ARLINGTON, Texas – Not to leave you guessing, let’s start with what everyone wanted to know after the Astros beat the Rangers 5-4 to take a three-games-to-two lead in the ALCS: Was it? intentionally?
“Everyone on his side will say that wasn’t the case,” Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien said. “Everyone on this site will say it was.”
That’s the dilemma of questioning people who have not just some skin but their whole selves in the game, on a divisive call made while elated. But let’s back up.
There wasn’t a single lead change in the first four games of the ALCS. The team that scored first won, and the team that scored first was never the home team. The players and plays were good, but the baseball was a bit boring, to be honest.
Not so in Game 5. With two ties in the series, the Rangers and Astros met in a matchup that made the Lone Star State showdown worthy of sparking a new rivalry.
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The Astros took an early lead on a solo shot from Alex Bregman. Several precedents worked in their favor – the Astros are inevitable in October, they’ve beaten the Rangers all season in Arlington, which is exactly how this series has gone so far. But Texas tied the game (Nathaniel Lowe home run) and then fell behind again.
Semien led off in the bottom of the sixth with a harmless pop-up – one of five outs on the night that lowered his postseason average to .159. His acquisition, along with that of Corey Seager, before the 2022 season ushered in a new era in Arlington. He may not be the clear face of the club, but he is definitely its voice. Three days ago you could have said that his problems wouldn’t have held the team back this month. But with the Rangers’ season just around the corner, they seem to be a lot more noticeable.
But then Seager doubled, Evan “Little Savior” Carter singled, and with two hits, Adolis García stormed to the plate and promptly hit the biggest home run of his career off future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander. For the first time in the entire series, the home team won. While the sellout crowd responded accordingly, García calmly walked to the halfway point of the first base line. Just before he trotted out, he cheered on his teammates in the dugout and gave them a whack with the bat.
“If you hit a ball like that, you’re going to celebrate,” García later explained, an anodic analysis if it weren’t for what happened in between.
García gave Texas a two-run lead after the sixth. If it works, they would head to Houston one win shy of their first World Series appearance since 2011 and a shot at their first-ever championship.
But remember all the consternation over the Rangers bullpen? Well, Bruce Bochy wasn’t about to let the ulcer-inducing Aroldis Chapman finish him off, and after the unpredictable flamethrower gave up a two-out double in the eighth, Bochy called for his finish. José Leclerc had already gotten four outs in the Rangers’ last game win. The day off and the two defeats since meant he was well rested. He got pinch-hitter Michael Brantley to pop up.
On to the ninth. Granted, nothing is certain against the Astros, whose fearsome lineup is fully capable of scoring a few runs in an inning, but that would be twice as many as Leclerec had given up so far all postseason.
The drama had just begun.
Two innings after his electric home run, García came to the plate with a runner on first. The Astros’ goal was to stay within two. Crucially, this goal is neither entirely compatible nor entirely inconsistent with García ending up at first base. Keep that in mind.
The first throw García saw from Astros reliever Bryan Abreu was 99 mph and hit him squarely in the upper arm. In the time it took him to back away, García concluded that he had been intentionally thrown to the ground and immediately got into the face of Astros catcher Martín Maldonado.
Both benches cleared, the bullpens sprinted in, and García had to be restrained not only by his teammates, but also by Astros slugger and compatriot Yordan Álvarez.
“I said, ‘My bad, it wasn’t intentional,'” Abreu later told reporters. “He said ‘Bulls***’.”
So was it intentional?
The referees thought it was.
“We had a six-person meeting and came to the conclusion that the pitch that Abreu threw was intentionally aimed at García,” said crew chief James Hoye. “We know it’s the playoffs. We don’t want to make a mistake in such a situation. So we’re going to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that we all feel the same way. And basically we all felt like that pitch was intentional.”
For this they ejected Abreu. Because they escalated the situation by confronting Maldonado, García was also sent off.
“Obviously it was completely unintentional, one of those balls just slipped out of his hand,” said Astros reliever Ryan Pressley, who replaced Abreu.
“I know he said it slipped, but if you look at it again, it looks like it slipped right on Adolis,” Rangers third baseman Josh Jung said.
The Rangers assumed García was thrown to the ground in retaliation for enjoying his home run earlier in the game. There’s more history than that — a July altercation in which Semien was hit early in a game and briefly clashed with Maldonado after scoring on a García grand slam — but the gist was: The Astros liked it not to be put on display.
“I think the optics of the situation are really bad,” Lowe said. “It’s the playoffs. You can get excited. He was excited. He celebrated because it was a big breakthrough for us. Having to carry 98 [mph] On the arm after something like that, it’s pretty disappointing.”
Jung said that even before the fateful hit in the eighth, he feared the Astros might try to punish García.
“Given the situation and the tense rivalry, we’ve been there before on some things – in the back of my mind, yes, it was there,” he said, “but I was hoping it didn’t happen.”
Abreu claimed that he didn’t care about ostentatious celebrations, and even if he did, some things were more important than just beef – things like winning.
“If we’re trying to win a game, we’re not going to add runs in the ninth inning of the playoffs,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said after the game. He tried the same argument repeatedly with the referees at the moment, to no avail – and it ultimately cost him his place in the dugout.
“Dusty threw his hat,” Hoye explained. “We ejected Dusty from the game because he contested the ejection.”
“I haven’t been this angry in a long time,” Baker said. “And I don’t usually get upset about nothing.”
So was it intentional?
“Who knows?” Bochy pondered. “The guy hits a three-run home run. Next time it will be smoked there. It does not matter. I’d be upset too if it were me [Adolis]. But as I said, it just took too long until everything was back in order. That frustrated me.”
“I’m just glad we won the game and things went right for us,” Baker said.
Oh yes, the game. The one who had been interrupted by the excitement and the punishing consequences. While the Astros and Rangers argued, Leclerc was in the training room waiting to return to the mound. And wait… and wait. Nearly 20 minutes passed between his out at the start of the eighth and his victory over the mound in the ninth. Enough to give his pitching coach a break.
“Mike Maddux asked me when I was in the dugout if I was ready to go out there, if I needed to warm up a little bit,” Leclerc said through interpreter Will Nadal. “I said no, I could go.”
Then a single and a walk brought in Jose Altuve, who was playing in his 101st playoff game to create a unique moment. His three-run home run gave the Astros a 5-4 lead. There would be no further leadership changes that evening.
Ultimately, it was the final home run that counted, not the hit-by-pitch. Whether there was a causal connection between the two – Leclerc went cold, the Astros were fired up – cannot be proven, nor can any intention. Both teams will tell a story about what happened in Game 5 of the ALCS. Perhaps the Astros see themselves as unfairly maligned (again?) and able to overcome anything through their machine-like propensity to overwhelm everyone in October.
As for the Rangers, they need to find a version that portrays this moment — traveling to Houston on the ropes after losing three straight at home, the last in heartbreaking fashion — as the nadir and the start of something better sees .