HOUSTON — Pick your good to really good player … who then became something else in the biggest games.
Billy Smith for the dynasty Islanders or Robert Horry across seven titles for three NBA teams or Adam Vinatieri delivering one championship kick after another for the Patriots. El Duque? Derek Fisher?
Nathan Eovaldi has pushed onto the list.
A two-time All-Star and with Cy Young votes in one of 12 seasons. A guy with a regular-season ERA-plus of 103 or the same as a couple of average Jons — Garland and Lieber. A face in the crowd who becomes an ace of October.
Eovaldi delivered the exact parameters of a quality start Monday — six innings, three runs. Or exactly what was needed for his team.
For him, it was one of the worst of his nine postseason starts; that’s how good he has been at this time of year. What he did importantly was offer solidity as opposed to rival starter, Framber Valdez, who melted in a top of the first in which he allowed five hits, committed two errors and allowed four runs.
Eovaldi doesn’t melt at this time of year. He mentioned that other players talk to him about the volume increase from a postseason crowd. Eovaldi responds that he doesn’t notice. He used the term “tunnel vision.”
Houston pecked away at Eovaldi, but could not come all the way back. The 33-year-old righty pitching not far from his hometown of Nolan Ryan’s Alvin, Texas, was never bigger than escaping unscathed from bases loaded, no out in the fifth. A “momentum turner,” to his catcher Jonah Heim’s thinking.
Like another Yankee alum, Jordan Montgomery in Game 1, Eovaldi provided the backbone for a Texas ALCS victory, this time in Game 2.
The Rangers defeated the Astros 5-4 to improve to 7-0 in the postseason — a run done only five other times to open the playoffs, including by Houston on the way to a World Series title last year. Texas won both games at Minute Maid Park to take a two-games-to-none series lead. The visiting squad has won the first two games on the road 28 times in a seven-game series and only on four occasions has the team in that hole rallied to win.
The Astros have to hope that this ALCS resembles the season. Texas led the AL West for 139 days this year, but Houston caught up in the end. The teams finished with identical 90-72 records, but the Astros won the division by beating the Rangers nine of 13 times, including going 6-1 at Globe Life Field, where the series shifts Wednesday night for Game 3.
That is when the ex-New York pitcher theme continues for the Rangers, with Max Scherzer scheduled to start for the first time since Sept. 13. He has been out with a low-grade strain in his right shoulder, but threw 69 pitches in a simulated game Saturday.
“I have no idea what I will have — I might have a lot, I might have a little,” Scherzer said, chatting near the visiting dugout three hours before Game 2. “You tell me what the magic formula is for 60-ish pitches in a simulated game translated to a playoff start. It might go great, it might not.”
Texas had a higher degree of confidence in Eovaldi, whose regular seasons pale to the three-time Cy Young-winning Scherzer, but whose postseasons glitter. Eovaldi now has a 2.87 ERA overall in 14 playoff appearances and 2.56 in those nine starts. He struck out nine and walked one in Game 2 and now for his postseason career has whiffed 65 against nine base on balls, including a 24-to-1 ratio in these playoffs. His control of the strike zone — and himself — at this time of year has been magnificent. Eovaldi wheels out six different pitches, throws them all in just about any count, according to Heim, and all for strikes.
“Something just clicks for him [this time of year],” Heim said. “I’m not sure why. It’s the same preparation, the same mentality that he has all year. Just something about big games that he loves … and I’m not mad about it.”
Eovaldi already helped the Red Sox win a championship notably — of all things — losing Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, but throwing six innings of gutty, noble relief. This postseason he has made three starts and won all three, allowing five runs in 19 ²/₃ innings to help Texas push closer to its first title ever.
Ultimately, the Rangers survived two homers by Yordan Alvarez, the second an eighth-inning blast off Aroldis Chapman that drew the Astros within a run. But the defending champs could not come all the way back. Eovaldi did his legends of the fall thing again and Houston is on the edge of falling out of this series.
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