Evan Carter’s running-and-leaping catch of an Alex Bregman drive that had extra bases stamped on it otherwise ended with doubling up José Altuve in the Game One eighth—on Altuve’s own baserunning mistake.
This was not a good look for the Astros. When Justin Verlander keeps the arguable best remaining postseason offense to the weakest postseason game it’s had this time around but the Astros still don’t win, it’s not a good look.
When Jordan Montgomery scatters five hits in six and a third innings with no Astro scoring against him, before handing off to a bullpen whose regular season was an indictment for arson but has been a challenge to pry runs out of this postseason, it’s not a good Astro look.
When José Altuve, one of baseball’s smartest players, makes an eighth-inning baserunning mistake more to be expected of a raw rookie than a thirteen-year veteran with a Most Valuable Player Award in his trophy case, it’s not a good Astro look.
Astroworld should only be grateful that the Rangers didn’t even think about trolling Altuve the way a certain Brave trolled Bryce Harper on a similar but different play in the National League division series out of which the Phillies shoved the Braves.
Harper didn’t miss second scrambling back to first when Nick Castellanos’s long ninth-inning drive in Game Two was caught on the run and leap by Braves center fielder Michael Harris II, but he was thrown out at first by a hair and a half to end the game and the only Braves win of the set.
Altuve didn’t end American League Championship Series Game One Sunday night, but he did put the kibosh on the Astros’s final scoring opportunity in the 2-0 loss. He’d drawn a leadoff walk against Rangers reliever Josh Sborz, who yielded at once to Aroldis Chapman—a relief pitcher whose best fastball can still out-fly a speeding bullet, but who once surrendered a pennant-losing homer to Altuve himself and is still prone to hanging his sliders.
Then, somehow, Astros third baseman Alex Bregman sent a 2-1 slider off the middle of the zone to the rear end of Minute Maid Park, toward the chain-link fence beneath a Bank of America sign. The Rangers’ rookie left fielder Evan Carter ran it down and still had to take a flying leap to catch it one-handed just before it might have hit the fence and spoiled the Ranger shutout.
“Everybody,” said Astros catcher Martín Maldonado, who probably meant both the Astros themselves and the Minute Maid crowd, “thought that ball was going to hit the wall.”
Carter threw in to shortstop Corey Seager, who tossed right to second baseman Marcus Semien with third baseman Josh Jung pointing to the base emphatically. Semien stepped on the base just as emphatically. It took a replay review to affirm what Seager, Semien, and Jung spotted at once. Second base umpire Doug Eddings rung Altuve up. Altuve never touched second en route back to first.
Ouch!
“I didn’t think he was going to make the play he made—it was a great play,” said Altuve, a man who excels at just about everything you can ask of a veteran except baserunning, what with leading the entire Show with sixteen outs on the bases during the regular season. “You just try to come back to first base (and) that’s what I did.”
“That’s a play,” Semien said, “where I always watch to see what the runner does. Sometimes the umpires are looking at the ball, and that’s exactly what (Eddings) told me. He said he was looking at the ball. He didn’t see it. I tried to remind him. He still called it safe, but luckily that’s a play we can review. I’ve made that mistake before on the bases, so it’s one that we kinda go over in spring training, and all of a sudden in the ALCS, it showed up.”
Carter had also run down and caught leaping a Bregman drive down the left field line in the first. Then he himself accounted for the first Rangers run in the second inning, when he shot a base hit right past diving Astros first baseman José Abreu and gunned his way to second ahead of a throw that was dropped almost inexplicably at the base. Rangers catcher Jonah Heim then singled back up the pipe and Carter, reading the ball almost as a Biblical scholar parses the Beatitudes, scored.
“They always preach to us, especially the ones that can run a little bit, just, ‘Hey, it’s a double until it’s not’,” said Carter, who didn’t play his first major league game until 8 September. “So that’s kind of my mindset. I’m going to get a double until the outfielder tells me that I need to stop. I didn’t feel like I was told I needed to stop, so I just kept going.”
Three innings later, the Rangers’ number nine lineup batter, center fielder Leody Taveras, caught hold of a hanging Verlander sinker and lined it right over the right field fence. That was the second and final blemish against Verlander, the veteran who walked to the Mets as a free agent last winter but returned to the Astros in a trade deadline deal in August.
Altuve’s eighth-inning misstep was only the final among several opportunities the Astros missed all game long. They wasted Abreu’s second inning-opening single almost at once when Michael Tucker forced him at second on a followup ground out, then stranded Tucker on a pair of fly outs.
They wasted first and second with two outs in the third when Yordan Alvarez struck out for the second of three times on the night.
They pushed the bases loaded against Montgomery in the fourth, the only inning in which the Rangers’ 6’6″ tall, free agent-to-be lefthander truly struggled, and Montgomery ironed up and struck Maldonado out swinging on 1-2.
It was only when Astros utility player Mauricio Dubón, playing center field for them Sunday night, slammed a hard line out to center field opening the Houston seventh, that Rangers manager Bruce Bochy decided to reach for the bullpen. Now, the Astros had a clean shot at a bullpen that might resemble the Third Army this postseason but blew 33 out of 63 so-called save situations on the regular season.
Altuve’s baserunning mistake still left the Astros four outs to work with yet and the vulnerable Chapman hardly off the hook with Alvarez checking in at the plate: Chapman’s lifetime postseason ERA in Minute Maid Park was 7.53 entering Sunday night. He fell behind Alvarez 2-1. Then, he threw Alvarez a slider that hung up just enough to be sent into orbit, just as Altuve had done winning that 2019 ALCS.
The only place Alvarez sent this one, though, was on the ground toward first base for an inning-ending out. Then Bochy reached for Jose Leclerc to work the ninth. Leclerc landed a hard-enough earned three up, three down; he went to full counts on Abreu and Chas McCormick before getting Abreu to line out to center for the first out and McCormick to strike out swinging, sandwiching Tucker’s 2-2 ground out to second.
“We just found a way to get a couple of runs across the board,” said Bochy after the game ended. “That was the difference in the game, obviously. But our guy was really good, Monty, terrific job he did. And he got in a couple of jams there and found a way to get out of it.”
Verlander didn’t sound discouraged after Game One despite his solid effort coming up just short enough. “We’ve lost Game One of some playoff series before,” said the future Hall of Fame righthander. “And that’s the great thing about this team. Obviously nobody is sitting in the locker room right now happy. But it’s very matter of fact, okay. We just got punched, how do you answer?”
The Astros have Game Two to start answering, of course. But they might have to find a few more ways to keep Carter from running down and killing their better drives.
Throneberry Fields Forever 