NEW YORK (AP) James Paxton was filled with nerves, and so were New York Yankees fans, worried the season was slipping away.
Tension only surged when the top of the first featured a little grounder that got away, a passed ball and a run-scoring wild pitch.
No worries.
Boom! DJ LeMahieu drove Justin Verlander‘s second pitch over the wall to tie the score.
Clang! Aaron Hicks hit a three-run homer off the foul pole later in the inning.
Just like that, the Bronx Bombers were back – in the game, and in this matchup of powerhouses.
A day after a brutal loss, and with little margin for more errors, the Yankees played like a 103-win team. Paxton chilled Houston’s bats and the bullpen followed with shutdown relief to beat the Astros 4-1 Friday night, cutting New York’s AL Championship Series deficit to 3-2.
“I wasn’t ready to go home yet,” Paxton said, “so I wanted to go out and give my team everything I had and just battle away.”
Now the teams rush to Texas, where the series resumes Saturday night without a day off. With pitching plans disrupted by a rainout earlier this week, both teams plan all-bullpen efforts in Game 6. But Gerrit Cole, 19-0 since May, looms as the Astros’ starter on Sunday if New York manages to extend the matchup to the seven-game limit.
“We’ve just got to go back home and finish the job,” Houston’s Carlos Correa said.
Paxton, a fishing aficionado born outside Vancouver in Ladner, British Columbia, wore three-quarter-length sleeves on a night with a game-time temperature of 52 degrees. That was the coldest for a Verlander start since last year’s ALCS opener at Boston, according to STATS – he had on long sleeves and half of Houston’s fielders had hoodies or balaclavas.
After lasting just 2 1/3 innings in Game 2, Paxton struck out nine in six innings, allowing four hits and four walks. Punching his pitching hand into his glove after big strikeouts, he saved his biggest emotion for his 112th and final pitch. Manager Aaron Boone had just made a trip to the mound, unsure whether he would make a change.
“He just said, `Are you ready? Do you have anything more left in the tank?'” Paxton said.
“And I said, `Yeah, let’s go. I want this.'”
Robinson Chirinos hit a first-pitch fastball that Brett Gardner caught in front of the left-field scoreboard with a runner on.
“When it first left the bat: `Oh, no!'” Boone remembered thinking to himself.
After Tommy Kahnle allowed George Springer‘s one-out single in seventh and walked Jose Altuve, Zack Britton retired Michael Brantley and Alex Bregman. Britton struck out two in a perfect eighth, and Aroldis Chapman finished with a 1-2-3 ninth for the save.
Paxton outpitched Verlander, an eight-time All-Star and former AL MVP and Cy Young Award winner, on a night when each team had five hits.
Verlander opened with a JV first inning – not Justin vintage, but junior varsity. He allowed a pair of first-inning homers for the first time in 28 postseason starts and gave up four runs in an inning for the first time since Houston acquired him from Detroit in August 2017.
“Fastball command wasn’t very good, and the slider was just hanging,” Verlander said.
Verlander retired 10 in a row after Hicks’ homer and wound up allowing five hits in seven innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.
“We took advantage of his missed locations when he was a little vulnerable,” LeMahieu said. “And that’s the difference in the game.”
A night after the Yankees made four errors in one of their messier games this season during an 8-3 loss, Paxton fell behind after 14 pitches. Springer reached on an infield hit, took second on Gary Sanchez’s passed ball, advanced on a groundout and scored when Paxton bounced a breaking ball off Sanchez’s glove for a wild pitch.
“A lot of nerves,” Paxton said. “I was just overthrowing a little bit early.”
New York came out swinging against Verlander, who had been 4-0 with a 2.38 ERA against the Yankees in seven postseason starts.
LeMahieu fouled off a pitch, then drove a fastball 355 feet to right-center for New York’s first postseason leadoff homer since Derek Jeter in the 2009 ALCS against the Angels.
“Woke up the building,” Astros manager AJ Hinch said.
Aaron Judge singled and Gleyber Torres doubled. Verlander struck out Giancarlo Stanton, who went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts after missing three games with a strained right quadriceps.
Hicks was sidelined for more than two months by a right elbow injury that made him wonder whether he would need Tommy John surgery, then made a surprise return for the ALCS and re-entered the starting lineup for Game 3.
He fell behind 0-2, took three straight balls and sent a chest-high slider down the right field line. He dropped his bat, turned and watched the ball, took a half-dozen slow steps toward first and started jogging after it clanked off the pole for his first home run since July 24.
“It curved a lot more than I thought it would,” Hicks said.
New York had never hit a pair of first-inning homers in 404 previous postseason games. Verlander could only crouch on the infield grass as Hicks circled the bases.
Hicks ended a stretch of 15 straight hitless at-bats for the Yankees with runners in scoring position. New York has relied on the long ball, scoring 12 of its 17 runs against the Astros on seven homers.
“We just always fight back,” Judge said. “That’s what we talked about in our meeting today. Let’s go back to being ourselves.”
FIRSTS
This was the 1,609th postseason game in major league history, and the first in which both teams scored in the first inning and neither scored the rest of the game.
SABATHIA
CC Sabathia dislocated his left shoulder while pitching in Game 4 and was replaced on the Yankees active roster by RHP Ben Heller. That ended the 19-season career of the 39-year-old left-hander, who is retiring. He was given a big ovation when shown on the video board in the sixth and waved to fans from the dugout.
UP NEXT
Neither team announced a Game 6 starter. Rookie RHP Jose Urquidy is Houston’s most likely option, and New York could go with RHP Chad Green as an opener or start LHP J.A. Happ. New York would start RHP Luis Severino in a Game 7.
Photo credit – Kathy Willens / Associated Press / New York, NY
