HOUSTON – They were professional valleys for both players, even if Jose Altuve has 12 seasons and eight All-Star honors to his name, and Framber Valdez is still crafting his career narrative.
And Saturday night was the perfect time for Altuve and Valdez emerged from their darkest times to save the Houston Astros in this World Series.
In danger of dropping the first two games at home to the ever-resistant Philadelphia Phillies, Altuve jumped the visitors on the very first offering from ace Zack Wheeler, setting off a first-pitch, first-inning lightning bolt that handed Valdez a healthy lead. And then the Astros’ lefty spun the Phillies into submission, dominating them with his curveball to take a shutout into the seventh inning.
GAME 2: Astros remind Phillies who they are a day after meltdown
ILLEGAL BAT: Houston catcher has to change up his lumber (he wasn’t cheating)
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By night’s end, the Astros had registered a 5-2 victory to square this Series 1-1, a major burden lifted after Philadelphia erased a five-run deficit for a 6-5, 10-inning Game 1 win.
It was a shameful collapse for a franchise playing in its fourth World Series in six years. But they evened things up in a hurry as two of their most indispensable players recovered from their own foibles.
For Altuve, October heroics are expected. He has 29 career multi-hit postseason games, which made his 0 for 25 skid – the worst hitless run of his career – to start these playoffs all the more startling. He was still just 3 for 37 entering Game 2, none of the hits of the well-struck variety.
That changed in an instant.
Altuve wailed on Wheeler’s first pitch, shipping a 96-mph sinker to left field for a double, his first extra-base hit to the pull side this postseason. And a pattern was quickly established.
No. 2 hitter Jeremy Peña: First-pitch curveball, RBI double.
No. 3 hitter Yordan Alvarez: First-pitch fastball fouled off, followed by another swing on a slider, knocking it the opposite way off the left field wall for another RBI double.
Cleanup man Alex Bregman also offered at the first pitch, but actually swung and missed. No matter: Alvarez eventually scored when first baseman Rhys Hoskins failed to scoop shortstop Edmundo Sosa’s low throw and by the time Houston’s first-inning ambush was over, Wheeler was in a 3-0 hole.
Wheeler entered Game 2 with a 1.78 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 25 ⅓ innings this postseason, very much the playoff ace the Phillies hoped for. But the Astros never let him get comfortable. And in Game 2, Valdez would not yield the 5-0 lead he eventually received, as Game 1 starter Justin Verlander did the night before.
No, this is a new Valdez.
The old one was probably the player most culpable for Houston’s six-game loss to Atlanta in the 2021 World Series. Valdez started Games 1 and 5 and was terrible: A 19.29 ERA thanks to 10 earned runs in 4 ⅔ innings, four home runs allowed, a Game 1 loss and a gracious bailout by his teammates for a Game 5 no-decision.
But Valdez went to work on his focus and his repertoire, consulting a sports psychologist to keep him on point during games and adding a cut fastball to complement a 95-mph sinking fastball and curveball.
Oh, that curveball. It was particularly biting Saturday night.
Through five shutout innings, nine of Valdez’s 13 swings and misses came on his curve. It was particularly nasty on a fourth-inning strikeout of Phillies slugger Bryce Harper, during which Valdez showed him his cutter, a trio of 95-mph sinkers and finally a huge breaking ball that had Harper flailing.
Two innings later, his pitch count in the 90s, Valdez encountered Harper again, this time with two on. But Harper skidded a fastball right at Altuve, who initiated a 4-6-3 double play.
By then, Alex Bregman’s third home run this postseason, a two-run shot that was also the sixth World Series homer of his career, staked Valdez to a 5-0 advantage.
He finished with nine strikeouts in 6 1/3 innings, an inherited earned run scored. It nearly duplicated his seven-inning, nine-strikeout, no earned run effort in Game 2 of the ALCS.
This Game 2 was a decidedly different outcome than his two stumbles against Atlanta one year ago.
“I think last year my emotions got the better of me during the World Series,” Valdez said Friday, through an interpreter. “I think the key for this year is just continue doing what I’ve been doing, try not to let the game get away from me, and I think we’ll get good results there.”
Still just 28 and with less than four years of service time, the Astros have witnessed Valdez come of age firsthand.
“You hope that you get better with age, even though he don’t have much of it,” says manager Dusty Baker. “He doesn’t get nearly as upset as he used to. You know, you get a wife and two or three kids, man, that will make you do a lot of stuff.
“That will make you grow up.”
The Astros didn’t need Altuve to grow up, just rediscover his old self. And he may be back. Altuve followed his lightning-strike double with singles in the fifth and eighth innings, giving him 99 career postseason hits. Alvarez, meanwhile, doubled and walked after coming in on a 3-for-25, 10-strikeout skid.
If both are back, as the Astros know them, than a club that’s now 8-1 this postseason once again looks very dangerous as the Series shifts to Philly for Monday’s Game 3.
