ARLINGTON, Texas – So as not to leave you in suspense, we’ll 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 like that? deliberate?
“Everyone on their side will say it wasn’t the case,” Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien said. “Everyone on this side will say it was.”
This is the pitfall of polling people with not just some skin, but their entire selves in the game on a divisive call made when emotions run high. But let’s back up.
Through the first four games of the ALCS, there has not been a single lead change. Whichever team scored first won, and the team that scored first was never the home team. The players and plays were good, but the baseball was, frankly, a bit boring.
Not so in Game 5. With the series tied at two apiece, the Rangers and Astros met in a matchup that made the Lone Star State showdown worthy of sparking a renewed rivalry.
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The Astros jumped out to an early lead on Alex Bregman’s solo shot. Many precedents were working in their favor — the Astros became inevitable in October, they’ve beaten the Rangers in Arlington all season, and that’s how this series has gotten so far. But Texas tied it (Nathaniel Lowe’s home run) and then pulled away again.
Semien homered in the bottom of the sixth with an innocuous popup — one of five hits on the night to lower his postseason average to .159. His acquisition, along with that of Corey Seager, before the 2022 season signaled a new era in Arlington. He is, if not the clear face of the club, then certainly its voice. Three days ago, you could have said his struggles weren’t holding the team back this month. But as the Rangers’ season approaches, they appear to be clearer.
But then Seager doubled, Evan “Little Savior” Carter singled, and with two on, Adulis Garcia walked 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 all series, the home team was the winner. While the packed crowd responded accordingly, Garcia walked halfway down the first base line, trailing off. Just before he took off at a trot, he shouted to his teammates in the dugout and swung his bat.
“If you hit a ball like that, you’ll celebrate,” Garcia later explained.
Garcia gave Texas a two-run lead after the sixth inning. If it holds, they will head to Houston one win away from their first World Series appearance since 2011 and a chance to win their first championship ever.
But remember all the panic over the Rangers game? Well, Bruce Bochy wasn’t going to let the ulcer-inducing Aroldis Chapman blow him away, so after the out-of-form flamethrower gave up a two-out double in the eighth, Bochy called for a closer. Jose Leclerc had four catches the last time the Rangers won a game. The day off and two losses since then means he’s had plenty of rest. He made hitter Michael Brantley pop up.
To the ninth. Granted, nothing is guaranteed against the Astros, whose fearsome lineup has plenty of potential to pitch a few innings a round, but that would be double the number Leclerc has surrendered throughout the postseason thus far.
The drama was just beginning.
After two electric home runs, Garcia came to the plate with a runner on first. The Astros’ goal was to keep it within two. Crucially, this goal is neither entirely compatible nor entirely inconsistent with Garcia ending up at first base. Keep that in mind.
The first velocity Garcia saw from Astros reliever Brian Abreu was 99 mph, and it hit him squarely in the upper arm. In the time it took to bounce, Garcia decided he had been dunked on purpose, and immediately got into the face of Astros catcher Martin Maldonado.
Both benches were cleared, the bullpen quickly entered, and Garcia had to be restrained not only by his teammates but also by Astros slugger and fellow Cuban Yordan Alvarez.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, that wasn’t on purpose,'” Abreu later explained to reporters. “He was like ‘bulls***’.”
Was it intentional?
The judges thought it was.
“We had a meeting between the six of us and determined that the throw by Abreu was intentional at Garcia,” crew chief James Hoy said. “We know it’s the playoffs. We don’t want to make a mistake in a situation like this. So we’re going to make sure everyone is on the same page, that we all feel the same way. And for the T, we all felt like that presentation was intentional.”
For this reason, they expelled Abreu, and the next day, they suspended him for two matches. To escalate the situation by confronting Maldonado, they also fired Garcia.
“Obviously it was completely unintentional, one of those balls just slipped out of his hand,” said Astros outfielder Ryan Pressley, who came in to replace Abreu.
“I know he said it slid, but if you go back and watch it, it looks like it slid right into the Adulis,” Rangers third baseman Josh Young said.
The Rangers’ assumption was that Garcia was hit in retaliation for how badly he hit a home run earlier in the game. There’s more history than that — a July brawl in which Semien got hit early in the game and got into it briefly with Maldonado after hitting a grand slam by Garcia — but the gist was: The Astros didn’t like the show.
“I think the scene is really bad,” Lowe said. “It’s the playoffs. You’re allowed to get excited. He got excited. He celebrated because that was a big swing for us. You should wear 98 [mph] “On the arm after something like this, it’s very disappointing.”
Even before the fateful hit in the eighth, Young said, he was worried the Astros would try to punish Garcia.
“Given the situation, the tense rivalry, we’ve been there before with some things – in the back of my mind, yes, there was, but I was hoping it wouldn’t happen,” he said.
Abreu claimed he didn’t care about showboating celebrations, and even if he did, some things are bigger than beef — things like winning.
“You’re not going to add runs in the ninth inning of the playoffs when we’re trying to win the game,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said after the game. He tried the same argument over and over again with the umpires at that point, but to no avail — and in the end, it cost him his seat in the dugout.
“Dusty threw his hat,” Howie explained. “We ejected Dusty from the game because he argued about the ejection.”
“I haven’t felt this crazy in a long time,” Baker said. “And I don’t usually get angry about anything.”
Was it intentional?
“Who do you know?” Bushy mused. “The guy hits a three-run homer. Next time, he gets smoked out there. It doesn’t really matter. I’d be upset too if you were [Adolis]. But like I said, it took a long time to get things right. That’s what was frustrating me.”
“I’m glad we won the game and that it worked out for us,” Baker said.
Oh yes, the game was interrupted due to the uproar and the punitive repercussions. While the Astros and Rangers scrimmaged, Leclerc was in the training room, waiting to get back to the mound. And waiting… and waiting. Nearly 20 minutes elapsed between the out he scored in the top of the eighth and when he took the mound in the ninth. It’s enough to give his coach pause.
“Mike Maddox asked me when I was in the dugout if I was ready to go there and if I needed to warm up a little bit more,” Leclerc said through translator Will Nadal. “I said no, I’m ready to go.”
Then, Jose Altuve, playing in his 101st qualifying match, appeared on the verge of creating a unique moment. His three home runs put the Astros up 5-4. There will be no more lead changes at night.
Ultimately, it was that final home run, not the hit-by-hit, that mattered. Whether there is any causal connection — Leclerc going cold, or the Astros catching fire — between the two is as impossible to prove as any intent. Both teams will tell themselves a story about what happened in Game 5 of the ALCS. Maybe the Astros will see themselves as unfairly maligned (again?) and capable of overcoming anything with their machine-like tendency to beat anyone in October.
As for the Rangers, they will need to find a version of themselves that sees this moment — after losing three straight home games, the last one in heartbreaking fashion, to head to Houston on the ropes — as rock bottom and the dawn of something better. .
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