HOUSTON — With just two weeks to go before the trade deadline, the best record in baseball and a huge lead in the division, the Yankees got another reminder that the Astros are going to be a huge obstacle to their World Series hopes. Lefty pinch hitter JJ Matijevic singled in a run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning as Houston beat the Yankees 3-2 at Minute Maid Park.
In the first game of a split doubleheader Thursday, the Astros became the second team in the American League to reach 60 wins and are now just four wins behind the Bombers’ league-leading total.
“That’s huge, huge,” Giancarlo Stanton said. “The home-field advantage is definitely important. So we gotta make sure we get it.”
That comes with having the best record in the American League. The Yankees (64-29) have lost three of their last five, but they still have the best record in baseball.
The loss cost them the season series to the Astros, who held a 3-2 lead heading into this doubleheader, which was scheduled to make up for a series lost by the late start following the owners’ lockout. If the season ended right now, the Bombers would hold the top seed in the AL and would have that home-field advantage. If the Astros were to catch up, however, the first tiebreaker for identical records would be the season-series winner.
That may factor huge in the Yankees playoff hopes.
The Astros have been the Yankees playoff Kryptonite, with the Bombers losing the AL Championship Series to them in both 2017 and 2019 and the Wild Card Game in 2015.
“We’ll definitely have to get through them, as well as other great teams to get to where we want to,” Stanton said. “Like I said, every game is important. We need (the nightcap) and then we’ll roll out of here and then we won’t worry about it until we need to.”
In what was reminiscent of many battles between these teams, the Astros crushed the Yankees’ late rally.
Alex Bregman led off with a first-pitch single and Aledmy Diaz doubled off Michael King to put runners in scoring position with no outs in the bottom of the inning. King struck out Yuli Gurriel, before the Yankees intentionally walked Yordan Alvarez to load the bases. King got another out before giving up the game-winning single.
The Bombers needed a ninth-inning rally just to get to that point.
Aaron Hicks lined a one-out single off Hector Neris in the top of the ninth to get things started. Giancarlo Stanton, fresh off winning the All-Star Game MVP, grounded out, but Isiah Kiner-Falefa, pinch hitting for Marwin Gonzalez, got a sharp ground ball through the hole at shortstop to tie the game. After Joey Gallo worked a two-out, five-pitch walk, Neris got a groundout from DJ LeMahieu to end the inning.
Jordan Montgomery held the Astros to two runs on seven hits. He walked one and struck out eight. It was his 17th start allowing three earned runs or less, tied for the most this season.
He gave up an RBI-single to Alex Bregman in the first and a run-scoring double in the second to catcher Korey Lee.
“They’re really talented throughout their lineup, which is full of good hitters,” Montgomery said. “Just a lot of guys that compete, they play the game hard so we just gotta play good baseball to beat them.”
LeMahieu lined his ninth home run of the season off Cristian Javier in the fifth inning. That snapped 11 innings that the Bombers had been held scoreless by the Astros’ right hander. It was one of just two hits the Yankees got off Javier in five innings of work.
“I thought we had actually good at bats against Javier today too,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. ” We had a chance to punch through with good at-bats by (Matt) Carpenter and Gleyber (Torres) there. You know where they hit the ball hard but couldn’t couldn’t get through there. Their bullpen was pretty tough against us today too.”
Boone was adamant before the games on Thursday that this was not a preview for the postseason.
“I know that’s always going to be an interesting question. No matter what happens today, it will be a story one way or the other. If we ended up facing them in October, I really don’t think us winning two games today or not is going to have much bearing,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “If it comes down to that it will be two great teams going at it and you got to win when it counts, so I don’t put a lot into it. We know we’re up against a great team and you want to perform your best against the best. But I’m sure it’ll create some fun storylines one way or the other.”
()
from Signage https://ift.tt/BWYaPnI
via Irvine Sign Company
