Highlights from Yankees vs. Astros ALCS Game 2

Dallas Keuchel and the Houston Astros kept the New York Yankees’ bats silent in Game 1 of the 2017 ALCS, and now Justin Verlander will try to put the Astros up 2-0. He’ll be facing Luis Severino, who was the Yankees’ best pitcher for most of the season.

Aaron Judge will be there. Jose Altuve will be there. It’s not like Gary Sanchez, George Springer, Carlos Correa, or Didi Gregorius are slouches, either. I’m pretty sure both bullpens combined for 3,000 strikeouts this season. I could definitely go for a best-of-17 series, if we’re being completely honest.

As usual, if you want to follow along from the beginning, scroll down and read up.

Yeah, that. So come in, make yourself comfortable, and let’s watch Game 2 of the 2017 American League Championship Series together. The Yankees are an excellent team. The Astros are an excellent team. Let’s sit down and watch them pummel each other.

7:10 p.m. ET — aksl;dfja;dknwpiorthpjnfn;adsnf;alks; it’s over

what a damned game. WHAT A DAMNED GAME.

With one out in the ninth inning, Jose Altuve singled off Aroldis Chapman, and it was legitimately hard to hear announcer Joe Buck over the crowd noise. A raucous din, it was. That brought up Carlos Correa, which reminds me of the old saying: “Holy crap, are Altuve and Correa up every inning?”

Correa hit a ball into the gap, but here’s the thing, Aaron Judge cut it off. It shouldn’t have been a double (even though it was), but more importantly, it shouldn’t have scored the runner from first. And if Gary Sanchez catches the ball, it doesn’t.

Considering that Altuve would have been at third with just one out, it wasn’t the best send. It wasn’t the best send at all! But it worked. And this game might have turned on the Yankees sending a runner who shouldn’t have been sent (Brett Gardner) and the Astros doing the same, with just one defense doing their job.

That game was so exciting that I want to give a thank you speech like I’m accepting an award. I’d like to thank ... oh, man, I’d like to thank Jose Altuve for being the best, and for being really, really fast, and I’d like to thank Justin Verlander for pitching one of the most brilliant postseason games I’ve ever watched, and, and, I’d like to thank ... oh, man ...

The Astros head back to Yankee Stadium with a 2-0 lead. The Yankees are used to that feeling at least, and they have even a little more breathing room this time.

Still, the Astros are two wins away from their second pennant ever, and the Yankees will need to win four out of their next five games against a team that is absolutely thunderous right now.

I think the next game should start right now, and I’m annoyed that it doesn’t. What a freaking game.

6:59 p.m. ET — Justin Verlander has already thrown an all-time classic, throwing nine full innings, striking out 13, and allowing just six baserunners. His only flaw was that he allowed two doubles back-to-back. Other than that, this has been incredible.

Quick reminder:

Oh, things changed.

As a writer whose job is often to hunt for narratives like a truffle pig, I was very close to buying into the idea that every subsequent postseason was going to be a bullpen-driven affair, that if a team couldn’t shorten the game to three or four innings, they would never have a chance.

Verlander reminding us that starting pitchers still matter is very, very welcome, then. It’s just so much fun to watch a guy like this dominate three and four times through the order. More starts like this over the remainder of the postseason, please.

6:50 p.m. ET — NOPE. IT’S VERLANDER. HE’S BACK. OF ALL THE DRAMATIC THINGS.

And in the time it took me to type that sentence, he’s already up 0-2 on Aaron Judge. This is already a legendary postseason performance, and it has a great chance of being even legendarier with just another clean inning.

(He got Judge to pop up on a high fastball. I admire the derring-do with that pitch, which could have ended poorly.)

6:40 p.m. ET — Justin Verlander might have finished the game like he started it, by striking out Brett Gardner. If the eighth inning was Verlander’s last, he’ll have left after allowing four hits, one walk, and one run, while striking out 13.

At the same time, how do you take the dude out? It’s 2011 again, except for the part where the Astros didn’t lose 106 games.

6:32 p.m. ET — For all of the slobbering I’ve done over Verlander’s outing in this blog, it’s probably time to remark on the absurd Yankees bullpen. Tommy Kahnle threw two scoreless innings, allowing just one walk, and David Robertson had a mostly quiet seventh inning, allowing just one double.

The Yankees’ blueprint this postseason was to outscore their opponents and let their bullpen of death slowly suffocate them. The bullpen is doing their job, at least. The lineup isn’t, but, well, they’ve had to face Dallas Keuchel and Justin Verlander at their best. That’ll mess a team up, alright.

Verlander is still in the game as the eighth inning begins. His first pitch was a 95-mph high fastball because of course it was.

(The second pitch was a 96-mph high fastball, fyi.)

(The third pitch was a beautiful slider at the very bottom of the zone, and I can’t stop laughing.)

(Okay, but don’t forget about the Yankees’ bullpen doing a good job. I want to be fair.)

6:20 p.m. ET — Verlander is through seven full, and he’s at 97 pitches. I would guess that he’s done without any more context, but his last pitch was a slider in the middle of the plate that Aaron Hicks just missed.

But don’t forget that Ken Giles threw 37 pitches in a five-out save in Game 1. While the Astros’ bullpen is deep, that doesn’t mean it’s invincible. Verlander has looked invincible at times. For the 14,537th consecutive day, I’m very happy not to be a major league manager.

6:11 p.m. ET — Not a whole lot is going on. Justin Verlander is still in the game, starting the seventh inning having thrown just 82 pitches (65 of them for strikes, ha ha), and in the time it’s taken to write this sentence, he’s struck out yet another Yankee. Mercy.

This seems like a good time to point out something that we ignore too easily. According to Brooks Baseball, this is what the strike zone has looked like so far:

Which is to say, Hunter Wendelstedt, take a bow. This has been an incredibly well-called game, and the pace and score reflects as much.

It helps when Verlander is throwing the ball where he wants to.

5:52 p.m. ET — Just kidding, Verlander is dominant again. Sorry, sorry. Sorry for the confusion.

The score is still 1-1, and we’re into the bottom of the seventh inning after only two hours. That’s a pretty brisk clip, and it’s not like, ha ha, we’re going to see 17 different pitching changes over the next two innings to slow everything down. What are the odds of that?

5:29 p.m. ET — Aaaaand that Astros lead lasted six minutes. With two outs in the top of the fifth inning, Aaron Hicks doubled, and that brought up Todd Frazier, who promptly doubled him home. It was a double that allows for a pedantic baseball lesson, too!

If you’ve watched baseball enough, you’ve almost certainly seen a ball bounce over the outfield wall and an announcer refer to it as a “ground-rule double.” It’s not a ground-rule double. That’s an automatic double. There is no specific ground rule that needs to be invoked. When the ball bounces over the fence, it’s a double everywhere.

When the ball does this, though ...

... ah, now that’s a ground-rule double. When the baseball gets stuck in the little padding thing, that’s something that not every ballpark. Just Houston. So you see the difference now, and you can use this as a clever bit of conversation on your next date.

Anyway, forget that dumb note about Verlander and complete games down there. He looked hittable for the first time, and the Yankees and Astros are all tied up, 1-1. This will probably be a bullpen game after all. Tommy Kahnle is already in for the Yankees, and the Astros probably won’t stretch Verlander out too much.

5:23 p.m. ET — Carlos Correa got the Astros on the board with a solo shot to the opposite field. It might have been a home run in just two parks, but the good news is that the Yankees play at the other one, so the Astros don’t even have to feel guilty.

The ball was so close to staying in that there was a replay to see if a young boy interfered with the ball as it barely scraped over the fence. It looked high enough to get over without any help, though, and Aaron Judge wasn’t close enough to a catch to make it an issue.

If Judge were a little taller, he might have caught it. There’s always a what-if, right?

As is, the kid wasn’t kicked out of the game. And there was much rejoicing.

You done good, little Jim Thome. You done good.

5:17 p.m. ET — Justin Verlander has pitched four clean innings on just 52 pitches. If you were wondering, he hasn’t thrown a complete game all season.

That’s a premature note. But if you’re watching him pitch right now, you get it. The biggest question right now is if the Astros can get him a run or two.

4:57 p.m. ET — With one out and this game looking like something of a pitcher’s duel, it looked as if Chase Headley was going to give the Yankees the lead.

Josh Reddick made a brilliant play, though, leaping to snag the ball and saving at least a double.

The very next batter was Brett Gardner, and he actually hit that double, except he decided to try for a triple with two outs for some reason. Reddick didn’t think much of that idea, either, making a perfect throw to his cutoff man, Carlos Correa, who gunned down Gardner.

Gardner made it to third quicker than almost any other Yankees player this season, but after a quick replay, Reddick’s defensive acumen was confirmed. Dude’s good, and he’s the reason we have a scoreless game right now.

4:51 p.m. ET — In the interest of equal coverage, it should be noted that Luis Severino is throwing 98-mph fastballs down the throats of the Astros, and they aren’t exactly slapping the ball around the ol’ yard. He’s walked two and allowed a single in two innings, and the Astros haven’t struck out yet, but he’s throwing well. He ended the second inning by getting Alex Bregman to ground into a double play.

Back to Verlander, who still looks supremely weird in an Astros uniform. I wish we could send a picture of it back through time to 2012 and freak everybody the hell out.

4:43 p.m. ET — If you needed a reminder of just how long Verlander has been around ...

4:32 p.m. ET — Justin Verlander struck out Gary Sanchez on three pitches, and it’s hard for me to describe exactly how beautiful the sequence was. I’ll need a visual aid, courtesy of MLB.com:

It was a gorgeous sequence, and it made Gary Sanchez look like Matt Garza, which is hard to do. Starlin Castro nubbed an infield single immediately after, so there won’t be a no-hitter, but for two innings, the Yankees got a look at Justin Verlander at his best. It was kind of freaky.

4:27 p.m. ET — Luis Severino retired the first two Astros he faced on five pitches, but that’s the thing about this silly lineup: There is no rest, no relaxation. It is a carousel of doom, and Jose Altuve is always up.

Altuve singled on the first pitch, which brought up Carlos Correa, who drew a walk on eight pitches. And even though Marwin Gonzalez grounded weekly back to the mound to end the inning, what had looked like a quick response to Verlander turned into something of a grind. Severino threw 17 pitches after looking like he was going to get out of the inning throwing fewer than 10, and that’s going to ...

Oh, who cares? The Yankees’ plan is to get five innings out of every starter anyway. This affected nothing. But the #content now exists, at least.

4:13 p.m. ET — Justin Verlander starts the game off with an impressive strikeout of Brett Gardner, pumping fastball after fastball in the beginning of the at-bat, then switching up to the curve when Gardner kept making just enough contact to stay alive. The Fox broadcast informed us that makes it 21 straight postseason innings for the Yankees with at least one strikeout.

As I was writing this, Aaron Judge waved through a breaking ball. Oh. So I guess there’s a chance it’s this Verlander. Good luck with that.