,007 sold-out people who paraded through the aisles and in the street. night. It's a feeling of anxiety that seizes Boston, his hope now resting on left-handed southpaw David Price in the second game on Sunday night, when he will face the virulent southpaw Astrit , Gerrit Cole.
If anyone had learned that both teams would win two batters in the ninth inning, they would have imagined an epic and long duel between the two aces in the first game, left-handed Chris Sale and right-handed Astros Justin Verlander. , the two main candidates for this year's AL Cy Young Award. But that was far from the case.
Dirty had a rare command collapse in the second run and fainted after four shaky innings, winning 2-0. Verlander saved his collapse for the fifth goal, giving the advantage, which is unusual, during three straight strolls and a wild pitch. By the end of the night, the teams had combined to walk 14 batters, including 10 scored by the Red Sox.
Was it the weather, the nerves or anything else that made everyone comfortable?
Arbitration certainly did not help. The pitchers of both teams have sometimes challenged the marble umpire, James Hoye, in the strikes area, but at the end of the fifth inning, Alex Cora, the Red Sox's coach, has simply lost . Andrew Benintendi has been expelled from his post since workstation three for the second time this year. But before leaving the field, he went to Hoye furiously in the grass between his home and first goal, giving him all his money. for ejection before Crew Chief Joe West stands between them.
West would have his own signature moment at the top of the eighth, when a throw from Red Sox receiver Christian Vazquez, trying to catch a possible base thief, drilled to the west near the shoulder.
But the worst night could have been Eduardo Nunez, Boston's third baseman. It was Nunez who, in the fourth game of the AL Division series, managed to get their hands dirty, which ended the defeat and victory against the New York Yankees.
But Saturday night, it is the defense of Nunez that could have cost the game to the Red Sox. He did not manage to play on his left on the smash at a jump of George Springer, who passed just under his glove, a single charged with bases that brought home the first two points of the Astros. And four innings later, he made a mistake on a Gurriel ground player who helped the Astros score.
Sale's quick shot averaged 94.7 mph this season and 94.6 mph in his first game against the ALDS Yankees a week earlier. But on Saturday, he pitched short sleeves despite temperatures that dropped in the 40s, Sale's first bid was listed at 91, his second at 89. His command was also offensive, since he needed to 34 throws to sneak up to the second inning, 16 of them for strikes.
The impression was that of a pitcher who was not quite right physically. Dirty suffered from an inflammation of the shoulder in the second half of the season, limiting it to five starts combined in August and September. Speed drop and sudden and unusual command loss are alarm signals. His cleaning slider, usually a lethal weapon, was virtually useless. Only two of Sale's first 69 courts produced jumps and misses.
This sale was able to defeat four rounds with such small arms and allow only these two rounds in the second run, reflecting the cunning and competitiveness of the veteran.
It might have seemed like a small thing, but the way Sale started the fourth inning – his speed has returned to normal, his command is better, his slider has regained all his power – was auspicious for the Red Sox. Knowing that his time was running out, he intensified the intensity with excellent results. It is certainly possible, given the finesse of the Boston office and the aggressive way Cora managed the ALDS, that Sale makes a relieved appearance in match 3 or 4 in Houston.
Meanwhile, in the face of the most successful baseball attack, Verlander seemed to have total command until he was not. He had pulled out 10 Red Sox strikers before Steve Pearce scored the lead for the fifth goal, and the right-hander lost all throwing sensation. After eliminating Brock Holt, he walked to the last third of the order of Boston, the last in the first round of the Red Sox, before ending up on a wild throw that brought the goal tied .
After finally escaping the run – in the third shot called Benintendi who put Cora offside – Verlander rallied, completed a sixth inning without incident and left what was then a lead of 39, a point to its powerful and powerful enclosure.
Ryan Pressly is busy seventh and Lance McCullers Jr. of the eighth. After the opening match of the Astros to ninth goal, Houston manager A.J. Hinch had the luxury of keeping his closest, Roberto Osuna, under the veil and giving the last three outs to Collin McHugh.
Four hours and three minutes after the start of the match, match 1 ended on a low ground, a clean game and the Astros forming a handshake line to celebrate a win that counts as much as any other, even if she did not follow the script, no one could. have written.
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