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ALCS Takeaways: Rays are finally closing down Astros to secure their place in the World Series

It took long enough, but the Tampa Bay Rays closed the lid of the Houston Astros in the ALCS with a 4-2 win in Game 7 on Saturday night.

Of course it didn’t have to be like that. The Rays were 3-0 in the series and flirted with a historic breakdown by allowing the Astros to force a seventh game at all. But these shorts are selling a talented Houston club that, trash can or not, is anything but an easy playoff.

The Astros actually outperformed the Rays (59-44) in the series and were only beaten by three cumulative runs in the seven games. They got the tie run on the plate in the ninth inning of Game 7 and were really just a bad throw, booted ball, or wild pitch away from another result in one of their four defeats.

But that’s the crazy thing about playing the Rays – they don’t hit themselves. They pitch phenomenally, they play crisp defense, and they’re managed with a skillful touch. Whichever team you compete in the World Series, there will be a tough test.

The Rays and the rest of us will learn this opponent on Sunday evening. At the moment, here are your insights from a tightly played game that served as an exciting end to an exciting series.

Randy stays hot

Randy Arozarena was the breakout star of the postseason in Game 7. Then, a dozen pitches in the bottom half of the first inning, he went and did this:

That was Arozarena’s seventh homer in these playoffs, who set an MLB record for most by a rookie. And only three players – Barry Bonds, Carlos Beltran and Nelson Cruz – have ever scored eight in a single postseason.

It has given the Cuban outfielder 21 goals since the start of the playoffs, putting him down from a rookie to Derek Jeter in a single postseason. At this rate, it will be shocking if that record doesn’t fall sometime early in the World Series. Just one more night in October for the ALCS MVP.

Big game Charlie

When the Astros won the 2017 World Series with a 5-1 win in Game 7 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lance McCullers Jr. threw the first 2.1 innings of the game while Charlie Morton threw the last four. Three years later, they were both back on the hill in the seventh game of a postseason series – except this time they started for opposite teams.

Morton left the Astros as a free agent after the 2018 season and signed a two-year $ 30 million deal with the Rays, which in hindsight looks like an absolute bargain. Morton has made 42 starts since then, scoring 3.33 ERA and 2.92 FIP with sparkling peripherals at 10.9 K / 9, 2.6 BB / 9 and 0.7 HR / 9.

And he was even better in the postseason, as he allowed only two earned runs over 20 innings between four playoff starts in the last two seasons. Why should Game 7 be different on Saturday?

Morton was on an absolute mission, allowing only one single from Michael Brantley over his first five innings, finishing in sixth place on just 49 pitches. By that inning, he had no three-ball count after withdrawing 13 of the first 17 hits on three or fewer fields.

He did it with a steady stream of curveballs, sinks, tailors, and four-seamers who constantly mixed and matched while he lived on the plate. Morton didn’t get much swing-and-miss, but he didn’t need it as the Astros either stared in amazement at perfectly localized punches on the black, or brought soft contact into play to soak up Tampa’s elite defenses.

But the rays are still the rays. After two runners were on and two off in the sixth inning and Morton hadn’t let a ball out of the infield in the frame, manager Kevin Cash came to get him on just 66 pitches. Morton could have had what it takes to make it through nine. But it was game 7. And the rays had a plan.

Much from Lance

After the Astros thinly stretched his bullpen to reach that position, it took a long outing from McCullers, who completed seven innings during his start in Game 2 early in the series.

But the rays knew that too. And their approach to early innings couldn’t have been better as they stubbornly counted low and refused to knock curveballs off the plate while ramping up McCullers’ pitch count. The rays forced him to throw 30 pitches in the first inning and 20 more in the second. It is difficult to get deep into a ball game if your pitch number exceeds 60 in the third game.

McCullers nonetheless proved difficult to align and locate curveballs, changes and sinkers for so-called strikes, while getting a swing and miss under the zone. But when he made mistakes, the rays capitalized. In the first there was Arozarena’s bomb. And then there was this hanging curveball for Mike Zunino in the second:

You can see it all in McCuller’s body language when the ball comes off Zunino’s bat. It was an absolute bomb that hit 430 feet above the left field wall. That no one was on the base at the time is the only consolation McCullers could draw from it.

It had to be a frustrating outing through and through as McCuller’s showed nasty stuff but paid the price for a few missed places and never settled in a groove. Ultimately, his inefficiency led to an early catch when Dusty Baker knocked him out at four in the fourth inning, just as he was about to finish his second trip through the Rays line-up. McCullers made his best argument in favor of his stay, but the veteran Astros manager didn’t hear it.

A bullpen advantage

It was the bullpens until the sixth inning. And that is exactly what the rays wanted. The Astros had to rely on leverage for the last three games as they fought with all their might to stay alive on the series. Ryan Pressly had played in three consecutive games; Andre Scrubb and Blake Taylor had fought in two rows; and Chris Javier had been on long outings in two of the previous three.

The Rays had Nick Anderson, Pete Fairbanks and Ryan Thompson all rested and ready to go, not to mention Diego Castillo, who was available after throwing just 14 spots in Game 6. Once the starters were ready, it was time to blast advantage.

And that immediately bore fruit when the Rays ran a run on the sixth ahead of Jose Urquidy to climb by four. Meanwhile, Anderson had four outs behind Morton to bring the Rays shutout to eighth place. But then it got a bit tricky.

Anderson put on a couple of runners with two failures and handed things over to Fairbanks, who couldn’t find the zone. He went to four fields with Michael Brantley to load the bases. The next field of play he threw – one of those 91-mile sliders that somehow goes normal in today’s game – landed on the right field in front of Carlos Correa’s bat and overshot a pair.

But the beauty of being Pete Fairbanks is that you can throw a 100 mph baseman he did on three of four fields with Alex Bregman to beat Astros’ third baseman and finish the inning .

For the ninth time, Fairbanks knocked out a batsman, gave up a single, knocked out another, and finished it off with a fly ball to the right. Job done. Series finished. The rays had a plan and, as always, it worked.

bits and pieces

• This was just a miserable postseason for Yuli Gurriel, who went 5v44, including 0v13 with runners in goal position. In his penultimate ALCS record appearance, Gurriel played this absolute cookie twice:

• The Rays defended masterfully throughout the series, combining perfect positioning with instinct and athleticism to steal hit after hit from the Astros. This ridiculous piece by Willy Adames will get lost in the shuffle but deserves credit:

• Jose Altuves 2020 was easily the worst offensive season of his career. But there’s no arguing with what he did in the playoffs when he went 18v48 with five homers and hits in 10 of Houston’s 13 games. He is now a .303 / .376 / .566 career hitter in 63 postseason games.

• Ray’s starter Tyler Glasnow tossed the bullpen mound during the eighth and ninth innings and stood ready to come into play if things went sideways. They didn’t, which means he should be in line to start the first World Series game against the Atlanta Braves or the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday.

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