Friday was the most thrilling night yet of the 2023 MLB playoffs — and it might have been one of the most thrilling nights in postseason history, period.
Never before had multiple playoff teams overcome a multi-run deficit in the eighth inning or later. In the American League Championship Series, Jose Altuve and the defending World Series champion Houston Astros rallied from down 4-2 in the ninth inning to defeat the Texas Rangers and move to one win from returning to the Fall Classic. In the National League, the underdog Arizona Diamondbacks erased a 5-3 Philadelphia Phillies lead in the eighth inning to tie the National League Championship Series at two.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Along the way, we had a thundering bat flip and a benches-clearing brawl, a home run into a pool and a ground ball bouncing wildly around the infield. Here are our five favorite moments from a wild night of October baseball.
1. Jose Altuve — who else? — hits a go-ahead home run in the ninth
Altuve — the face of an Astros franchise playing in its seventh straight ALCS — comes up huge for Houston yet again. With runners on first and second after a single and a walk off Rangers closer Jose Leclerc, Altuve sends a ball sailing to left field — just out of rookie Evan Carter‘s grasp — for a three-run, go-ahead homer that drains the life out of a raucous Globe Life Field. The visiting Astros take a 5-4 lead and don’t relinquish it, en route to winning all three games in Arlington and heading home needing just one victory to return to the World Series for the fifth time in seven years.
Stat to know: This is the third time in MLB history a team took a 3-2 series lead after dropping the first two games at home in a best-of-seven postseason series. The Astros, in 2023 and 2019, have now accounted for two of them.
