The Tampa Bay Rays rallied to force a deciding game five against the Houston Astros with a thrilling 4-1 victory at Tropicana Field Tuesday night.
Opener Diego Castillo set the tone immediately by striking out the side swinging after yielding a leadoff single to right fielder George Springer.
Then, as they have so many times before this season, the Rays jumped out to a first-inning lead. Tommy Pham opened the scoring with a solo home run to left-center field off of Astros’ ace Justin Verlander.
A pair of two-out hits by catcher Travis d’Arnaud and third baseman Joey Wendle plated two more runs giving the Rays an early 3-0 lead.
Willy Adames pushed the Rays lead to 4-0 with a solo home run to lead off the fourth inning, but it was Ji-Man Choi’s third walk of the game that ended Verlander’s night.
Tampa Bay forced Verlander to throw 31 pitches in the first inning on the way to an 84-pitch, 3.2-inning outing –– his shortest of the season. The Cy Young hopeful lasted at least 6.0 innings in 29 of his 35 starts in 2019.
Meanwhile, it was stellar defense and clutch pitching that kept Houston off the scoreboard until the eighth inning.
Choi began the defensive heroics in the second inning with a brilliant diving grab on a line drive by Josh Reddick that likely would’ve resulted in a double into the right-field corner as well as the Astros first run.
Then, the Astros threatened to get on the scoreboard again when rookie Yordan Alvarez doubled deep into the right-center gap. What happened next was truly a thing of beauty:
Relay this message: You're out#StayHungry pic.twitter.com/CSWCboqnSv
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) October 9, 2019
Houston would open the sixth inning with a single. Once again, threatening to get back into the game. And, once again, the Rays defense was not having it as Choi snagged another line drive also catching Springer off the bag for an unassisted double play.
Houston catcher and former Tampa Bay Ray Robinson Chirinos hit a solo home run with two outs in the eighth inning scoring the Astros’ first run.
Taking no chances, Rays manager Kevin Cash immediately brought in closer Emilio Pagan for the four-out save. Pagan got Springer to fly out sharply to center to end the inning.
Pagan found himself in trouble in the ninth, however. Michael Brantley flew out all the way to the wall. Then, Altuve worked a seven-pitch walk. AL MVP candidate Alex Bregman followed with a single into the left-center gap to end the night for Pagan.
Cash then brought in 2018 Cy Young winner Blake Snell to get the game’s final two outs. Snell responded in heroic fashion striking out Alvarez then getting Yuri Gurriel to groundout to end it.
The deciding game 5 will be played in Houston on Thursday night. The first pitch is scheduled for 7:07 p.m. ET.
Rays Postseason Pitching
In the regular season, Houston led all of baseball in OPS (.898), slugging (.495), and fWAR (40.8) while having both the highest walk rate (10.2 percent) and lowest strikeout rate (18.2 percent). They averaged 5.7 runs per game.
Thus far, Rays’ pitching has held the Astros to 10 runs combined in four games.
