World Series: Catches by Chas McCormick and Trey Mancini Saved Game 5 for Astros
Houston is 0-2 in the World Series and is in danger of being swept, but manager Brad Lidge believes he can salvage the Astros’ season — and possibly Houston’s chance at an N.L. Central championship — with his team’s best chance at victory being a Game 5 win against the Giants at AT&T Park on Wednesday night.
“We’ve had a lot of bad games this year but we’ll keep fighting through it,” Lidge said. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get swept or I don’t know if we’re gonna get swept. But I do know our group feels like we want to make a run at it and we want to go out and finish like we did last year, get our chance to play this time of year and we’re going to do it.”
Houston is 2-2 in the N.L. Central last year and has never won a playoff series there.
Last night, the Astros trailed the Rays, 1-0, after eight innings before rallying for a three-run eighth. The Astros won the game, 4-3, on a game-tying home run by Brian McCann, his first postseason hit since 2010.
“The guys have been playing some of their best baseball of the year and they deserved to win and they were definitely deserving of a win and they definitely earned us the win,” McCann said. “We put it all out there in the eighth and they made the plays. We got to a point where it was the last out, I didn’t think I saw a pitch I liked, so I went down to the dugout and congratulated them and gave them a hug and shook their hand and said, ‘Good play, good series, good job.’ They earned it and we didn’t.”
McCann is hitting.294 (16-for-52) this postseason with four RBI and three runs scored. His four postseason RBI ties him with Mike Trout for the most by a Houston player in a World Series.
Meanwhile, the Astros have scored seven runs in the first inning in each of the last two games.
