George Costanza, aka Jason Alexander, couldn’t replicate the magic he had in the Bronx last month, allowing the New York Yankees to tag him for multiple runs, but the bats and bullpen kept it close, allowing them to come back to win 8-7 on Wednesday.
Jason Alexander’s final line:
5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 98-56 TP-S
After Alexander was done, the Astros turned to Steven Okert, Kaleb Ort and Bryan King, who each came out and helped out their starter in big ways. Between the three of them, they gave
Houston three innings of one-run ball.
The Yankees threatened in the top of the ninth after Bryan Abreu allowed a three-run bomb to Cody Bellinger, bringing them back within one run, but it wasn’t enough after Abreu finished the game with a strikeout, finishing off an 8-7 Astros win.
At the plate, Giancarlo Stanton got the scoring started in this one, and in a booming way, hitting a 405 ft. missile over the train tracks. They added on two more in the fourth with a two-run bomb, their fifth of the series, to go up 3-0.
The Astros couldn’t get anything going at all at the plate. Through the first five innings, the Astros only had more than one runner on base at a time once, and that one time was when the Astros finally got on the board.
A double from Yeiner Diaz and single from Victor Caritini put runners at the corners for Ramón Urías, who skied a ball into center deep enough to score the Astros first run of the game. Unfortunately though, the Yankees answered right back with an RBI sac-fly of their own in the next half, pushing the score to 4-1.
After scoring that first run, the Astros got into something offensively, starting with Jeremy Peña sending the first pitch of the bottom of the sixth into the Crawford Boxes for his 15th homer of the year.
This was followed up by Yordan, who doubled into the left-center gap before moving over to third on a wild pitch and scoring on a Jose Altuve sac-fly and bringing the game back within one run. They kept it going in the next innings, doing what they do best and tying the game with two-outs on Yordan’s fourth hit of the game, scoring Jacob Melton and tying it at four.
All four of Yordan’s hits in this game were ROCKETS, with each of them coming off the bat at over 100 MPH. He has a ridiculous 10 hits and eight walks in his first eight games back, bringing his average from .206 to .254.
Houston finally took their first lead of the series in the eighth when the Yankees decided to turn to Devin Williams out of the pen and things went the same as they did last time the Astros faced him.
After a double and two walks, the Astros loaded the bases and, once again with two-outs, the Astros had the leading run brought in for them on a walk to Taylor Trammell, giving Houston a 5-4 lead. This led to Williams getting pulled and both him and manager Aaron Boone getting tossed.
They added on another three runs after that to extend their lead to 8-4, with one coming from an RBI-single from Peña and the other two coming from a balk and wild-pitch.
The Yankees threatened a comeback in the top of the ninth, bringing it back to within one, but they couldn’t do it, dropping the second game of the series 8-7 and splitting it one-one. The decider will be on Thursday at 6:40.
