-Tons of Fun

Just three weeks ago we had 10 teams with a dream of hanging another banner from the rafters (or, in a couple cases, a banner at all). You usually see this quote from former commissioner Bart Giamatti after the World Series ends, but "[baseball] is designed to break your heart". For eight of those teams it already has. And thus that banner will be the second one ever for either Hous-ton or Washing-ton (in case you wondered about the title). This is the first time two "-ton"s will compete for baseball's ultimate prize, and we even included Arlington (Texas) and Bloomington (Minn.) in that. But before those teams get their -ton of pressure later this week, let's look back at the fun they had getting there.


Running the Cards

Plenty of card games (Hearts, Euchre, Pinochle, 500) are based on the concept of taking tricks, and most of these games also have some special term (running, "nello", "going alone", "shooting the moon") for either taking all the tricks or none of them.

If you've got designs on running all the cards, it's probably a good idea to have at least a couple of aces. But it's rarely a good idea to play them right away. Let's see what this 10 of clubs will draw out before unleashing the big guns.

Enter Anibal Sanchez for Game 1 of the NLCS. And that 10 of clubs silenced every other club, at least the ones coming out of the St Louis dugout. One through nine go the Cardinals in the first three innings. Kolten Wong works a walk in the 4th but meh. Randy Arozarena, remarkably still on the team, gets hit by a pitch and steals second. But that's still not a hit. When Marcell Ozuna flies out to right in the 7th, Sanchez has set the Nats/Expos record for longest postseason no-hitter, which Max Scherzer held for barely 2 years. Now granted, Anibal Sanchez does already have one no-hitter-- thirteen years and four teams ago as a 22-year-old rookie with the Marlins. Only Nolan Ryan had ever thrown two of them 13 years apart. And only the baseball gods could unleash this coincidence on us: The Cardinals had been no-hit through 7 innings twice in their posteason history, by Red Ruffing of the Yankees in 1942 and Jim Lonborg of the Red Sox in 1967. Both those no-hitters got broken up with 2 outs in the 8th. So you know what has to happen when pinch hitter Jose Martinez wanders to the plate with 2 outs in the 8th. Clean line-drive single that Michael Taylor later admitted he thought about diving for, but then also realized the game was still only 2-0 and it could be an inside-the-parker if he missed. That also cleared up any confusion about whether to let Sanchez try and finish the game after 103 pitches; Sean Doolittle would get 4 outs in just 15 pitches to render Martinez's single the only hit of the game for St Louis.

That Jim Lonborg game in 1967 was another of the three postseason games where the Cardinals ended up with only 1 hit; the other was 2004 NLCS 5 against Houston, which comes up at least once per series because of Jeff Kent's walkoff homer to break a scoreless tie. The Cardinals hadn't been shut out on 1 hit at home, in any game, since Daniel Descalso broke up Yovani Gallardo's no-hitter in the 8th on May 7, 2011.

This also created a rough loss for Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas, who gave up an early run on doubles by Howie Kendrick and Yan Gomes, but then cruised through 6 innings while striking out 7. That one run was enough to tag him with the loss, the third in Cards postseason history to pull that off. Matt Morris lost a 1-0 decision to Arizona in the 2001 Division Series, and none other than Steve Carlton was on the opposite side of that Jim Lonborg near-no-hitter in the '67 World Series.

For the Nationals, it could certainly have been a game of missed opportunities; they still scored only 2 runs despite collecting 10 hits and 5 walks. The last time Washington turned 10+ hits into 2 or fewer runs, and still won, was in Jordan Zimmerman's no-hitter on the final weekend of the 2014 season. The franchise hadn't done it in a road game since an all-Canada affair between Montréal and Toronto, appropriately on Canada Day 1997. And Doolittle became just the second Nats/Expos pitcher to get a 4-out save in a postseason game, joining Jeff Reardon in the 1981 Division Series against Philadelphia.


Maxed Out

So after that 10 of clubs was a nice surprise, you actually can bring out the aces. For the Nationals that means Max Scherzer and, wait a minute, didn't we just do this? Kolten Wong draws a walk but remains the Cardinals' only baserunner for 3 innings. And then 4. And then 5. Well, at least we don't have to look up any more no-hitter notes. Although it was the first time the Cardinals had been held hitless through 4 innings twice in the same postseason. And just as Scherzer looks to regain his title of the longest no-hitter in Nats postseason history (the one Sanchez broke yesterday), Paul Goldschmidt finally comes through with a single to start the 7th. Like Taylor before him, Juan Soto said he briefly thought about diving for the ball, but this one wasn't nearly as close a play, and plus this game is still 1-0 as well. Taylor's homer in the 3rd was the only scoring to this point, as Scherzer and Adam Wainwright both fanned 11 opponents. The only other starters to match 11-K games in the postseason were Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw in the opener of the 2015 NLDS.

Waino was already on the hook for the loss with only that one run, but Adam Eaton's double in the 8th added two more and knocked him out of the game. He became the first Cards pitcher to strike out 11 in a home game and lose since Woody Williams against the Reds on August 18, 2004. However, Waino did have a road game where he did the same thing-- May 25, 2010 at San Diego. And only four other Cards pitchers have had two such games in the live-ball era: Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Harvey Haddix, and Sam Jones. Meanwhile, back in Scherzer's corner, that hit deprived us of seeing what would happen if Davey Martinez tried to remove him at 110 or 120 pitches with the no-hitter still going. Matt Adams hit for Scherzer in the 8th after that single by Goldy, giving Max his fourth game with the Nationals where he allowed 1 hit and struck out 11+. All other pitchers in franchise history have done it three times combined. He also became just the fourth pitcher, for any team, to do it in the postseason, joining (!) Anibal Sanchez, then his teammate with Detroit in 2013; Roger Clemens in 2000; and Baltimore's Moe Drabowsky in 1966.

Jose Martinez would come up with a pinch-hit double in the 8th to at least get the Cardinals on the scoreboard this time (and prompt a lot of calls from Redbirds faithful about, why isn't he starting?). Martinez joined Allen Craig (2013), So Taguchi (2006), and Bob Skinner (1964) as the only Cardinals with a pinch-hit double and a pinch-hit single in the same postseason series. And NLCS Games 1 and 2 would be the first time in the history of the current Busch Stadium (2006) that St Louis had been held to 3 hits in back-to-back games. They hadn't done it at the old park since May 12 and 13 of 2000 against the Dodgers (Darren Dreifort & Chan Ho Park).


It's A Hit!

Our house of Cards would move to the nation's capital for Game 3, and it's true in most card games (though not all) that an ace beats a jack. That axiom would hold on Monday when the ace was Stephen Strasburg and the Jack was Flaherty. Having apparently taken their off-day to study the "objectives" part of the rule book, Marcell Ozuna figured out how to get the Cardinals a base hit before the 7th inning. (Though he promptly got caught in an unforced rundown, so clearly didn't finish the whole chapter.) And it would be the bottom of the 3rd when the Nationals broke out against Flaherty, with Anthony Rendon and Howie Kendrick each hitting RBI doubles to lead a 4-run inning. That was the first time in 2019 that the Nats had scored 4+ in a frame against the Cardinals; St Louis was the only National League opponent against whom they didn't do it at least once in the regular season.

With Strasburg dealing again, Mike Shildt made a curious decision to pinch-hit for Flaherty in the 5th inning, ending his start after just 78 pitches. That would lead to John Brebbia taking the mound in the Nationals' half of the inning, which would then lead to Kendrick and Ryan Zimmerman hitting another pair of RBI doubles to nearly seal the Washington victory at 6-0. The Nationals became just the second team, after the 2007 Red Sox, in postseason history to have four RBI doubles in the same game. When Brebbia also hung a leadoff homer to Victor Robles in the 6th, he joined Mark Petkovsek (1996 NLCS) as the only Cardinals pitchers to give up 3 extra-base hits while getting only 2 outs.

Kendrick would add another two-bagger in the 7th and finish off the scoring at 8-1, becoming the 17th player (and first for Nats/Expos) with 3 doubles in a postseason game. Ben Zobrist was the previous, in the 2015 ALCS at Toronto. Having turned 36 in July, Kendrick is also the fourth-oldest player ever to have 3 extra-base hits in a postseason game, after Craig Biggio (39 in 2005), Willie Stargell (39 in 1979), and Larry Walker (37 in 2004). He's the first player in Nationals history with 3 doubles and 3 RBIs in the same game; the last Expos batter to do it was Vladimir Guerrero on June 2, 2001. And only Albert Pujols (2011 NLCS 2) and then-Giant Freddy Sanchez (2010 WS 1) had posted that line in any postseason game.

Meanwhile, although not threatening the no-hitter, Strasburg would complete 7 innings like Scherzer and Sanchez before him, striking out the side around three singles in the 7th, and getting charged with an unearned run only because Juan Soto slipped and missed everything when trying to get the ball back in from left field. The last team to have three consecutive starters throw 7 innings and allow 0 earned runs in the postseason was the 1974 World Series champion Athletics, who did it in that year's ALCS behind Ken Holtzman, Vida Blue, and Catfish Hunter. And the last opposing pitcher for any team to strike out 12, walk 0, and allow 0 earned runs against the Cardinals was Corey Kluber back on May 13, 2015.


We'll Take The Rest

At some point in your card game, if someone is trying to run the table, they might get to a point where the outcome is inevitable, the cards are such that they are guaranteed to take every remaining trick without losing the lead, so they just throw the whole hand down and say, thank you very much. That would bring us to Game 4.

Patrick Corbin hasn't achieved "ace" status yet, but by now he probably qualifies as a face card. One of those cards where, if you've been counting, you know that the ace and king were already drawn out, and you can play this queen without worrying about it losing to anything. Corbin started by striking out the first three Cardinals batters (here we go again!), becoming the second Nats/Expos pitcher in postseason history with 3 K's in a 1st inning. The first? Max Scherzer in Game 2! It would, however, be quite a while before Corbin got back out there to fan #4 batter Marcell Ozuna as well.

That's because Dakota Hudson, to continue the card analogy, folded. Or went all-in with a pair of 3's, or whatever you'd like. You know how it went. Trea Turner leadoff single. Adam Eaton double. Sac fly. Double. Walk. Kolten Wong drops a relay throw at second that certainly should have gotten one out if not started a double play. Two more singles. And Hudson is mercifully removed from the game before having to face the aforementioned Patrick Corbin, to whom he has already handed a 5-0 lead. Turner then bats again and finishes off the beatdown with a single off Adam Wainwright to score the last two inherited runners and gave the Nats their first 7-run 1st inning since that famous 25-4 game against the Mets last July. Turner also had a pair of 1st-inning hits in that game as well, and is the first player in Nats/Expos history to pull that off twice. He's also just the fourth for any team to do it in a postseason game, joining Chuck Knoblauch (2000 ALDS), Jerome Walton of the Cubs (1989 NLCS), and the Yankees' Bob Cerv (1960 WS).

At this point, the rest of the game (and the series) is pretty much elementary. The Cards do have one glimmer of hope when Corbin loads the bases in the 5th and then our buddy Jose Martinez-- who is finally starting-- doubles home 2 runs to get as close as 7-4. But Corbin comes back to strike out Paul Goldschmidt and Ozuna again to finish the day with 12 strikeouts. Combined with Scherzer and Strasburg, it's the first three-game streak in Nats/Expos history (regular season or post-) where their starting pitcher fanned at least 11 in each game.

Dakota Hudson, meanwhile, became only the third Cardinals pitcher in the live-ball era to get 1 out, give up 7 runs, and take a loss. Mark Petkovsek, whom you may remember from Game 3 for giving up 3 XBH and getting 2 outs in 1996, also had this line in a regular-season game in June 1998, along with Bob Forsch in May 1977. Only one other pitcher for any team had posted the 1-and-7-plus-a-loss line in a postseason game... and that was Mike Foltynewicz against the Cardinals last week, in that NLDS Game 5 where St Louis had a 10-run 1st. No team had posted a 7-run frame on offense, and allowed one on defense, in the same postseason since the 2007 Red Sox-- and then both the Nationals and Cardinals did it with the start of Game 4.



The NLCS brought to you by all things Joker. And not the movie. The ALCS, on the other hand, will be a different game entirely. Take your pick. Or should we say, go fish. Intermission!



Turns, Flops, and River Avenue

Okay, so we switched card games. But unlike the NLCS where there was little drama beyond the initial dealing, its AL counterpart took many strange turns, right up until the very last pitch.

After sweeping the Twins in the Division Series, the Yankees had four off-days to regroup, reset the pitching rotation, and otherwise enjoy autumn in New York. That meant Masahiro Tanaka against a group of Astros hitters who had just escaped a 5-game series with the Rays. Oof. We will thank Kyle Tucker for smacking a line-drive single in the 3rd, although we didn't yet know that would be the only hit off Tanaka. If that sounds kinda familiar for a Game 1, it's because Anibal Sanchez did the same thing for the Nationals the day before, although he waited until the 8th inning to give his up. In the 51-year history of League Championship Series play, it's the second time that both of them have had a Game-1 starter allow just 1 hit... and the other time was last year when Gio Gonzalez and Chris Sale did it. Tanaka would become the fourth Yankees starter to give up 1 hit in a postseason game and get a win, joining Roger Clemens, David Cone, and Orlando Hernandez, who all did it in a two-season span (1999-2000).

The only other baserunner Tanaka allowed in his 6 innings was a walk to Alex Bregman, and wouldn't you know it, both Bregman and Tucker got erased on double plays. That made Tanaka the first Yankees pitcher to throw at least 6 innings and face the minimum over his entire outing since David Cone's perfect game on July 18, 1999. And the only other Yankees pitcher to allow 2 baserunners and get a win in a postseason game... was Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956. The Astros did manage 2 hits off the bullpen, but still were shut out on 3 or fewer for the first time ever in the postseason, and the first time ever by the Yankees.

Meanwhile, on offense, Game 1 turned into The Gleyber Torres Experience, as the 22-year-old doubled home the Yankees' first run in the 4th, homered in the 6th, and dumped in a bases-loaded 2-out single in the 7th. That gave him his third career game with a single, double, homer, and 4 RBI, the most ever by a Yankees hitter before turning 23. Mickey Mantle "only" did it twice. Annnnd then sure enough, just as we're readying the rest of those notes, Gleyber puts the cap on the 7-0 final score with a 9th-inning groundout to score DJ LeMahieu. Only two other Yankees-- Hideki Matsui in 2004 and Bernie Williams in 2001-- had ever had 3 hits and 5 RBI in a postseason road game, and only two others for any team had posted a 5-RBI postseason game at a younger age. The record, like many things age-related, belongs to Andruw Jones in the 1996 World Series; Addison Russell of the Cubs also had a 5-RBI game in the 2016 fall classic and beat Torres's age by 3 weeks.


Highlights At 11

If you're the Astros (or any team, for that matter), the last thing you want is to go to New York down 0-2. Especially after getting thumped 7-0 in Game 1 of the series. You at least feel good that Justin Verlander is back on the mound, but the question is which James Paxton will show up for the Yankees-- the one from June and July who gave up 6+ runs four times, or the one who rattled off 10 straight wins in August and September?

Naturally, of course, the answer is a little bit of both. Paxton gave up an RBi double to Carlos Correa in the 2nd, then two more singles in the 3rd before Aaron Boone-- whose team won Game 1, remember-- decides to pull him after only 51 pitches. Chad Green would retire the next six Astros batters, making Paxton just the third Yankees postseason starter in the last 60 years to only give up 1 run but not finish the 3rd. And the others had better excuses-- CC Sabathia did it in the rain-suspended ALDS game in 2011, and David Wells left the 2003 World Series against Florida with a back injury. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge broke through against Verlander with the Yankees' first lead-flipping homer in a postseason game since Johnny Damon took Cleveland's Jake Westbrook deep in the 2007 ALDS. After Green has exhausted his supply of 26 pitches, even though 21 of them were strikes, the ball passes to Adam Ottavino, and George Springer quickly passes it back almost to the train tracks above left field. That saddled Ottavino with his eighth blown save this year, the most for a Yankees pitcher since Mariano Rivera in 2001. After the Yankees require three more pitchers to get out of the inning (yet strike out four batters thanks to a wild pitch, just the third 4-K inning in postseason history), we are tied 2-2. And now we wait.

DJ LeMahieu runs into an out at home plate to end the top of the 6th. After which we go 4½ innings, 36 batters, NINE pitching changes (make it stop!), and just over 2 hours without a base hit. If you've done the math, you realize that we are now in extra innings, and Brett Gardner-- who got that infield hit in the 6th on which LeMahieu was thrown out-- also gets the next hit of the game in the 11th. Josh James, however, manages to strike out Gary Sanchez after the latter fouled off eight pitches, and finally Carlos Correa says, I've had enough of this, let me dump the very first pitch of B11 halfway up the lower deck in right field. And if it sounds a little déjà vu that Correa hit a walkoff in ALCS Game 2 against the Yankees, it's because you're still in 2017. When he really did do the exact same thing, just in "double" form instead of "homer". That was also the Astros' only other walkoff anything against the Yankees, including in the regular season, and the first postseason walkoff homer surrendered by New York since David Ortiz took Paul Quantrill deep in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS.


Flip Flop Fly Ball

That tying homer off the train tracks in Game 2 was the 12th of George Springer's postseason career, jumping himself back ahead of Jose Altuve who has 11. Altuve must have gotten wind of this, and realizing that we list ties alphabetically when tweeting out these leaderboards, he wasted no time saying give me my "record" back. After Springer grounded out to start Game 3, Altuve mashed his own 12th postseason homer off Luis Severino, who then got into-- but also out of-- a bases-loaded jam with only that 1 run. Altuve also hit a 1st-inning homer at Yankee Stadium against J.A. Happ on June 23 and is the first Astros batter with two there in the same season.

Gerrit Cole worked into and out of his own bases-loaded jam in the bottom half (amazingly, for the first time in a long while, both teams got hits in the 1st inning), and Game 3 wound up being the first postseason game where both teams stranded the bases loaded in the 1st since the Giants and Cardinals in the 2002 NLCS. Josh Reddick led off the 2nd with another homer, the first time Severino's ever allowed dingers in the 1st and 2nd innings of the same game, and the first game in Astros postseason history where they've hit them. But then we wait some more. Cole uncharacteristically walks five batters but the Yankees can't ever manage any hits to drive them in. In fact an otherwise-harmless Edwin Encarnacion double is all they managed against him from the 2nd through the 7th, while the Astros have grown their lead to 4-0 thanks once again to Adam Ottavino. Although it was Zack Britton who threw the wild pitch to score one of the inherited runs, it was Ottavino who started the 7th with a walk and a single, the third time this postseason he's appeared in a game and not recorded an out. Only Scott Schoeneweis of the Angels (2002) and Jesse Orosco of the Orioles (1996) had done that in postseason history. (Yeah, we know. Wait for it.)

Never do the shutout notes early. Because Gleyber Torres is still in the game, and Gerrit Cole is now out of it by the time we reach the 8th. So Torres unleashes the inevitable shutout-breaking solo homer against Joe Smith, and having drawn two of those walks from Cole, Gleyber is the first Yankees batter with a homer and two walks in a postseason loss since Hideki Matsui did it against the Angels in 2005. But when Roberto Osuna got the final 3 outs, the Yankees had just their second postseason game ever where they scored 1 run and stranded 10 or more on base. The other was a 3-1 loss to Minnesota in the opener of the 2003 Division Series. Game 3 was also the 14th time this year that Gerrit Cole threw 7+ innings, allow no more than 1 run, and got a win. That broke a tie with Roy Oswalt (2005) and Dallas Keuchel (2015) for the most in Astros history.


We Rain As One

We mentioned at the end of our Division Series post that this would be just the fourth postseason that had a game every single day from October 1 through 16. Except we forgot one little thing. With the Nationals sweeping their series, there would suddenly only be one game on the 16th. And because it's at Yankee Stadium, it's outdoors. And those things falling from the sky are not rally towels, though those might have come in handy to soak up a little bit of the 1.83 inches of rain that fell on Central Park that day alone-- as much the previous 43 days combined. So let's just say we're not playing baseball, and we'll be forced to give up our travel day on Friday instead. This does, however, create a situation where both teams can go back to their Game 1 starters, Greinke and Tanaka, on normal rest.

Neither was particuarly sharp, although Greinke held on a little longer than Tanaka this time. That's despite walking three batters, including a bases-loaded pass to Brett Gardner, in the 1st inning. It was only the second game of Greinke's career where he'd issued three walks in the 1st; the other was April 16, 2007, and the opposing starter that day was now-teammate (then-Tiger) Justin Verlander. And while it is just the 1st inning, Gardner's walk was the first go-ahead one for the Yankees in a postseason game since Steve Avery passed Wade Boggs in the 10th in 1996 WS 4 (aka The Jim Leyritz Game). However, Gary Sanchez would strike out with the bases loaded to end that inning and end the Yankees' threat. In the 2nd New York had two runners on before Aaron Judge struck out to end the inning. (There's a theme here.) The Astros finally got to Tanaka in the 3rd with a 4-pitch walk, a Josh Reddick single, and George Springer's 3-run homer to retake that home run title that he's been flipping with Altuve all month.

The Yankees, now down 3-1, finally knock Greinke out of the game in the 5th, but Gleyber Torres and Edwin Encarnacion both strike out with the bases loaded to end that one. And Chad Green made their missed opportunities that much worse by giving up another 3-run homer, this one to Carlos Correa, for a 6-1 Astros lead in the 6th. The Astros, mostly by virtue of being in the National League until 2013, had never hit multiple 3- or 4-run homers in a game in the Bronx, but had still only ever done it three times in Queens. And those were all at Shea: Brad Ausmus and Geoff Blum in 2002; Bob Watson and Lee May in 1973; and Denis Menke and Jim Wynn in 1969. Gary Sanchez makes up for his 1st-inning strikeout with a 2-run bomb in the 6th to get back to 6-3. But after DJ LeMahieu gets an automatic double when his fair ball jumps into the extended netting down by the foul pole, Judge records yet another inning-ending strikeout, the Yankees' fourth of the game with runners in scoring position. They had not pulled that off in a postseason game since doing it six times in Game 2 of the 1978 World Series against the Dodgers.

In the 8th it's time for Adam Ottavino again, and while you can blame a lot of this one on the defense, Alex Bregman's leadoff double is squarely on him. LeMahieu then makes an error to allow Yuli Gurriel to reach, and guess what that means for Ottavino. After 10 pitches, he's done again, and yet again he's failed to record an out. After just tying the record for such a thing two days ago, he now owns it outright with his fourth 0-IP appearance in the same postseason. Torres would promptly commit another error while trying to charge a grounder and cut off Bregman at the plate, and there was more of the same in the 9th when Yordan Alvarez sent a slow roller to Torres at short and it went right under his glove. That led to the 8-3 final score, but was more notably the Yankees' fourth defensive error of the day, their most in a postseason game since Game 2 of the 1976 ALCS at Kansas City. Thanks to all those walks and inning-ending strikeouts, the Yankees also managed to strand 10 baserunners, creating the very unusual final linescore of 3-5-4-10. No team had hit that exact combo since April 21, 1972, when the Giants did it... also in a loss to the Astros.


Friday Night Lights

As mentioned, we weren't originally supposed to be playing a game on Friday. The 18th was supposed to be that big exciting travel day back to Houston if Game 6 had to happen. To accommodate that lack of travel time, Game 5 even started at the non-TV-friendly time of 7 pm, which frankly is becoming a good idea for all postseason games considering they regularly take over 4 hours. But anyway. Our point is that you definitely wanted to be on time for Game 5, because if you only saw the last 8 innings, well, you pretty much already missed it all. George Springer started things with a slow roller that James Paxton just missed, his third leadoff hit at Yankee Stadium to also lead all Astros players in that category. Within the next 12 pitches we've had a passed ball, a groundout, a walk, and a wild pitch to score Springer with the first run of the game and cause the Internet to gush with a bunch of notes about the Astros being 77-19 this year when they score first. However, this year there's been one team who consistently could care less about those notes, and they're over in the other dugout. And 12 pitches into Justin Verlander's outing, he's already given up a leadoff homer to DJ LeMahieu to tie the game, a single to Aaron Judge, and a double to Gleyber Torres. For Torres that was his eighth extra-base hit of the postseason, joining Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui, and Bernie Williams on that single-season list. And the big blow came when Aaron Hicks, of 1 hit in 10 prior ALCS plate appearances, cranked a 3-run homer to propel the Yankees ahead 4-1. Verlander also gave up a pair of 1st-inning homers on a slightly smaller stage in Cincinnati on June 18; it's the first time in his career he's done it twice in a season. The Yankees hadn't begun a postseason game with three straight hits since the 2003 ALDS against Minnesota, and hadn't scored 4 runs in a postseason 1st inning since the 2000 Division Series at Oakland.

Still, there's eight more chances for the Astros to come back and render that trip back to Houston obsolete (well, at least for one team). Paxton ends up never having a 1-2-3 inning, but the Astros also end up with one and only one baserunner in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th-- none of whom score. Meanwhile, Verlander-- who apparently missed the memo about the game being at 7:00-- is back to normal and retires 20 of the next 21 batters following the Hicks homer. Tommy Kahnle puts two runners on in the 7th but Zack Britton escapes that jam, and then it's 12-up, 12-down as we limp to the end of the game without so much as a 3-ball count. So the amazing news is that you actually saw a postseason game end shortly after 10:00. Oh yeah, and-- for the first time this postseason-- both teams scored in the 1st inning. For the Yankees, it was the second postseason game where they scored 4+ in the 1st but none after that; the other was a 5-1 win against Brooklyn in 1955. But if you thought this game couldn't make postseason history, well, there's always something. It's the first playoff game ever where both teams scored in the 1st inning... but then neither of them scored again after that.


Six Of A Kind

Okay, we realize this requires a seven-card hand and either multiple decks or a couple of wilds. But Minute Maid Park does have several decks, and Game 6 was nothing if not wild. After the team planes followed each other back to Houston in the early hours of Saturday morning, leaving Newark at midnight and landing just before 3 am, both managers opted to go with another "bullpen day" just in case they needed to keep that last ace in their pocket for a potential Game 7. Chad "Green" ended up much closer to "blue" after watching Jose Altuve smack a 1st-inning double, his 19th career extra-base hit in the postseason. That tied Carlos Correa and left him behind only George Springer (23); not only are they flip-flopping spots on the home run list, they're doing it with total XBH also. After a walk to Alex Bregman, and immediately following an oh-so-helpful Mound Visit, Green then hung a shoulder-high fastball that Yuli Gurriel somehow snuck over the wall into the Crawford Boxes for a 3-run homer. The Astros had never hit a 3- or 4-run homer in the 1st inning in their postseason history, and only Alex Bregman (May 2017) and Carlos Lee (June 2008) had ever hit them against the Yankees. And once again, the Astros are still 77-20 when they score first and the faithful at MMP have those orange towels going crazy. Not so fast, y'all.

After retiring the first five Yankees in order, Brad Peacock-- who actually threw the 9th inning of Game 5 last night-- gave one of those runs back in the 2nd when Didi Gregorius doubled. Peacock was the first pitcher in Astros history to "start" a game after pitching at all the day before, and the fourth in postseason history to do it after finishing the prior game. The others only go back to 1924 (Firpo Marberry of the Senators), 1910 (Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown), and 1906 (Guy "Doc" White). Much like Game 4, Brett Gardner strikes out to end that threat, and then Ryan Pressly gets Gregorius on a slow roller with the bases loaded in the 3rd. Jose Urquidy, the Astros' fourth pitcher, would end up with their longest outing-- 8 outs including 5 strikeouts-- but not before surrendering a home run to Gio Urshela to put the Yankees right back in this thing. It also blew up our Twitter feed with folks wondering if one "U" player had ever homered off another before. (Yes, though not in the postseason, and very sadly not involving Ugueth Urbina.)

The Yankees got singles from Judge and Gregorius in the 7th and 8th but had them both erased on double plays. The Astros hold a 4-2 lead at this point, but squander a bases-loaded opportunity for more runs in B8. And haven't you learned by now what the Yankees will do with that. Recall that A.J. Hinch was holding Gerrit Cole out for a potential Game 7. We said, put him in now, you need 3 outs for the pennant. Instead we got the usually-reliable Roberto Osuna who gives up a line-drive single to Urshela. Now the tying run is at the plate, and after a 10-pitch battle with DJ LeMahieu, the tying run is back at the plate-- after circling the bases with a 2-run season-saving homer to make it 4-4 and make us delete half a dozen notes. The Yankees' last tying or go-ahead homer in the 9th inning of a postseason game was by Raul Ibañez, and it's not the one you're thinking of. It was the game after his famous walkoff-- Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS against Detroit. The only other players to hit such a homer when trailing by 2 or more in a potential elimination game are Albert Pujols-- also in Houston, off Brad Lidge in 2005-- and Brooklyn's Carl Furillo in 1953.

Aroldis Chapman gets 2 outs and starts the scramble for those same extra-inning notes from the last time we played here on Sunday. Springer draws a 5-pitch walk. And darned if Altuve isn't really tired of Springer catching up to him on that home-run list. Take that. Oh yeah, and take this pennant while you're at it. You've undoubtedly seen the list of pennant-winning walkoff homers; since the LCS became a thing in 1969, it's Chris Chambliss (1976), Aaron Boone (2003), Magglio Ordoñez (2006), Travis Ishikawa (2014), and now Altuve. The last three of the five were of the multi-run variety. Friend Of Kernels Jacob Pomrenke of SABR has tracked all pennant-clinching games, including those in the regular season, and identified 21 walkoffs total, the most famous still being The Shot Heard 'Round The World. Ignoring the whole walkoff thing for a moment, it was Altuve's 20th career postseason extra-base hit (remember he hit 19 earlier in the game), and his third game with 2 XBH and 3 runs scored. The only other player in postseason history to have three such games is Albert Pujols. And Osuna, despite blowing the save by giving up the LeMahieu dinger, also got a "BS win" since he was still technically in the game at the end. He did that twice during the regular season and is the first Astros pitcher with three since Jose Valverde in 2008. But the baseball gods have a fun treat in store. Because the last pitcher for any team to give up a homer, blow a save, and then turn around and get the win... was Saturday's loser, Aroldis Chapman, in that 10-inning rain-delayed World Series Game 7 three seasons ago.

For the Yankees, Urshela did manage to collect 3 hits including a homer, joining Derek Jeter (2005) and Jorge Posada (2002) as Yankees to do that in a game where they got eliminated. Green was the fourth starter in their postseason history to give up 3 earned runs, not start the 2nd inning, and have the team still lose-- even though DJ's homer got him personally off the hook. The others (all of whom did take the individual loss as well) were Art Ditmar in 1960, Bob Turley in 1958, and Whitey Ford in 1953. This season marks the 14th time, including World Series play, where the Yankees have been eliminated from the postseason on the road. The Astros of course bounced them two years ago as well. Of those 14 times, the only other city where it's happened twice is Detroit (2006 & 2012).

And finally, let's step back and look at that Astros' boxscore. 6 runs on 6 hits. They drew 6 walks. They struck out 6 times. And they left 6 runners on base. (Did we mention it's Game 6?) The last team to hit all those 6's exactly was the Angels against Tampa Bay on May 30, 2003. Care to guess how many times it's now happened in the live-ball era? Your first five guesses don't count.



And while the AL Championship series went fairly long with a bunch of twists and turns, the number of days that the Nationals will have off to sit around and think about things? Yeah, that's 6 also. We were sad when this streak got broken last year, but for 9 straight seasons from 2009 to 2017, the team who won its pennant first, and thus had longer to sit around and wait before playing again, lost the World Series. (Another, still-true, oddity that makes that possible is that the two pennants have not been claimed on the same day since 1992.) Since the three-round format debuted in 1995, teams with 6 or more days off are 3-3 at winning the fall classic, although two of the wins were the first two years of the format before MLB had all the scheduling down. It then happened each year from 2006 to 2009, with three of those four teams losing. But an 86-year curse worked for the Red Sox (from Bos-ton, by the way) not so long ago. And the last time a World Series came to Washington was 1933... 86 years ago. See ya Tuesday.