The New York Yankees were able to hit Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel early and often in their 5-0 win in Game 5, giving them a 3-2 lead in the ALCS.
Keuchel pitched seven scoreless innings and recorded 10 strikeouts in Houston's Game 1 win but didn't make it through five innings in Game 5, allowing seven hits and four runs. What was different this time around? New York's approach at the plate.
“See the ball in the middle of the plate and react from there,” Todd Frazier said. “His ball moves so much, if I’m thinking middle of the plate, anything to the left or right most of the time is going to be a ball. That’s how he wins games. He gets guys off their approach and swinging at balls. Today, when we got our strikes, we hit them pretty hard.”
“You’ve got to stay disciplined, but you’ve got to be aggressive,” Greg Bird said. “It kind of contradicts each other, but you’ve got to get him on the plate, and when you do, you’ve got to make it hurt.”
New York got a run in both the second and third innings before getting two in the fifth, forcing Keuchel's early exit. Chase Headley said getting that first run so early is what set the tone for the game.
“He’s as tough as anybody on us. And to really break through, in the second inning … to get a run, I thought that lifted everybody’s spirits and gave us some confidence that we could get to him going forward,” Headley said. “We knew we weren’t going to bust it open and score seven off of him, but we could scratch a couple runs out, but that was going to be good enough with the way (Masahiro) Tanaka was throwing.”
The teams have today off while the series shifts back to Houston for the final two games of the series.
Game 6 is set for 8:08 pm ET on FS1, with a victory sending the Yankees to the World Series. Justin Verlander will start for the Astros, while ace Luis Severino will take the mound for New York.
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