ALCS all tied up after Rangers stumble at home again

ARLINGTON -- The Rangers were 50-31 at Globe Life Field this season, turning their ballpark into one of the best home-field advantages in Major League Baseball.

But the Astros were 51-30 on the road. In the battle of the unstoppable force versus the immovable object, Houston has come out on top in the American League Championship Series after taking Game 4 in a 10-3 blowout at Globe Life Field on Thursday night to even the series.

The Rangers dropped six of seven games against the Astros at Globe Life Field in the regular season, including the oft-mentioned three-game sweep in September. Between that series and the ALCS, Houston has now scored 57 runs in its last five games in Arlington.

“I wish I had a good answer for you,” manager Bruce Bochy said ahead of Game 4. “It seems like we make more mistakes here, to be honest. That's what I see. Going back and going through the games, we're just not quite executing as well. You go to the earlier series in September, I mean, we made a ton of mistakes.

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“They're a good club. They're a really good hitting club, and they're going to take advantage of that. So I think we just have to do a little better job on our execution of pitches.”

Mistakes were made early and often on Thursday.

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Starter Andrew Heaney didn’t get out of the first inning, allowing three runs on four hits and one walk. Dane Dunning -- a planned piggyback behind Heaney -- ate 2 2/3 innings but ultimately allowed three runs on three walks and three hits.

“I just made a lot of mistakes up the middle and they made me pay,” Heaney said. “I just ended up throwing a lot of balls right down the middle, and that's not a recipe for success.”

Even though Texas fell behind early as Heaney labored through just two-thirds of an inning, the turning point of the game came in the fourth inning. The Rangers' offense fought back to tie the game, 3-3, on Corey Seager's home run in the bottom of the third, and it was up to Dunning to provide a shutdown inning to keep things close.

Instead, the right-hander issued a leadoff walk to nine-hole hitter Martín Maldonado before allowing another walk and a single to load the bases. Bochy went to rookie left-hander Cody Bradford to face Yordan Alvarez, who promptly delivered a 401-foot sacrifice fly before José Abreu cleared the bases with a three-run homer.

“They're just capitalizing on mistakes,” Dunning said. “I mean, that's plain and simple. We put ourselves in a bad spot and I put Cody in a bad spot. He never should have been in that situation, but I mean that's the Astros to a ‘T’. They capitalize when we make mistakes.”

Through the first two rounds of the postseason, Bochy rode his top two starters in Jordan Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi, while utilizing as few relievers as possible. It worked in a short series. It worked against teams that weren’t the Astros, more than anything.

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By turning to the Heaney-Dunning piggyback start for the second time this postseason, Bochy was almost assuring heavy usage of a bullpen that was unreliable throughout the regular season. It turned out to be a disappointing, but almost unsurprising outcome: a second straight loss at the hands of the Astros.

Bochy noted postgame that it wasn’t fair to say that Montgomery and Eovaldi are his only trustworthy pitchers, but it’s obvious that the Rangers are at their best when their depth on the pitching staff -- specifically the bullpen -- isn’t tested.

“You need other pitchers to come through for you,” Bochy said. “So that's really not fair. [Montgomery and Eovaldi] have done a great job, but there's other games you have to win. And whether it's the bullpen or another starter, that's what it's going to take.”

That being said, the Rangers are in a good place with Montgomery on the mound Friday for Game 5 and Eovaldi on Sunday for Game 6 in Houston. Their three best relievers -- Josh Sborz, Aroldis Chapman and José Leclerc -- haven’t been used in three days.

It’s basically a best-of-three series now, and Bochy said he likes their chances to head back to Houston with a lead. In best-of-seven series tied after four games, the Game 5 winner has taken the series 46 of 65 times (71%).

“Yeah, I always like my chances with this club,” Bochy said. “They've battled all year. We're playing a good team. Nobody thought it was going to be easy. I've been in this kind of situation where we have to bounce back. That's what we need to do. [The Astros] have played very well in this ballpark. We need to change that. We know it. But it's all going to be us pitching better and scoring some runs.”