Kyle Schwarber was close to turning a triple play for the Red Sox against the Astros on Friday night, but Yordan Alvarez, who was a Boston killer all through the American League Championship Series, was able to score from third.
Houston ended up winning Game 6 by a score of 5-0 over Boston to punch its ticket to the World Series.
The unassisted double-play by Schwarber, though a beauty, left the first baseman wishing he could have done more to save the run.
“It was a very weird play,” Schwarber told reporters after the game, as transcribed by ASAP Sports. “Especially just with the situation where it’s a one-run game, and you don’t want that guy to score. You get the ball hit to you and … in the corner of my eye, I could see (Carlos) Correa go back to the bag. And when I caught the ball, I looked at third, and I thought I saw (Alvarez) pause; just kind of stop. I was, like, ‘OK, he is not going to go.’ That’s when I kind of turned around, and that’s when I went for the tag and the step on first. And then when I turned back around, obviously he scored.”
Schwarber wished he realized he had just a bit more time to make the play.
“If I could kind of do it all back, I wish that I could have just realized you have a little bit more time there just because Correa is coming back to the bag and you can see if Yordan is going to go home,” Schwarber said. “Me, personally, I didn’t want the run to score. I would rather keep the run from not scoring and having us work our way out from there. And just realizing that I could have had a little bit more time with Correa going back to the bag to really kind of stop him fully, and then you could probably still turn a double play. That was a play that I kind of wish I could have back.”
While the defense made a few mistakes in Game 6, it essentially was the offense that just couldn’t get anything going against the Astros.
Schwarber will be a free agent and hopes to be able to return to the Red Sox.
