For Astros and Rangers, seven is the magic number

A splendid American League Championship Series finds resolution Monday night.

Bryan Abreu

With the possible exception of the days when Harry Caray would bellow “Cubs win!” over all he surveyed, the best two words in baseball have always been Game Seven.

The Astros and Rangers provide this gift Monday night, in the American League Championship Series.

 For one night, baseball should suspend its new rules. Game Sevens, by definition, are never too long. See the 2016 Cubs-Cleveland World Series Game Seven for reference. It lasted four hours and 28 minutes, and every minute was precious. You don’t put a stopwatch on history. So, for this one, forget the pitch clock and go into the storage room and fetch the real bases, the ones that don’t spread like throw-rugs to pump up artificial steals.

Fortunately, the ghost runners are gone in postseason. The Astros and Rangers will play 18 innings if they must. Ask Nate Eovaldi what it’s like, what that Game 3 was like in Dodger Stadium five years ago, when he threw himself into the breach for six innings and saved the Boston bullpen. He pitched Game 6 for Texas Sunday night, when it evened up this series, and he’s 4-0 in the playoffs. He’ll be sitting there Monday night, a lot like the rest of us, prone to fidgeting but immune to surprise. And if the Rangers need to get an out or two in the 18th, he’ll have his spikes on.

This has been one of the best series in years, with subplots and new faces and more than the allotted amount of disdain. It also has controversy, which will resume on Monday, long before the first pitch.

Houston reliever Bryan Abreu was suspended for two games because he hit Adolis Garcia with a pitch in Game 5, and MLB’s magistrates thought he did it intentionally, prompted by Garcia’s exuberant home run trot after he gave Texas a short-lived lead.

Even by MLB standards this was a brainless ruling. Abreu hit Garcia in the eighth inning, with nobody out and a man on first, with Houston losing, 4-2, in the fifth game of a 2-2 playoff series. To suggest Abreu would do that on purpose is to accuse him of such ignorance that he probably should be disqualified from playing baseball, or driving. There is zero chance he was retaliating, as much as he might have wanted to. The situation was too fraught. But the baseball execs decided to bigfoot their way into this series, without being asked.

Abreu’s presence or absence could decide the winner. That appeal will be denied or upheld on Monday afternoon, so there’s a good chance Abreu will be ineligible for this game. He has been Houston’s most consistent reliever all season, with 100 strikeouts and 44 hits somehow wedged into his 72 innings. Abreu ran into Garcia again Sunday night, and he struck out Garcia without incident. In the Texas ninth Garcia smacked a grand slam off Ryan Stanek, and humbly jogged around the bases.

The Rangers’ victory meant that the road team is 6-0 in this series. That’s nothing new for Houston. In 2019 the road teams were 7-0 in the World Series. Washington came to Houston trailing 3-2 and won Games 6 and 7.

The Astros were 39-42 at Minute Maid this year. That is likely just one of those gremlin stats, because Houston was 55-26 there in 2022 and celebrated the World Series title when it beat Philadelphia there. But Houston also was home when it was eliminated in the 2021 World Series by Atlanta.

A familiar face, with eyes of two different colors, waits for them Monday night. Max Scherzer, now 39, pitched Game 7 in 2019 for the Nationals, or tried to. Neck spasms had cost him the middle start in that Series, after he had tried to gut his way through Game 1. He only went five innings in Game 7 and gave up four walks and seven hits. He also threw 103 enervating pitches. But he held Houston close, leaving when it was 2-0, and when the Astros removed Zack Greinke in their seventh, Washington struck, eventually winning 6-2.

Scherzer started Game 3 of this series but couldn’t navigate the Houston lineup twice, and lost 8-5. This will be his 24th postseason start. He hasn’t started and won a postseason game since that Game 1 in 2019 but, again, he’s a 214-game winner whose possibilities are endless.

The Houston starter is Cristian Javier, already possessing a legacy even though he’s just 26. He has won his previous four playoff starts, all on the road, against four different teams. In those games Javier has gone 22 innings and given up five hits and two runs, with 26 strikeouts. One of those games was a six-inning no-hitter at Philadelphia during the ‘22 World Series. This is the same guy who had an ERA of 4.56 this season and gave up a batting average of .234, fully 64 points higher than in 2022. So it’s a collision involving a life master and a young virtuoso, both unpredictable. Those are the tiptoes upon which a good Game 7 can place everyone.

The Rangers were the top offensive club in the American League all year and, on several occasions, threatened to run away with the division. On June 27, the Astros lost in St. Louis to Jordan Montgomery, who is now a Ranger, and were 42-37 and six games behind. On Sept. 10 they led by two-and-a-half games. Then they lost nine of 12, and in that stretch they were 2-7 against Oakland and Kansas City, two teams full of kids that probably should be required to pay for Jose Altuve’s autograph.

Was this the end of the empire? No, the Astros won five of their final six, all on the road, including a 3-game sweep at Arizona while the Rangers were getting swept in Seattle. The Astros were suddenly the division champs. They had tiebreaker rights over Texas, with both teams winning 90. Sure, that was 16 fewer than the Astros had won in 2022, but Alex Bregman wasn’t thinking about that when he put on the champagne goggles. Channeling Kanye West’s Grammy speech, Bregman told his teammates, “A lot of people were wondering what it was going to be like if the ‘Stros didn’t win the division. I guess we’ll never know.”

Pop went the corks, and the Rangers, who were looking at a first-round bye, silently flew from Seattle to Tampa Bay for the best-of-three playoff round. And then to Baltimore to start the best-of-five division series. They won all those games, won their first two in Houston, and here we are, with teams whose familiarity and contempt grow nightly.

This is why they all should be 7-game series. The stories build. The adjustments grow deeper. The Rangers get another crack at Javier. Corey Seager of Texas can put an iffy series behind him with just a couple of swings. Same for his teammate Marcus Simien, same for Kyle Tucker of Houston. But the pivotal player might be someone like Evan Carter, the Rangers’ rookie outfielder who has caught everything from El Paso to Galveston in this series. Carter played 23 games this year before he got his postseason closeup. In other words, he might get to a World Series before he goes to his first major league spring training.

A 7-game series also exposes the entire team, warts and all. You can’t hide your shaky pitchers, as you can in a 5-gamer. Everyone on the roster gets a moment. The final out in 2016, remember, was Mike Montgomery retiring Michael Martinez.

And nothing remains the same. Houston was beaten up Sunday night, which meant it didn’t have to use Ryan Pressly, a Dallas guy who has made 46 postseason appearances and given up one home run. He comes into Game 7 with two days’ off.

No matter what, the Minute Maid field will bear the weight of All-Stars Monday night, maybe a couple of Hall of Famers, some with ample yesterdays, others with abundant tomorrows. And, in a sport that takes up 180 days on the calendar, one team will lose its right to tomorrow. Of course, that’s just an expression; if the Astros and Rangers want to take this past midnight, that’s OK too.