Red Sox: 3 bizarre plays from a wild series finale with Astros
The Red Sox won a wild finish to their series with the Astros
For the second time this season, the Boston Red Sox won the finale of their series with the Houston Astros to avoid a sweep. Setting the trend of winning the final game in the series may bode well if these teams meet in the playoffs but dropping five out of seven games to one of the top American League contenders is hardly ideal. The Red Sox must be pleased to know they are done with the Astros for a while.
Perhaps these clubs will face off again in the postseason but if his was their last meeting of 2021, at least it was a memorable one.
Boston came out on top in a 12-8 slugfest that was a back-and-forth affair much closer than the final score indicates. This game had everything – offensive fireworks, clutch hits, stellar defensive plays. It also had its fair share of baffling blunders, bizarre moments and a bit of controversy. A streaker ran out on to the field at one point and that wasn’t even the craziest thing that happened during this game.
Red Sox fans will gratefully take the victory but not without looking back on this game and thinking, “Wait, did that really just happen?”
Red Sox pitchers give up a pair of cheap home runs
A home run counts no matter how far you hit it but as a pitcher, you know when you’ve given up a cheap one. Eduardo Rodriguez could only shake his head when Yuli Gurriel hit an opposite-field pop-up 315 feet down the right field line that clanked off the Pesky Pole.
Fenway is the only major league park where that ball is a home run. The Red Sox should be used to that against this Astros team by now. Gurriel’s homer was the second-shortest in the majors this season. The shortest? That would be the 310-foot shot that Jose Altuve hit into the Crawford Boxes in Houston.
The Astros weren’t done torturing Red Sox pitchers with the long-ish ball. Altuve nearly dropped to one knee to golf a slider 354-feet into the Monster seats. That pitch was 0.85 feet off the ground, the lowest pitch hit for a home run since the start of the 2018 season.
José Altuve's home run came on a pitch 0.85 ft above the ground
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) June 11, 2021
That's the lowest pitch hit for a HR since the start of the 2018 season pic.twitter.com/hRyW1D2sg5
The homer came on an 0-2 count when Darwinzon Hernandez was trying to get the batter to chase a slider diving out of the zone but Altuve somehow made contact. Prior to that, opposing hitters were 2-for-27 with 20 strikeouts after falling behind in the count 0-2 to Hernandez in his career.
Gurriel’s homer had an exit velocity of 92.9 mph while Altuve’s was 93.5 mph, per Baseball Savant. That’s the first time this season that any team has hit multiple home runs in the same game with an exit velocity of less than 94 mph. It’s only the 37th time this has happened in the Statcast era (since 2015).
The damage ultimately only mattered to the ERAs of those two pitchers but E-Rod and Hernandez must feel like they’ve been the victims of some bad luck that those balls left the park.
Controversial infield fly proves costly to the Red Sox
The Red Sox received a gift when Astros right fielder Kyle Tucker dropped a routine fly ball in the sixth inning of a tie game. J.D. Martinez was credited with a sac fly since Kike Hernandez would have scored from third either way, but Martinez made it to first safely on the error.
A Xander Bogaerts walk put two runners on base for Rafael Devers. That’s when things got weird. Devers hit a pop fly to shallow center field. The ball hung up in the air long enough for shortstop Carlos Correa to camp under it but he dropped it!
It briefly appeared that the Red Sox were getting another gift from an Astros defensive miscue but the umpire instead called Devers out on the infield fly rule.
Wait, what?? Did the umpire not realize that the infield was the part with dirt on it? This ball was hit over 200 feet, well outside of the infield. The center fielder probably had a better chance at catching it if the back-peddling Correa wasn’t in the way.
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The infield fly rule is an umpire’s judgement call that he can make if he believes the ball could easily be handled by an infielder. By the letter of the law, the Devers pop-up seems to qualify since Correa had plenty of time to get under it, only to misjudge where it was landing when the ball got caught in the swirling winds that were wrecking havoc at Fenway all night.
This scenario completely ignores the purpose of the rule though. The infield fly rule is meant to prevent a defensive player from intentionally dropping a routine ball in an attempt to turn a sneaky double play. This wasn’t Correa’s intent, he simply dropped it. Bogaerts easily made it to second base in time despite hesitating to see if the ball would be caught and Devers could have walked to first base.
Even if the play met the criteria for when this call could be made, common sense should have told the umpire it wasn’t needed in this case.
Perhaps motivated by their outrage, the Red Sox would pile up four more runs in the inning with a pair of walks, a hit by pitch and a bases clearing double by Bobby Dalbec. The botched call against Devers cost the Red Sox at least one run while preventing a big inning from being extended further but thankfully, the offensive outburst they did get from this inning was all they needed.
Red Sox turn an unusual double play
Houston attempted to battle back in the seventh inning only for a rally-killing double play to spoil their efforts. This was no ordinary double play though.
Yordan Alvarez reached on a one-out single which brought Gurriel to the plate. The Astros infielder already benefited from the shortest home run you can hit at Fenway earlier in this game. This time, the shortest you can hit a ball in fair territory came back to bite him.
Gurriel hit a tapper in front of the plate that nobody on the field initially reacted to. Gurriel must have thought he fouled the ball off himself or assumed it was rolling into foul territory because he never made a move toward first base. Catcher Christian Vazquez was hesitant to reach down for the ball but he finally picked it up and tossed it to first base for the out.
Alvarez was off on contact and already reached second base while all this was happening. He must have seen Gurriel still standing at home plate and assumed it was a foul ball. Alvarez started jogging back toward first, only to realize that Dalbec had the ball and was racing toward him for the tag. Alvarez tried to retreat to second but it was too late. Dalbec flipped the ball to second before the runner could get there and Alvarez was easily tagged out to complete the double play.
The entire sequence appeared to play out in slow motion. As NESN commentator Jerry Remy remarked, Vazquez had time to read War and Peace before making the throw to first. Both the hitter and base runner had no clue that the ball was in play and the Red Sox defense was slow to react.
Next. Sale willing to return to bullpen. dark
Boston’s bullpen retired six of the final seven batters they faced to secure the win. The seventh inning was Houston’s last real chance to rally and it came unhinged by one of the most confusing double plays you’ll ever see.