BOSTON — Fenway Park transformed into a morgue Wednesday evening, and these Red Sox must pull off one heck of a feat in order to turn this place back into a ballpark before next spring.
The Astros, presumed deceased just two days earlier here, placed themselves in the American League Championship Series driver’s seat with another big inning and an old-school starting-pitching performance in Game 5.
A five-run sixth propelled the Astros over the Red Sox, 9-1, giving them a 3-2 lead in games and putting them in position to secure their third AL pennant in five years when this battle resumes Friday night at Minute Maid Park. Even better for Dusty Baker’s bunch, who hadn’t seen their starting pitcher register as many as nine outs, Framber Valdez threw an astonishing eight innings of one-run, three-hit ball — the longest start of this entire postseason — providing a plethora of rest for the relievers in preparation for Game 6.
“It’s something that I thought immediately as soon as they took me out of the first game (with two outs in the third),” Valdez explained through an interpreter: “ ‘Whatever happens, I’m throwing at least seven innings in my next outing.’ ”
“He really put the team on his shoulders tonight,” Yordan Alvarez said through an interpreter of Valdez. Alvarez took on a shoulder-full himself, providing a homer, double and single and three RBIs against Red Sox veteran southpaw Chris Sale, who pitched his best game of 2021 despite taking a beating from the lefty-swinging Alvarez.
“Obviously I didn’t get it done,” Sale said, “but I left my nuts out there on that mound tonight, that’s for damn sure.”
What a twist of fate in less than 24 hours, for when the Red Sox outscored the Astros by a collective 21-8 in Games 2 and 3, decimating the Houston pitching staff, Alex Cora’s bunch appeared set to become one of the least likely AL pennant-winners in a long time. However, that seeming inevitability blew up in Tuesday night’s Game 4 when the ’Stros broke open a 2-2 game with a two-out, seven-run explosion in the top of the ninth.
If that didn’t carry over immediately into Game 5, it did so eventually. Valdez retired the first 12 Boston batters he faced, Alvarez giving him a one-run edge with his second-inning homer over the Green Monster, and when Rafael Devers singled and J.D. Martinez got hit by a pitch, Baker took the rare step of paying a mound visit.
“The first thing I did was look back to the bullpen and see if anybody was out there,” Valdez said, explaining that Astros pitching coach Brent Strom usually goes out in such instances. “He told me, ‘Breathe. You can’t let a [hit batter] and a hit take you out of your confidence.’ ”
“It was kind of like you call a 20-second timeout in basketball and try to take the air out of the game,” Baker said. “That was a 20-second timeout that probably took 15 seconds.”
Valdez responded by retiring the slumping Hunter Renfroe on a 6-4-3 double play and Alex Verdugo on a groundout to Yuli Gurriel at first base. And coincidentally or not, the Astros followed by blowing the game open against Sale and reliever Ryan Brasier. Alvarez’s two-run double serving as the big bop.
