Rangers seize ‘big moment,’ snare 2-0 ALCS lead
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
HOUSTON — You hear it so often at playoff time that the words take on the form of the cliche: The team that wins the big moments wins in the postseason.
For two games over two nights in the ALCS, and for seven games since the playoffs began, the Texas Rangers have won just about all of the big moments that have come their way this October.
Texas was at it again Monday, winning a nail-biting 5-4 decision in Game 2 at Minute Maid Park that puts the Houston Astros in the kind of postseason hole they’ve rarely been in during their seven-season run of October dominance.
“I think that’s what makes baseball special,” said Rangers catcher Jonah Heim, who clanged a homer in Game 2 off a metallic sign above the Crawford Boxes. “You never know who’s going to win the big moment.”
While the Rangers haven’t faced this kind of pressure cooker as a group before, a number of their key performers have been there and done that during their careers. One of those seasoned standouts is Texas Game 2 starter Nathan Eovaldi, who won his seventh career playoff game.
Texas gave Eovaldi an early margin to work with, jumping on Houston starter Framber Valdez for four runs in the first inning and chasing the lefty after 2⅔ innings. Texas built a 5-1 lead before Houston started chipping away.
Eovaldi wavered at times, giving up solo homers to Yordan Alvarez and Alex Bregman. The game appeared to be on the verge of flipping Houston’s way in the fifth, when Michael Brantley and Chas McCormick singled. Josh Jung, who otherwise put up a highlight-reel performance in the field at third base, misplayed a slow Jeremy Pena grounder.
Bases jammed, no one out, the Rangers clinging to a 5-2 lead. These are the moments the Astros have won so often over the years during their streak of seven straight ALCS appearance that has included two World Series titles and four pennants.
“I feel like in those big moments you’ve got to bear down and make big pitches,” Eovaldi said. “The stadium is crazy. You have all the fans and everything going nuts. But at the same time you try to simplify everything down to your strengths and what you do best.”
In this instance, pulling off an escape that would make Houdini jealous is what Eovaldi did best. Eovaldi won the moment, striking out Yanier Diaz and Jose Altuve, then getting Bregman on a chopper to third. Threat extinguished.
“That was the turning point in the game,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “Found a way to get through it. And terrific job by [Eovaldi]. He had good stuff today. He pitched very well.”
Eovaldi departed after gutting out six innings, allowing three runs and striking out nine. He has now struck out 23 batters over three 2023 playoff starts and for his postseason career is 7-3 with a 2.87 ERA over 14 appearances, including eight starts.
The next big moment arose in the bottom of the eighth against the Texas bullpen. Alvarez mashed his second homer of the game and sixth of the postseason, taking lefty Aroldis Chapman deep to trim the Rangers’ lead to one run.
With the orange towel-waving fans in Houston worked into a frenzy, anticipating the kind of climatic moment they’ve come to expect from the Astros, Bochy decided to insert closer Jose Leclerc for a possible four-out save, one of the first instances this October in which the manager has pushed one of his relievers.
“I didn’t really think about [four outs],” Leclerc said via a team interpreter. “I just had to get one out, then three more outs.”
Bochy, in pursuit of his fourth World Series title as a manager, has guided as many teams through big moments as anyone. But it appeared that he might have made the wrong call for once when Leclerc started off wild, walking both Jose Abreu and Brantley. Surely this was the tipping-point moment for the inevitable Astros.
Instead, Leclerc got McCormick to reach for a slider down in the zone. McCormick chopped it at Jung. The rookie third baseman has excelled with the glove all season but also missed time in September because of a thumb injury that still requires him to wear a guard on his glove hand.
“It hit off my little thumb guard,” Jung said. “Just hit right off there and popped up in the air. I didn’t panic or anything.”
That’s how it played out, with the ball deflecting off Jung’s glove and suspending in the air for what felt like a long time. Jung simply gathered it back in and stepped on the third-base bag for the forceout, ending the inning.
Leclerc was back out for the ninth and after Pena flied out to the wall in right, Jung went to his knees to smother a sharp Diaz grounder and threw across for the second out. That brought up perennial postseason hero Jose Altuve.
But this was the Rangers’ moment, too: Altuve reached for a Leclerc offering and flied out harmlessly to center. Leclerc said, “I’d didn’t have my best stuff,” but his stuff was good enough for the bend-but-don’t-break Rangers.
“We had balls bounce our way a couple of times and we’ve made some really good plays defensively,” Heim said. “I think that makes us who we are.”
Now the Rangers are getting into historical territory. Texas has reeled off seven straight wins to start the playoffs, including six on the road. Only the 2014 Royals had a longer streak (eight games) to begin a postseason. Only the 2005 White Sox had a longer road win streak (eight) within the same postseason.
Perhaps more importantly, the Rangers have pushed the Astros into a corner from which they’ve rarely had to respond. Only once in 14 series since 2017 has Houston hosted the first two games of a matchup and lost both.
But the Rangers would be well served to recall what the Astros did when they last faced an 0-2 hole with three games looming on the road. In the 2019 World Series, Houston dropped two straight games to the Nationals at Minute Maid. They then traveled to Washington and won three straight.
Game 3 is slated for Wednesday at Globe Life Field. Texas will send ace Max Scherzer to the mound for his first action of the postseason. Houston will start righty Cristian Javier.
Anyone expecting the Astros to panic now will probably be disappointed. After seven years of excellence, the Rangers can expect an opponent that still very much expects to win.
“You treat it like the game of baseball,” said Bregman, whose homer gave him 17 career playoff long balls and 50 postseason RBIs for the Astros. “You got to continue to play and have that next-pitch mentality. So true too. We’ve seen what this October has been like, and sometimes things don’t make sense.”
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Chris Low
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Coach Josh Heupel is adding former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Seth Littrell to his staff at Tennessee in what is expected to be an analyst’s role, sources confirmed to ESPN on Tuesday.
Heupel and Littrell were captains on the Sooners’ 2000 national championship team.
Littrell spent parts of the past two seasons on Oklahoma’s staff. On Oct. 20, he was fired as offensive coordinator after the Sooners lost three of their first four SEC games and were ranked 128th nationally in total offense. They were plagued by inconsistency at quarterback and a rash of injuries at receiver.
Littrell, 46, was the head coach at North Texas from 2016 to 2022. He was 44-44 overall and led the Mean Green to six bowl bids and two Conference USA championship game appearances but was fired after the 2022 season when North Texas finished 7-6. He spent the 2023 season as an analyst at Oklahoma before he was promoted to co-offensive coordinator before the 2024 season when Jeff Lebby left for the Mississippi State head coaching job.
Heupel was the quarterback and Littrell the fullback for the Sooners in 2000, and both ended up being fired as offensive coordinators at their alma mater. Bob Stoops fired Heupel after the 2014 season.
The Vols beat the Sooners last season in Norman on their way to their first appearance in the College Football Playoff. They play again this season Nov. 1 in Knoxville.
Volquest first reported Littrell was joining Tennessee’s staff.
DALLAS — Leaders of the College Football Playoff are asking for more information before they decide whether to change the way teams are seeded in the 12-team playoff this fall, CFP executive director Rich Clark said Tuesday following a day of meetings at the DFW Grand Hyatt.
The 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua — an 11-person group called the CFP management committee — are considering a “straight seeding” format this year, which would reward the selection committee’s top four teams with a first-round bye instead of the four highest-ranked conference champions as was the case this past season.
“We laid the groundwork,” Clark said, following a roughly seven-hour meeting. “There’s still some things the [management] committee wants from us, some research we need to do for them on their behalf so they can make good, informed decisions. They do want to make not just data-informed, but informed — they don’t want to go into this on a whim. They want to make these decisions really strong.”
The management committee has to unanimously agree to any format changes in 2025. Last week, at a meeting in New Orleans involving the SEC and Big Ten conferences, both SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said they would vote in favor of a straight seeding model. In that format, No. 3 seed and Mountain West Conference champion Boise State and No. 4 seed and Big 12 champion Arizona State would not have earned first-round byes because they weren’t ranked in the committee’s top four.
This was the first time, though, that the full management committee discussed it in person. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said “it’s too early” to determine if he would vote in favor of changing the seeding.
“We had a really good discussion,” Yormark said. “The CFP is going to run some models and then come back to us next month. Good, heartfelt conversations — everyone gave their point of view — we’ll vet it out and see what happens.”
There’s a $4 million payout that comes with advancing to a quarterfinal — that’s in addition to $4 million for reaching the playoff for a total of $8 million earned by a team’s respective conference.
“That’ll certainly be a part of the decision,” Clark said, “because whatever changes happen — if changes happen — that would be a part of it. I don’t know how to quantify how much of it is about that, but whatever we use, there’s going to be a financial model that goes with it.”
After the meeting, both Sankey and Petitti left without speaking to reporters, and multiple commissioners declined to comment and were scrambling to catch flights. American Athletic Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti said the group looked at a model as to how the CFP would have played out this past season with straight seeding.
“And then everybody had questions and asked for more information,” Pernetti said, “so the CFP is going to come back to us with some analysis, a couple things that were asked for, but I can’t get specific beyond that.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said any decisions for 2025 have to be made with the new six-year contract, which begins in 2026, in mind.
“You’ve got to look at it in totality,” Phillips said. “It’s one contract coming to an end and a new six-year cycle, but those things have some linkage to them as well.”
Though the possibility of automatic qualifiers has generated conversations both publicly and privately, Clark said the idea was discussed, but not at length, and the Big Ten and SEC did not present any specific model for consideration. Phillips said the CFP was still considering multiple options for 2026 and beyond, including fields of 12, 14 and 16 teams.
“All of it is open for us,” Phillips said. “What you do is you believe in your coaches, you believe in your program, and you want the best format that you possibly can for college football. We all have our own constituents, but that can’t be the only thing that drives what you do with the CFP now and in the future. It’s really important to get this thing right. Access is why we expanded from four to 12, and if we go to 14 or 16 or stay at 12 — and I would just say that — none of those models were taken off. … We just haven’t dug in exactly on which of those we prefer.”
The CFP’s management committee will meet again in March, but it could be a virtual conference because of the hectic scheduling nature of basketball season. Clark said that any decisions about the seeding for this fall could happen next month or at the annual CFP spring meeting in April.
“It’s important we make these decisions for ’25 now,” he said, “because they’re going to impact what happens in ’26 and beyond.”
NEW YORK — The Los Angeles Dodgers owe $1.051 billion in deferred pay to eight players from 2028 to ’46 following Tanner Scott‘s $72 million, four-year contract and Teoscar Hernandez‘s $66 million, three-year deal.
Los Angeles’ high payment point is $100.95 million in both 2038 and ’39, according to details obtained by The Associated Press.
Major League Baseball proposed during collective bargaining on June 21, 2021, to put an end to the practice, but the players’ association rejected the change.
“The Dodgers have gone out and done everything possible, always within the rules that currently exist, to put the best possible team on the field and that’s a great thing for the game. That type of competitive spirit is what people want to see,” commissioner Rob Manfred said last week.
“By the same token,” he added, “it’s clear that we have fans in some markets that are concerned about the ability of the team in their market to compete with the financial resources of the Dodgers. And I think if we’ve been consistent on one point it is we try to listen to our fans on topics like this and I have heard people on this, believe me, I get a lot of emails about it.”
Scott’s contract includes $21 million in deferred money and Hernández’s $23.5 million.
Hernández is owed a total of $32 million in deferred pay from the team. He already was due $8.5 million as part of his $23.5 million, one-year deal for 2024, to be paid in 10 equal installments each July 1 from 2030 to ’39.
Los Angeles also owes deferred payments to two-way star Shohei Ohtani ($680 million from 2034 to ’43), outfielder/infielder Mookie Betts ($115 million in salaries from 2033 to ’44 and the final $5 million of his signing bonus payable from 2033 to ’35), left-hander Blake Snell ($66 million from 2035 to ’46), first baseman Freddie Freeman ($57 million from 2028 to ’40), catcher Will Smith ($50 million from 2034 to ’43) and utilityman Tommy Edman ($25 million from 2037 to ’44).
“It’s just how you account for it,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said when Snell was introduced. “We’re not going to wake up in 2035 and [say]: ‘Oh my god, that’s right. We have this money due.’ We’ll plan for it along the way.”
The Dodgers’ deferred obligations total $4 million each in 2028 and ’29, $7.2 million annually from 2030 to ’32, $17.2 million in 2033, $90.2 million in 2034, $98.95 million a year from 2035 to ’37, $100.95 million in 2038 and ’39, $98.75 million in 2040, $93.75 million annually from 2041 to ’43, $20.75 million in 2044 and $7.25 million a year in 2045 and ’46.
Los Angeles must fund the deferred money in an amount equal to its present-day value by the second July 1 following the season in which it is earned, according to MLB’s CBA.
Hernández received a $23 million signing bonus payable Feb. 1 as part of the deal announced by the World Series champions on Jan. 3.
His agreement includes salaries of $10 million this year, $12 million in 2026 and $14.5 million in 2027. The Dodgers will defer $7.5 million from this year and $8 million in each in 2026 and ’27, and that $23.5 million will be paid in 10 equal installments each Dec. 1 from 2030 to ’39.
Scott’s deferred money is due in a dozen $1.75 million payments each Dec. 1 from 2035 to ’46.
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