The New York Times - 08.10.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSTUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019 0 N + B9

BASEBALL DIVISION SERIES

Yankees, who are ahead in that se-

ries, are most likely pulling for the

Astros to lose — or at least be

drawn into a fight that could tax

their pitching staff. Houston won

107 games in the regular season,

the most in Major League Base-

ball, and holds home-field advan-

tage throughout the postseason.

Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said

the decision to go with Verlander

was not complicated. Verlander

went 21-6 in the regular season

with a 2.58 earned run average,

and Tuesday will be his 27th post-

season start. He is 8-0 in A.L.D.S.

games.

“He’s one of the best pitchers in

the world,” Hinch said. “It’s pretty

simple.”

The Rays were the beneficiaries

of a solid start by the former Astro

Charlie Morton, who gave up a

solo home run to Jose Altuve in

the first inning, but nothing after,

finishing with three hits allowed

over five innings. He took the

mound a little after 1 p.m. in an at-

mosphere that was jarringly dif-

ferent from virtually every Rays

home game during the regular

season.

Tampa Bay had the second-low-

est average attendance in the ma-

jors this year, with 14,734 fans per

game, despite fielding an enter-

taining team that won 93 games.

The Rays’ attendance has de-

clined every year since 2012 as lo-

cal interest in the team — Monday

aside — seems to wane.

Even on Sept. 23, with the Rays

holding a half-game lead over the

Cleveland Indians in the A.L. wild-

card race, only 8,779 fans showed

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. —
Baseball is not dead in the Tampa
Bay area, not just yet.
The Tampa Bay Rays, whose
consistently poor home attend-
ance has cast
doubt on
their long-
term future in
this area,
staved off
postseason
elimination with an emphatic win
over the Houston Astros in Game
3 of their American League divi-
sion series on Monday in front of a
lively crowd at Tropicana Field.
The Rays pounded the Astros,
10-3, in front of 32,251 fans — the
stadium’s largest crowd of 2019
and more than three and a half
times the number of fans who
showed up for a game two weeks
ago during a pennant race. Most
of them roared their support and
waved yellow towels as a parade
of Rays rounded the bases in a
rout that kept their season alive.
The fans even sat in the upper
deck, where the seats are usually
covered by tarps during the regu-
lar season. But for the first time
since 2016, some of the covers
were rolled back, and the crowd
poured into the upper deck and
packed the lower levels to give
Tropicana Field a genuine playoff
feel.
The Trop was actually alive.
“About time,” said Tommy
Pham, Tampa Bay’s designated
hitter.
In their first home postseason
game in six years, the Rays tied a
club playoff record with four home
runs. Kevin Kiermaier had the
biggest, a three-run shot off Hous-
ton starter Zack Greinke, who fell
to 0-5 with a 5.50 earned run aver-
age in seven career games at
Tropicana Field.
Ji-Man Choi, Brandon Lowe
and Willy Adames also hit home
runs for the Rays, who expect the
Trop to be rocking again for Game
4 on Tuesday. Houston will hand
the ball to Justin Verlander, who
dominated the Rays in Game 1,
with the hope that their ace can
close out the series on three days’
rest. For the Rays, it will be a
bullpen day, featuring a series of
relievers starting with Diego
Castillo.
The winner of this series will
play the winner of the other divi-
sion series between the Yankees
and the Minnesota Twins. The

up to see the Rays play the defend-

ing champion Boston Red Sox.

Tampa Bay’s previous high for

home attendance this year came

on opening day on March 28, when

25,052 showed up. But the Rays

manage to play well even when

the building is more than two-

thirds empty, having gone 16-2 in

their last 18 games at home.

The Rays’ lack of support at the

turnstiles, combined with the in-

ability to find a consensus on loca-

tion and funding for a new sta-

dium, has led ownership to ex-

plore alternatives. One possibility

would see the Rays play part of

their season in Tampa Bay and

part of it in Montreal.

But at least on Monday, that

possibility seemed distant, and

the playoff atmosphere gave some

hope to the Rays.

“If we have that every day, it

would be so much different,”

Adames said. “It’s something that

we were expecting to have today,

and I’m really happy that we had

it. Hopefully, we will keep having

it over the next days and seasons.”

It was especially meaningful for

Kiermaier, who has been with the

Rays since their last postseason

appearance in 2013. But during

that division series, a loss to the

Red Sox, Kiermaier was not on the

roster and watched the games

from the clubhouse. He called

Monday’s showing by the fans the

best he had ever seen.

“Seeing everyone with the tow-

els and every fan through every

pitch, it was insane,” he said.

“That’s something that I’ve never

experienced before.”

Rays (and Bleak Park) Come Alive

By DAVID WALDSTEIN

RAYS 10

ASTROS 3

Houston leads
series, 2-1

Kevin Kiermaier, right, hit a three-run homer off Houston’s Zack

Greinke, who fell to 0-5 with a 5.50 E.R.A. at Tropicana Field.

CHRIS O’MEARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ST. LOUIS — With all of their

late drama over five days — a

ninth-inning rally on Sunday, nine

runs in the final two innings a cou-

ple of nights before that — per-

haps it was

predictable

that the At-

lanta Braves

and the St.

Louis Cardi-

nals would

push one of their postseason duels

beyond the constraints of nine in-

nings.

It happened just in time on

Monday: With the Cardinals on

the brink of elimination, the teams

went to the 10th inning and saw

their National League division se-

ries extended when a sacrifice fly

by Yadier Molina gave St. Louis a

5-4 win and forced a Game 5.

The winner in Atlanta on

Wednesday will advance to the

N.L. Championship Series, sched-

uled to start on Friday.

But the Braves must first

reckon with a game they will re-

member for missed opportunities

and debatable decisions, and both

teams must recover from an after-

noon of wildly swinging emotions.

Dallas Keuchel, the 2015 Cy

Young Award winner who made

his name as a playoff stalwart for

the Houston Astros before joining

the Braves in June, got two quick

outs to start the game, which he

entered on just three days’ rest.

Then Paul Goldschmidt, the St.

Louis first baseman whose bat

had already tormented Atlanta

this series, stepped in. He took

four pitches, and then the fifth, a

changeup, became a souvenir for

someone sitting just above the

left-field fence.

Batting right after Gold-

schmidt, left fielder Marcell

Ozuna took even less time, driving

Keuchel’s second pitch, a cutter,

even deeper into the stands. In the

fourth inning, Ozuna sized up a

Keuchel slider and hit it out, too,

for another solo homer. Keuchel’s

day was done two batters later, af-

ter 67 pitches.

Dakota Hudson, the St. Louis

rookie starter who was making his

first postseason appearance,

lasted until the fifth inning, when

Atlanta stitched together three

runs from a ground ball, an error

and an Ozzie Albies home run. In-

cluding a sacrifice fly from Albies

in the third, the Braves now had a

4-3 lead.

It proved difficult to preserve,

however, as Goldschmidt, Ozuna

and Molina menaced Atlanta’s

pitchers.

In the eighth inning, Gold-

schmidt delivered his second dou-

ble of the night. With Ozuna, just

the man Atlanta did not want to

see in the batter’s box, approach-

ing the plate, the Braves’ fielders

played deep, the shadows by then

covering almost all of the grass.

Ozuna struck out, but Molina fol-

lowed by lashing a drive into right.

Tied game.

Atlanta had already scuttled op-

portunities to build on its lead,

loading the bases in consecutive

innings without scoring, its run to-

tal stubbornly stuck at four.

Instead, St. Louis concocted a

breakthrough in the 10th inning.

After second baseman Kolten

Wong doubled, the Braves opted

to walk Goldschmidt intentionally.

That left Atlanta’s Julio Teheran

on the mound to face Ozuna, who

tapped the ball into a fielder’s

choice to put runners at the cor-

ners with one out.

Molina, the 37-year-old catcher

who has spent his entire career in

St. Louis, came to the plate and hit

the first pitch he saw just shy of

the warning track. Wong tagged

and scored. Game over, series tied

and on to Atlanta.

“He’s been doing this for a lot of

years,” Ozuna said of Molina, a

member of two World Series-

winning teams in St. Louis whose

stature seemed likely to grow

even more after Monday’s game.

“He knows how you play in the

postseason.”

Cardinals Manager Mike Shildt

said there was no limit to the situ-

ations that Molina was capable of

handling.

“If he needs to just put a ball in

right field, he can do it,” said

Shildt, whose news conference be-

gan with a question about

whether the team should begin

work on a Molina statue. “If he

needs to work on getting the ball

in the air, he can do it.”

What he did on Monday was

buy his team time.

The series opened on Thursday

amid what counted as a raucous

atmosphere for suburban Atlanta,

but the Braves squandered an

early lead as the Cardinals scored

six runs in the final two innings to

take a 1-0 series lead.

The Braves won Game 2 behind

solid pitching, and claimed Sun-

day’s Game 3 with a ninth-inning

rally to give themselves an oppor-

tunity to clinch the series on Mon-

day.

But time and again any poten-

tial celebration for Atlanta, which

has not won a postseason series

since 2001, was postponed.

“We had the deck stacked, I

thought, pretty good in our favor

more than once today, and we just

couldn’t get a hit,” Brian Snitker,

Atlanta’s manager, said.

Now the series will run on, add-

ing more late theatrics: a winner-

take-all Game 5.

Cards Push Seesaw Series to the Limit

CARDINALS 5

BRAVES 4

10 innings

Series tied, 2-2

By ALAN BLINDER

Kolten Wong’s winning run came on Yadier Molina’s sacrifice fly.

Molina “knows how you play in the postseason,” a teammate said.

JEFF CURRY/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERS

JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gleyber Torres’s second-inning home run helped the Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-1, on Monday night to finish a three-game sweep and advance

to the American League Championship Series. The Yankees will face Houston or Tampa Bay. Coverage at nytimes.com/sports.

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