couldn’t soar into another World Series.A year after Houston won the first title in the team’s 56 seasons Michael Brantley Jersey , Verlander had a rare off night in an elimination game and the Astros lost the AL Championship Series to the Boston Red Sox in five games.“This year’s team is better than last year’s team,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “Everyone in here will have a little bit of an edge to play with, a chip on their shoulder knowing that we believe we should have been back-to-back champions.”Houston boosted its rotation with Gerrit Cole last winter and its bullpen with Roberto Osuna ahead of the July trade deadline. The Astros won a club-record 103 games, led the majors with a plus-263 run difference and swept Cleveland 3-0 in the Division Series.But after beating Boston in the opener, the banged-up Astros were outscored 27-14 in losing four in a row — one short of their season high. The major leagues remain without a repeat champion since the New York Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000.“The World Series is the only thing that was going to make this team feel like we accomplished much,” manager AJ Hinch said. “It’s a pretty hollow feeling when the season abruptly ends the way that it does and the way that it did.”Their season came to a close a day after the Astros were cleared of any wrongdoing by Major League Baseball after a credentialed Houston employee was caught pointing his cellphone toward opposing dugouts during playoff games in Cleveland and Boston.Verlander was last year’s Championship Series MVP with two wins against the New York Yankees, including seven scoreless innings to force a Game 7.The Game 1 winner this year, he entered 4-1 with a 1.21 ERA when starting potential elimination games with Detroit and Houston. He had pitched 26 scoreless innings in such situations before J.D. Martinez’s go-ahead solo home run in the third.“We had a good season. Didn’t end up where we wanted. We lost to a great team,” Verlander said. “I said it last year, playoffs, it’s kind of flip a coin sometimes. It’s whoever is playing the best baseball at the time. We were dealing with a ton of injuries as you could tell.”Verlander wasn’t the only Houston player who didn’t measure up to his 2017 form.Altuve, a six-time All-Star and last year’s AL MVP, went on the disabled list for the first time in July with right knee soreness. He never seemed healthy, banged the knee in the playoffs and was limited to a designated hitter in the last three games. He hit .250 in the series with two RBIs.“It’s not a secret that my knee was hurting pretty bad,” Altuve said. “But it’s something that I don’t have control of. It hurts and I couldn’t control being healthy. I feel really, really bad for not being on the field for my team but one thing you can know is that I gave everything I had, healthy http://www.indiansfanproshop.com/authentic-yan-gomes-jersey , not healthy that was all I have.”Shortstop Carlos Correa dealt with back issues much of the second half of this season. While he had three hits and two RBIs in Game 4 — his only multi-hit game this postseason — he hit a relatively quiet .316 with three RBIs against the 108-win Red Sox.Right-hander Charlie Morton was a first-time All-Star and won 15 games, but he dealt with shoulder issues the second half of the season. Lance McCullers Jr., a 10-game winner, said he was pitching through some stuff like others while focused on trying to win a World Series, and indicated without being specific that his injury might require surgery.“The heart of this team, really kind of unparalleled. We had guys playing through so much,” Verlander said. “These guys could give nothing else to a man.”Morton is among the potential free agents for the Astros. That group also includes former Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel, catchers Brian McCann and Martin Maldonado, and utility player Marwin Gonzalez. CHICAGO (AP) — The crowd of 39,275 roared when Jason Heyward caught Francisco Pena’s fly ball for the final out on a wet, cool afternoon at Wrigley Field.Now, everything gets real crazy.Anthony Rizzo had four hits and scored three times, and the Chicago Cubs set up a tiebreaker game for the NL Central title by beating the St. Louis Cardinals 10-5 on Sunday.“We know what’s at stake. Obviously we needed to win today, by all means,” Rizzo said, “and tomorrow is the same thing.”Shortly after Milwaukee completed an 11-0 victory over Detroit, Jorge De La Rosa worked a hitless ninth inning to move the Cubs back into a tie with the Brewers at 95-67. Yairo Munoz walked with two out Kenny Lofton Jersey , but Pena’s harmless fly to right closed it out.Next up, game No. 163.Chicago hosts Milwaukee on Monday afternoon and the Colorado Rockies visit the Los Angeles Dodgers as baseball holds a pair of tiebreaker games on the same day for the first time. At stake is the postseason road for each club.The winner at Wrigley gets a spot in the division series and home-field advantage throughout the NL playoffs. The loser plays again Tuesday night, hosting the runner-up in the NL West in the wild-card game.“It’s interesting that baseball is such a perfect game in some ways that it takes 162 to not decide anything,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.St. Louis (88-74) was in contention heading into the final week of the season, but it was swept by Milwaukee before dropping two of three against Chicago. Catcher Yadier Molina, outfielder Marcell Ozuna and infielders Kolten Wong and Jedd Gyorko were held out of the finale due to nagging injuries.St. Louis missed out on the playoffs for a third straight year for the first time since it went 75-86 in 1999. It finished with a 41-28 record under Mike Shildt, who took over as manager after Mike Matheny was fired on July 14.“Three straight years of coming up short,” said first baseman Matt Carpenter, who finished with a career-high 36 homers. “We as an organization, as a total group, top to bottom, everybody in this clubhouse, all the staff, we have to find a way to get better, to compete if we want to play in October.”The only other time Chicago began the final day of the regular season tied for the lead in its division or league was in 1908, when it beat Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants 4-2 at the Polo Grounds for the NL pennant. The Cubs then won their second straight World Series title before enduring a championship drought that cruised past a century before they won it all again in 2016.Rizzo and company are looking for another October run, but they have been plagued by an inconsistent offense. It looked like more of the same when Jack Flaherty (8-9) cruised into the third inning with a 2-0 lead and then retired the first two batters.Then everything changed.The next six batters reached for Chicago http://www.indiansfanproshop.com/authentic-jim-thome-jersey , producing four runs. Rizzo hit a tiebreaking double to give him 100 RBIs on the year, waving his arms in the air as he coasted into second. Jason Heyward added an RBI single.“Just the overall approach today, two outs, a lot of two-out rallies … just kept things going and kept the line moving,” Rizzo said, “and we usually have good success when we do that.”The Cubs broke it open with four more in the fifth. Kris Bryant roped a two-run double into the left-field corner. Two batters later, Willson Contreras hit a drive to left for his first homer since Aug. 1.“We just couldn’t stop them,” Shildt said.Allen Webster (1-0), the first of eight Chicago relievers after Mike Montgomery was pulled in the third, got two outs for the win.Jose Martinez, Paul DeJong and Patrick Wisdom each had two hits for St. Louis, which left 12 runners on base. Munoz finished with three RBIs.CENTURY CLUBRizzo became the first lefty batter in franchise history with four seasons with at least 100 RBIs.TRAINER’S ROOMCardinals: Wisdom was visited by a trainer and Shildt after he was hit by a pitch in the third. The trainer examined Wisdom’s left wrist for a short time, but he stayed in the game. … Wong (left knee) is expected to undergo an MRI in the near future, general manager Michael Girsch said.UP NEXTJose Quintana (13-11, 4.09 ERA) will start the tiebreaker for Chicago. Quintana is 6-2 with a 1.60 ERA in 10 career starts against Milwaukee. The Brewers did not announce a starter.
