By the time, per tradition, they sang “Sweet Caroline” in the middle of the eighth inning Sunday night at Fenway Park, the giddy, bundled-up crowd may not have actually believed its good fortune. The Boston Red Sox were winning a playoff game started by David Price, against the undefeated-in-October Houston Astros. That, indeed, was Boston’s own beleaguered bullpen procuring those last precious outs, mostly without incident.
Survival was not an instinct the Red Sox were forced to develop during a triumphant, 108-win regular season, but they absolutely showed it in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, when a single misstep across the middle part of the game would have been costly and another loss near-fatal.
As a result of the 7-5 Red Sox victory Sunday night, the ALCS is heading to Texas knotted at a game apiece, with Game 3 on Tuesday at Houston’s Minute Maid Park. To make it so, some things had to happen that hadn’t happened in a long, long time.
For starters, the Astros had to lose a postseason game for the first time this fall, and lose a game at Fenway Park for just the fourth time in 11 games dating to the start of 2017.
Price had to — well, not exactly save Boston’s hopes, but not torpedo them either. His middling, 42/3-inning stint, which started poorly and ended tenuously, didn’t gain him the first win in a postseason start in his career, but it put the Red Sox in position to win, which is more than he can usually say. He departed in the fifth with a one-run lead.
And the Red Sox bullpen, long considered the weakest segment of the Boston roster, had to cover the 13 outs that Price left behind, an effort that was aided by the insurance runs the Red Sox scored in the seventh and eighth against the Astros’ previously untouchable bullpen (albeit the lesser portion of it).
The final three of those outs were delivered by Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel, last seen coming within a breath of wind of surrendering a walk-off grand slam at Yankee Stadium in the clinching Game 4 of the division series five nights earlier. This time, the red-bearded right-hander merely put a fright into the Red Sox, giving up a run and once again, this time facing Astros third baseman Alex Bregman, sending his left fielder to the wall to catch the final out.
Even in victory, the Red Sox were weakened, though the degree to which is still unknown. They needed Rick Porcello, their theoretical Game 3 starter, for an inning of relief Sunday night — he delivered a 1-2-3 eighth and punctuated an inning-ending strikeout with a couple of animated fist-pumps — which likely pushes him back to Game 4 and puts Nathan Eovaldi in line to start Game 3.
In addition, the team announced that Game 1 starter Chris Sale, who was also lined up to start a potential Game 5, was hospitalized overnight with a stomach illness.
It was a strange game that featured nine runs and all sorts of drives launched off, over and beyond the classic green fences at Fenway in the first three innings, but not so much as another hit on either side until the bottom of the eighth.
A head-to-head matchup of Price and Astros right-hander Gerrit Cole, both former No. 1 overall picks in the draft, ended with no clear winner. Both pitchers squandered leads. Both pitched in almost constant danger early on. Both failed to minimize it, Price allowing a two-run double to George Springer in the second and a two-run homer to Marwin Gonzalez in the third, and Cole giving up a three-run double to left by Jackie Bradley Jr. in the third.
That Price managed to pitch into the fifth and hand over a lead, however slim, to his bullpen represented some sort of breakthrough for the star-crossed lefty. Over the course of this postseason, his October failures have shifted from a narrative that was media-driven to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Price’s own, acute self-awareness of those failures seemed to make it so that they kept happening.
The Fenway crowd was in Price’s corner all the way, or at least pretended to be. There were no boos, only scattered murmurs, when he issued one-out walks to Altuve and Bregman in the first — the 11th and 12th walks issued by the Red Sox in the first 10 innings of the series — and roaring applause when he subsequently struck out Yuli Gurriel and Tyler White on his next six pitches.
There were more murmurs and more unease when Houston’s Marwin Gonzalez, with a runner on in the third, launched a towering home run off an advertising sign above the Green Monster seats in left, a two-run shot that made it 4-2 Astros. But there was another loud roar when he retired the side in order in the fourth.
Price was within an out of putting himself in position for his first postseason win as a starter, in his 11th try, but with two outs in the fifth and the Red Sox bullpen heating up, he walked Tyler White on four pitches, the second walk Price had issued in the inning – and the 14th issued by the Red Sox in the first 14 innings of this series. That brought Manager Alex Cora out of the dugout with the hook. As Price handed over the ball and walked off the mound, the Fenway crowd mostly cheered in approval, many of the fans on their feet.
Cole, meanwhile, righted himself after his early troubles and retired 10 straight Boston batters to end his night, but he still departed after the sixth inning trailing by a run.
At that point, the Astros could have been forgiven for assuming they would still come back and win, but by the time 37,960 fans belted, “Where it began I can’t begin to knowing,” the deficit had grown, and by the time Kimbrel finished them off, and “Dirty Water” blasted from the stadium sound system, the Astros were left with a strange and unfamiliar feeling: a loss.
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