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Houston Astros

5 takeaways from ALCS Game 6: Can Yankees overcome Astros' Minute Maid magic in Game 7?

Ted Berg
USA TODAY
Jose Altuve has an .855 OPS in the ALCS, and he and Carlos Correa turned a beautiful double play in Friday's Game 6.

HOUSTON - Five takeaways from the Astros' 7-1 win over the Yankees in Game 6 of the ALCS.

1. It's anybody's series

It should go without saying that any good baseball team could beat any other good baseball team on any given night, but it would be especially preposterous to assign any major advantage to either of these teams heading into Game 7 on Saturday. CC Sabathia, who went 14-5 with a 3.69 ERA in the regular season, will start for the Yankees against the Astros' Charlie Morton, who went 14-7 with a 3.62 ERA. The Astros have the deeper lineup, but the Yankees have the deeper bullpen. Statistically, home-field advantage doesn't play as big a role in baseball as it does in other sports, but the Astros have not yet lost a game at Minute Maid Park this postseason - and the Yankees are 1-5 on the road.

2. That bullpen look

The Yankees entered Game 6 with a mostly fresh bullpen thanks to Masahiro Tanaka's Game 5 gem, but Joe Girardi pulled Luis Severino after 4 2/3 innings and needed to lean on his relievers the rest of the way. He'll presumably try to stay away from Chad Green, who threw 38 pitches over 2 1/3 innings in the loss, and it'd be tough to give the ball back to David Robertson in a tight game after Robertson allowed four hits and four runs without retiring a batter on Friday. Dellin Betances looked better in his Game 6 inning than he did all postseason, but his issues with wildness make him difficult to trust in tight spots. The Yanks will have Tommy Kahnle and Aroldis Chapman good to go on Saturday, but their relief group doesn't look as deep or as dominant now as it did coming into the series. 

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But the Astros' beleaguered bullpen has struggled throughout the set. Justin Verlander's seven-inning start meant that Astros relievers needed to cover only two innings in Game 6, but neither Brad Peacock nor Ken Giles inspired a lot of confidence with their frames. Nothing the Astros' bullpen did during the regular season suggested it might be this bad in October, but don't be surprised to see Game 3 starter Lance McCullers Jr. warming up if Morton flounders in the early innings.  

3. D-lights

If the Astros had any bit of anxiety about their must-win game on Friday, they did not show it on defense. Houston helped out Verlander with a nifty double play turned by Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve and a beautiful, leaping catch in deep center field by George Springer. None of that necessarily means they won't tighten up in another must-win game in Game 7, but it can't be a bad sign for the Astros. 

4. Minute Maid in the shade

Verlander's stellar performance did more than hold the Yankees scoreless for seven innings. The swiftly popular right-hander's high-octane pitching energized a Houston crowd whose club had lost three straight games to fall behind in the series. With the roof closed, Minute Maid Park is deafeningly loud whenever the occasion calls for it. Again, it's hard to put too much stock in home-field advantage in baseball, a sport in which randomness dominates, and the Astros actually won more games on the road in the regular season than they did at Minute Maid. But it just can't hurt to have 40,000 thunderous fans rooting you on. 

5. MVP parade

The forthcoming elimination game means one of the primary AL MVP candidates -- the Astros' Jose Altuve and the Yankees' Aaron Judge -- will finish his season on Saturday. But where some of the NL's brightest stars like Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo failed to impress in the postseason, both Altuve and Judge have been MVP-like in the ALCS. 

Judge is a feast-or-famine hitter, and he has already struck out a record 26 times this postseason. But after he looked horrible in the ALDS against the Indians, he now has three homers in the ALCS and a 1.267 OPS over the six games. His towering blast in the eighth inning on Friday accounted for the Yanks' only run in the game. 

Altuve, meanwhile, failed to get a hit in the three games of the series in New York but has been stellar in every game in Houston. The second baseman went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs in the Astros' win Friday, and now owns an .855 OPS for the series and a stellar 1.167 mark since the start of the playoffs. 

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