ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Yordan Alvarez was expecting to take a strike with a 3-0 count and the score tied in the eighth inning for the Houston Astros against the Texas Rangers.
Then came a slider, and the Houston slugger just liked the look of it.
Next thing Alvarez knew, he had homered twice in consecutive games for the first time in his eight big league seasons, and put the Astros in front for good in a 4-3 victory Wednesday night.
“Like, who swings on a 3-0 slider and hits it 110 (mph) to the batter’s eye?” Jeremy Peña asked as part of an answer to what he thought was Alvarez’s most impressive at-bat in a 3-for-4 night. “That goes to show that he’s two steps ahead. He knew that they weren’t going to challenge him with something hard.”
The Rangers weren’t trying to challenge him at all. And they didn’t in the ninth inning, when they walked Alvarez intentionally right after Peña’s single. That led Houston’s leadoff hitter and shortstop to playfully tell the powerful man following him in the lineup, “You’ve got to thank me for that walk. You owe me that walk.”
The question for Texas manager Skip Schumaker was why he didn’t walk Alvarez intentionally an inning earlier when Rangers reliever Tyler Alexander had already thrown him three balls.
“It’s tough to walk the leadoff hitter, no doubt, with a tie game in the eighth inning,” Schumaker said while also mentioning he would have been fine with a walk to Alvarez in that spot. “I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. But the way he’s hitting, hindsight is always maybe we should have just put him on at that point.”
Alvarez has 17 home runs in 33 games at Globe Life Field, including five in the first three games of this four-game series that ends Thursday night.
“Apparently, I love playing here,” Alvarez said through an interpreter.
He reached 20 for the season in his 56th game — the fastest Houston slugger to reach that mark while doing it on the same night as Munetaka Murakami of Chicago White Sox. Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber leads the majors with 21 homers.
Alvarez’s first solo homer pulled Houston even at 2-2 against Texas ace Jacob deGrom, who struck out Alvarez in the first inning.
“I was joking with the guys in the dugout that it was kind of like he was throwing me, like, Playstation style, just dotting the corners,” Alvarez said. “But in the second at-bat, I was able to adjust.”
The homer off Alexander went 448 feet to deep right-center field, landing not far from his 449-foot drive a night earlier — a three-run shot that was the first of two when Houston lost 10-7 after falling behind 8-0 in the first inning.
Alvarez leads the American League with a .306 average and is fourth in the AL with 39 RBIs, one behind teammate Christian Walker.
“It is a combination of skills and intelligence,” Houston manager Joe Espada said. “You guys see the skills. I see the intelligence. In between at-bats, how he talks through an at-bat, ‘This is what I’m looking for, I’m going to stay within myself and I’m going to try to do something.’ There is a level of intelligence and calm through his at-bats that I have never, ever seen in my career.”
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