‘Have to figure it out ASAP’: Astros’ Alex Bregman and Gerrit Cole fail to deliver in Game 1 loss
HOUSTON – Come November, Gerrit Cole and Alex Bregman may be awarded two of the most cherished plaques in baseball and bring the American League’s Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards back to Houston.
There is another trophy they cherish above all, however, one that may slip through their grasp if they cannot reverse what ailed them in Game 1 of the World Series.
Quickly.
“I have to figure it out, ASAP, because I have to be better,” Bregman said after his postseason failures extended to Tuesday night and a 5-4 Washington Nationals conquest that saw the third baseman fail in several key spots.
“It starts with me. I was horrible. All night.”
Cole had not been beaten since May 22, a 19-game winning streak that continued through three dominant postseason starts. But the man who struck out 338 batters in the regular season and mowed down the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees in three playoff starts had no answer for Juan Soto, the Nationals’ precocious slugger.
In the fourth inning, Soto took a decent Cole pitch to the train tracks in left field for a game-tying home run. In the fifth, Soto killed a spinning Cole slider to left field, clanging off the scoreboard for a two-run double and a 5-2 lead.
Tip your cap, Cole said of the home run. The double?
“The slider was poor,” said Cole, who posted a 2.50 regular season ERA and had given up just one run (0.40 ERA) this postseason before coughing up five in seven innings Tuesday. “Didn’t end up over the heart of the plate, didn’t break like we wanted it to but he again used the whole field, stayed back within himself. Good hitters do that.”
If Cole was sanguine, color Bregman sullen.
One of the game’s most magnetic players and a postseason hero during their 2017 World Series run, Bregman has had a miserable postseason this time around. After an 0-for-4, three-strikeout performance in Game 1, he’s now in a 3 for 22 funk spanning the ALCS and Game 1.
In fact, he’s going so bad, he let a grateful reliever get away with an egregious mistake.
After burning through top right-handed reliever Daniel Hudson to escape a seventh-inning jam, lefty Sean Doolittle was forced to face three daunting righty hitters – Bregman, Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Correa leading off the ninth.
Bregman got the count in his favor, at 2-1. Doolittle, whose velocity was down for most of his 1 ⅓-inning save, botched the next pitch – a 92-mph fastball that fluttered over the heart of the plate.
It was a cookie, a gift from the baseball gods meant to be crushed into the Crawford Boxes for a game-tying home run.
Doolittle was sufficiently horrified after he released the pitch.
“Oh my gosh. I knew I got away with one there,” Doolittle said. “Baseball’s so weird because I was trying to go away. I’m not sure if the ball cut on me or if I just yanked it and it ended up right down the middle of the plate. But the weird thing is you could tell by the way he took it, it felt inside to him, even though it was right down the middle.
“I think he was looking away. So, if I hit my spot, then I would’ve fallen right into what he was looking for. Because I missed my spot – over the heart of the plate – I got away with it.
“I knew I got away with it. I looked at (catcher Kurt Suzuki) and kind of shook my head and in between pitches I was like, ‘I gotta put him away here. I can’t keep giving him looks. I can’t keep giving him looks. I just got away with one. He’s too good of a hitter.’”
Not to worry. Doolittle punched him out on the next pitch, leaving Bregman awaiting a long night curled up with all his equipment.
“I need to get in that video room and get in the cage and figure it out and figure it out quick because we face another good pitcher tomorrow,” he said, an eye toward Game 2 Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg. “I have been horrible mechanically, been off time, been in between, taking fastballs for strikes, taking sliders for strikes. swinging at bad pitches out of the zone.
“Better take my bat home, sleep with it, figure it out.”
The Astros will counter in Game 2 with Justin Verlander, a game Cole said will “start the recovery process.” Nobody’s playing better than the Nationals right now – they’re on a stunning 83-40 run that includes a 9-2 postseason ledger – and while the Astros are probably superior on paper, they are not playing up to that expectation.
“I think they’re pretty good,” says Bregman. “They did a good job pitching to us. We gotta get better.”
Image Source:*bleacherreport.com
Source:usatoday.com
