Houston is back to .500 on the year
Yankees pull ahead late to secure series against Astros
May 5, 2021, 9:43 pm
The Astros have been outmatched by the Yankees in the first two games of the series. Photo by Harry How/Getty Images
The Astros have been outmatched by the Yankees in the first two games of the series.
After a disappointing loss on Tuesday in the series opener, the Astros returned to the Bronx on Wednesday night to try and even the series and set up a rubber match on Thursday. Instead, the Yankees would pull ahead late to secure the series and drop the Astros back to .500 on the season.
Final Score: Yankees 6, Astros 3.
Astros' Record: 15-15, third in the AL West
Winning Pitcher: Jonathan Loaisiga (3-1)
Losing Pitcher: Brooks Raley (0-2)
Stanton homers again for Yankees lead before Houston responds
With rain falling in the early innings, both teams struggled to make contact with the ball at the plate, getting just one hit each in the first three innings. New York's happened to be a doozie, with Luis Garcia hitting DJ LeMaheiu with a pitch in the bottom of the third to bring Giancarlo Stanton to the plate who blasted his second home run in as many games to put the Yankees in front 2-0.
Three runs. Five hits. #Astros lead. 🤘#ForTheH pic.twitter.com/msDdq151et
— Houston Astros (@astros) May 6, 2021
Houston responded in the top of the fourth, loading the bases on three straight singles to lead off the inning. Carlos Correa got the Astros on the board with an RBI groundout, and then they brought in two more to take a 3-2 lead on RBI doubles by Yuli Gurriel and Aledmys Diaz though an aggressive send of Carlos Correa potentially left a run off the board.
Yankees tie in the fifth, then go ahead late to secure the series
Garcia would do mostly well, with the home run the only runs he allowed. He pitched into the fifth, but with a two-out single followed by a walk, and rising pitch count, Dusty Baker would lift him in favor of Ryne Stanek. After yet another poor at-bat by the home plate umpire in this series, where there was an easy strike three to be called, Stanek would watch Stanton capitalize on the extra pitch by getting his third RBI, a double to tie the game.
The game stayed gridlocked 3-3, with the Yankees leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth against Stanek. Bryan Abreu tossed a scoreless seventh, erasing a leadoff single and walk with a strikeout and double play. Brooks Raley was Houston's next reliever in the bottom of the eighth but would record no outs while allowing the go-ahead run on two singles and a walk, leaving runners on the corners for Joe Smith.
Smith hit his first batter on the first pitch he threw, loading the bases, still no outs. A sac fly and yet another RBI for Giancarlo Stanton, bringing him to four on the night, would extend New York's new lead to 6-3 before Smith could finish the frame. Houston would come up empty in the ninth, moving them to 15-15 on the year and looking to salvage one game to avoid the sweep in the finale.
Up Next: The finale of this three-game series will be an afternoon start on Thursday, with the game getting underway at 12:05 PM Central. It'll be an exciting pitching matchup, with Lance McCullers Jr. (2-1, 3.38 ERA), who was on the mound to eliminate the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS, appearing for Houston opposite of former-Astro Gerrit Cole (4-1, 1.43 ERA) now on the Yankees.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”