HOUSTON — Outpitched by his counterpart of the Texas Rangers, left-hander Jordan Montgomery, Houston Astros right-hander Justin Verlander didn’t appear overly concerned in the aftermath of a 2-0 loss in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series on Sunday.

Participating in their seventh consecutive ALCS, the longest such streak in AL postseason history, the Astros have shown resilience plenty of times previously. Their inability to solve Montgomery made for a micro issue, but it didn’t leave the 2022 World Series champions feeling any sense of hopelessness despite falling into a 1-0 hole in the best-of-seven series.

Houston won’t have to wait long for a chance to even things, as it plays host to the Rangers today in Game 2 of the ALCS.

“We lost Game 1 in the World Series last year,” Verlander said. “We’ve lost Game 1 of some playoff series before. And that’s the great thing about this team.

“Obviously, nobody is sitting in the locker room right now happy. But it’s very matter of fact. We just got punched. How do you answer?”

Left-hander Framber Valdez (0-1, 10.38 ERA in postseason) is the scheduled starter for the Astros in Game 2. He allowed five runs on seven hits and three walks with five strikeouts over 4 1/3 innings in a 6-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins in Game 2 of the AL Division Series.

The loss dropped Valdez, who finished 12-11 with a 3.45 ERA across 31 regular-season starts, to 7-3 with a 3.82 ERA over 14 career postseason appearances (13 starts).

Valdez is 7-5 with a 2.90 ERA over 16 career appearances (13 starts) against the Rangers. In three starts against Texas this season, Valdez finished 1-2 with a 4.32 ERA.

Right-hander Nathan Eovaldi (2-0, 1.32) has the starting assignment for the Rangers on Monday. He has allowed one run in each of his two starts this postseason, with Texas clinching series against the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles with Eovaldi on the bump. Eovaldi has recorded 15 strikeouts against 11 hits and zero walks in 13 2/3 innings this postseason.

Eovaldi is 3-4 with a 4.42 ERA over 10 career regular-season starts against the Astros. He was the pitcher of record in a 14-1 loss to Houston on Sept. 5 after surrendering four runs on five hits — including two home runs — and one walk with one strikeout while recording only four outs.

Eovaldi finished 1-1 with a 4.32 ERA in two starts against the Astros this season, including a 5-2 win at Minute Maid Park after he tossed seven shutout innings while allowing two hits and issuing four walks.

The Rangers showcased a blueprint for how they plan to attack Astros left-handed slugger Yordan Alvarez, who recorded a 1.783 on-base-plus-slugging percentage with four home runs in the ALDS against the Twins.

Montgomery recorded three strikeouts of Alvarez by working inside with fastballs before finishing him off with curveballs. Alvarez produced an .892 OPS against left-handed pitching during the regular season but finished 0-for-4 against Montgomery and southpaw reliever Aroldis Chapman, who got Alvarez to roll a harmless ground ball to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to conclude the eighth.

“Yeah, obviously he’s a really good hitter, so you kind of have to do a little bit of everything to him,” Montgomery said. “But we kind of worked the fastball in and out and threw some curveballs for strikes and expanded and made some big pitches when we needed to.”

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ARLINGTON – (Staff and Wire Service Report) – The Texas Rangers took the hard route after blowing a 2 1/2-game lead in the American League West in the final week of the regular season and landing in the wild-card round. Five consecutive victories later, the Rangers are headed to the AL Championship Series after a solid 7-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday in Texas.

Texas swept the Tampa Bay Rays in two games in an AL wild-card series before outscoring the Orioles 21-11 in three AL Division Series contests. The Rangers are headed to their first ALCS since making back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and ’11.

“We regrouped on that flight,” Texas star Corey Seager said of a trip from Seattle following the end of the regular season to Tampa Bay to start the playoffs. “We wanted to punch our ticket (as AL West champion) and we didn’t. We wanted to finish it off and try to win the division, but it didn’t happen. We moved on really fast, and we knew we had an opportunity in front of us.”

Seager hit one of three Rangers’ homers on Tuesday in the club’s first home game of the postseason. Adolis Garcia smacked a three-run homer, Nathaniel Lowe also went deep and Mitch Garver contributed a two-run double for Texas.

Garver, Garcia and Josh Jung each had two hits for the Rangers.

Nathan Eovaldi (2-0) allowed one run and five hits over seven innings for Texas. He struck out seven and walked none in his second straight stellar effort this postseason.

“It is more so just trusting my pitches,” Eovaldi said. “I have a game plan going in, but it’s going to change at times. I had a really good feel for my splitter.”

Texas will face either the Houston Astros or Minnesota Twins in the ALCS, with Game 1 on Sunday in either Houston or Minneapolis.

The Rangers went just 68-94 last season before manager Bruce Bochy was lured out of a three-year retirement by Chris Young, the Texas general manager who pitched for Bochy in 2006 with the San Diego Padres.

Bochy, 68, won three World Series titles as skipper of the San Francisco Giants and is hopeful of adding another.

“It’s just unreal. This is what I came back for, hoping something like this would happen,” Bochy said. “These guys have been warriors. Road warriors. The kind of baseball they’ve been playing is awesome.”

Gunnar Henderson had three hits and an RBI for the Orioles, who have lost eight straight playoff games dating back to 2014. Baltimore won an AL-best 101 games in the regular season.

It was a bittersweet ending for the Orioles.

“They defied all the odds. Nobody gave us a chance,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said. “These guys played their butts off for six months. We just didn’t play well for these last three, unfortunately. It’s definitely a successful season, and these guys are going to be really good going forward.”

The contest was the first at home for the Rangers since Sept. 24. Texas had played its previous 11 games — seven to end the regular season, four to start the playoffs — on the road.

Seager came up as the second batter in the game against Dean Kremer (0-1) and hammered a 445-foot homer into the seats in right-center. The blast was his first of these playoffs and 14th postseason shot of his career.

Texas loaded the bases with two outs in the second before Garver ripped a double down the third base line to score two. The big hit came two days after Garver hit a grand slam and drove in five runs in Game 2.

Garcia followed with a three-run blast to left-center to make it 6-0 and end Kremer’s night. The 418-foot shot was Garcia’s second career postseason homer, both coming this year.

Baltimore got on the board in the fifth inning when Henderson’s two-out single scored Jordan Westburg from second.

Lowe led off the sixth with a 437-foot homer off Kyle Gibson. It was the first postseason blast of Lowe’s career.

Kremer allowed six runs and seven hits in 1 2/3 innings. He walked one and struck out none.

–Field Level Media

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By TERRY LYONS

BOSTON – If it’s possible to make a statement in an October Major League Baseball game, the Boston Red Sox did so Monday night with a 12-3 demolition of the Houston Astros. The Boston victory in Game 3 of their American League Championship Series (ALCS), complete with three towering home runs came while while the Red Sox pitching staff limited the potent Houston offense to five scattered hits. The win gave Boston a 2-1 series lead.

In nearly all of professional sports, a combination of losing home field advantage in Game 2 and then getting throttled by nine in Game 3 would be such devastation that the losing team would fold up the tents and make vacation plans for Cancun for October 26-to-November 3.

But, not so for baseball. Not so for the Houston Astros.

The Astros are making their fifth consecutive appearance in the ALCS, splitting the previous four championship series, 2-2, and winning the World Series in 2017. To say they’ve been battle tested is an understatement. In the 2020 ALCS, the ‘Stros dropped the first three games to the Tampa Bay Rays only to become the second team in MLB history to fight back to play a Game 7. The Rays advanced but lost to the LA Dodgers, 4-2, in the 2020 World Series.

In Game 2 of the 2019 World Series against the Washington Nationals, the Astros dropped the first two games of the series at home with Game 2 a 12-3 shellacking (sound familiar?) That statement game by the Washington Nationals resulted in the Nationals returning home and proceeding to drop three straight to the Astros in a World Series where no team won on their home field.

When the Astros won their World Championship in 2017, they endured a devastating 6-2 loss in Game 4, allowing five runs to the LA Dodgers in the top of the 9th inning but bounced back to take an incredible 13-12 extra inning Game 5 win. After Justin Verlander and the Astros lost Game 6 in LA, Houston rebounded to take Game 7 with a 5-1 win. That series victory was tainted when Sports Illustrated revealed a pitch-tipping controversy a month after the series concluded.

Big-time victories don’t seem to carry over in Major League Baseball. when Nick Pivetta and Zack Greinke warm-up for Game 4 tonight, the canvas will be clean and Boston’s 12-3 Monday night win will be a distant memory for an Astros lineup that can crank it just as hard as the Red Sox did in Game 3.

In the pivotal game, Boston lived by the long-ball. In the bottom of the 2nd inning with the score already 2-0 Red Sox, newly acquired 1B Kyle Schwarber stepped-up to the plate with the bases loaded after a costly error by Houston All-Star 2B Jose Altuve. Astros starting pitcher Jose Urquidy misfired three times, twice with his four seam fastball and once with a change-up to take the count to 3-0 versus the dangerous, Fenway-loving bat of Schwarber.

Despite the 3-0 count and pressure mounting on the 26-year old Urquidy, pitching in his second season in the majors, Boston Manager Alex Coro gave his slugger the “green light” and Schwarber delivered with a 430-foot blast of a Grand Slam to right field to make the score 6-0, Boston.

Insurance runs were supplied by Sox 2B Christian Arroyo who hit a 399-foot, two-run homer in the bottom of the 3rd inning to elevate the Sox lead to 9-0 and J.D. Martinez’ 395-foot, two run dinger over Fenway’s Green Monster left field wall to put the Red Sox ahead 11-3 in the 6th. Two innings later, Raphael Devers placed an exclamation point on the Sox statement when he took Ryne Stanek for a 372-foot blast, crushing a 96 mph fastball over the Monster.

Not to be lost in the offensive barrage, Boston starter Eduardo “E-Rod” Rodriguez pitched for six innings, allowing only five hits, three runs while striking out seven. He was backed-up by scoreless innings tossed by each of Hansel Robles, Martin Perez and Hirokazu Sawamura.

“We’re playing good baseball, I think, all around, running the bases well, playing good defense, pitching well,” said Coro after the 12-3, Game 3 win. “Offensively this is the best we’ve been the whole season, and they’re locked in right now. The preparation – it’s a lot better right now. The communication is a lot better. Like I said, now it’s not about 30 homers or 100 RBIs. Now it’s about winning four games, and they’re doing everything possible in that batter’s box to grind at-bats and to put good at-bats, and they’re doing that.”

All that said, the scores will be wiped clean, by hand, on Fenway’s ancient scoreboard when the first pitch of Game 4 is thrown at 8:08pm (ET) tonight.

Houston Manager, the great Dusty Baker said it best, “They count as one (win). We come back and win tomorrow, the season — the series is even. I mean, you don’t like it. I’m not very happy about it, but you got to flush this one because you can’t bring this one or the last one back until tomorrow. And so, like I said, you don’t like it tonight, but the sun is going to come up in the morning.”

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BOSTON –  (Staff and Wire Services Reports and Preview Material – Boston’s DH J.D. Martinez and 3B Rafael Devers uncorked two grand samplings of power Saturday to lead the Red Sox and even their American League Championship Series with the Houston Astros at one game apiece. Tonight, the Red Sox return to Fenway Park with home field advantage and some serious momentum on their side as they host the Astros for a pivotal Game 3 in their best-of-seven showdown.

Martinez and Devers became the first pair of teammates in MLB’s postseason history to hit Grand Slams in the same game, doing so in the first and second innings respectively of Boston’s decisive 9-5 win in Game 2 on Saturday at Houston. Boston cruised to the key win with a fourth-inning solo homer from Enrique “Kike” Hernandez, who continued his big to be the new “Mr. October” with a 2-for-4 performance to make him 16-for-32 (.500) with five home runs and nine RBIs through seven 2021 MLB Postseason games.

A career .242 hitter, Hernandez has an MLB-record 15 hits over his last five playoff games and became the first Red Sox batter to homer five times in five postseason games. He has already matched Todd Walker (2003) and former Sox DH David Ortiz (2004 and 2013) for the club record for home runs in a single postseason.

Already without injured ace Lance McCullers Jr., the Astros’ rotation took another blow in the form of an injury to Game 2 starter Luis Garcia. He exited after serving up the grand slam to Martinez, leaving potential Game 4 starter Jake Odorizzi to pitch in a surprise mop-up role.

“I was caught off guard by it. I think everybody was,” Odorizzi said. “I sucked up four innings. That’s the best way of putting it. Those can be crucial as we move forward in the series.”

Houston right-hander Jose Urquidy is set to make his postseason debut in a critical spot as he starts Game 3. The 26-year-old had been in line to start Game 4 of the team’s AL Division Series against the Chicago White Sox before it was rained out. Urquidy went 8-3 with a 3.62 ERA over 20 starts in the regular season. In his postseason career, he is 1-1 with a 2.81 ERA in eight appearances (four starts).

Boston will counter with left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez (0-1, 5.40 ERA). The 28-year-old went winless in two playoff starts against Tampa Bay in the ALDS and is 0-1 with a 7.02 ERA in 10 career postseason games (three starts).

Rodriguez struggled in two regular-season starts against Houston as he went 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in 9 1/3 innings. Overall, Rodriguez is 1-3 with an 8.53 ERA in six career starts against the Astros.

The Urquidy-Rodriguez duel has led to a relatively high (for postseason) Over/Under of 9.0 runs at DraftKings. Then, there’s the Fenway Park factor, as well.  Game 3 will mark the first of three ALCS games to be played at The Fens, a band-box for run scoring, especially if the New England winds kick in.

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