No starting pitcher in major league baseball did a better job during the regular season than Sonny Gray at preventing home runs, and he surrendered two homers to the Houston Astros on Tuesday.
Bailey Ober, closer to league average at home run prevention, has allowed three in 4⅓ innings during the AL Division Series.
Shutting down a prolific Astros lineup, which hits a lot of homers and doesn't strike out often, will be the challenge for Joe Ryan in Wednesday's Game 4 to keep the Twins' season alive. Ryan permitted 32 home runs in 29 starts, the fourth-highest total among AL pitchers.
"People are going to focus on [Jose] Altuve, Yordan [Alvarez] and [Alex] Bregman because they've been there the longest," reliever Emilio Pagán said after he stranded two inherited runners in the fifth inning Tuesday. "[Michael] Brantley didn't even play today and Brantley rakes. They're deep, man."
It doesn't help when the Twins haven't figured out a formula to slow down Alvarez after three games. The Astros slugger, who homered in the ninth inning Tuesday, has six hits in 12 at-bats with two doubles, four homers and six RBI. His four homers are tied for the third most in a best-of-five playoff series behind Ken Griffey Jr. in 1995 (five) and Juan Gonzalez in 1996 (five), according to MLB researcher Sarah Langs.
"There are times where I think it's very, very much the right play to go out there and pitch to [Alvarez]," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "There are other times where it might not be. It's going to depend on how everything plays out."
The scariest part about Alvarez is he isn't locked into a singular pitch. It's not as easy as not feeding him fastballs. Few lefthanded batters hit lefty pitching as well as him.
Twins pitchers, Baldelli and catcher Ryan Jeffers agree, are making solid pitches. Simply, one of the league's best hitters is finding ways to spoil tough pitches and turn them into extra-base hits.
"He hits everything — right now, at least," Jeffers said. "He's a baseball player. He's going to go through ups and downs, but you can't make mistakes to him. When we have, he's punished us."
It was more than Alvarez in Game 3. José Abreu hit a pair of 440-foot homers, one off Gray in the first inning and another off Ober in the ninth. The Twins have done a solid job quieting Bregman, but he hit a solo homer against Gray in the fifth inning.
"They flexed their muscles," Pagán said. "We didn't do much of beating ourselves. There are a few plays we left out there, a few pitches that we want back. For the most part, they just beat us."
Pablo López tossed seven shutout innings against the Astros in Game 2. When López faced Alvarez for the third time, striking him out in a seven-pitch at-bat that finished with a changeup, he didn't hold back his emotion. López pumped his fist, clapped his hand into his glove, then waited for Jeffers to make eye contact with him before pointing at him.
"That at-bat, we used a changeup at the right time and the right moment," López said. "That's what pitching is about. Mixing speeds at the right time and at the right moments. We sped him up and then slowed him back down. I was just really pumped because Jeffers did such a great job sequencing their best guy after he hurt us big time the first game."
Alvarez and the Astros couldn't be quieted for back-to-back games. Now it'll be up to Jeffers to help navigate the lineup in Game 4 with their backs against the wall.
