Astros vs. Yankees 2017 live results: Score updates and highlights from ALCS Game 4

Can the Astros give the Yankees their first home loss of the 2017 postseason, or will New York even up the ALCS?

It’s Game 4 of the ALCS, and no matter what happens tonight, there will be a Game 5 on Wednesday. That’s because the Yankees continued their home postseason win streak with an 8-1 victory in Game 3, bringing the series to 2-1.

On the mound tonight for New York is Sonny Gray, and he’ll be facing Lance McCullers. Neither team decided to go with their Game 1 starters on short rest here, so you won’t be able to criticize or praise them for the decision. Maybe you can criticize them for not doing it, though! Won’t that be fun?

First pitch is at 5:08 p.m. ET, and we’ll be here to live blog the whole thing. The game, I mean, not just the first pitch.

As usual, to read from the beginning of the live blog, scroll down to the “1st inning” header and work your way back up from there.

3rd inning

Brian McCann leads off the third inning by getting hit by a pitch, which brings George Springer and the top of the Astros’ lineup to the plate again. McCann is erased on a grounder to short, but Springer can motor, and the Yankees don’t even bother throwing the ball to first base to try for the double play.

They got it with the very next batter, as Reddick grounded into a double play, ending any threat the Astros were mustering. That’s the kind of quick inning Gray needed with his already escalating pitch count — he began the frame at 41, and ended it at 49.

McCullers gets Aaron Hicks to ground out to open the bottom of the third, but then Todd Frazier makes him work a bit and delivers a bloop hit over Altuve in shallow right.

Austin Romine grounds out, but it was productive, at least, moving Frazier to second. That’s the first runner in scoring position for New York in the game, and just in time for Brett Gardner and the top of the order.

2nd inning

Yuli Gurriel, Alex Bregman — batting lower in the order once again — and Carlos Beltran are due up for the Astros in the second. Gurriel grounds out to to third on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, and now here’s Bregman making Gray really work. Eight pitches in, he works a full count, and Gray is at 32 pitches through just 1-1/3 innings.

Bregman would ground out on the 10th pitch of the at-bat, on a play not quite close enough to go to video review, but pretty close, nonetheless. And that brings up former Yankees’ slugger Carlos Beltran, whom New York traded to the Rangers last summer before he joined up with the Astros for 2017.

Beltran rips a double to the right field corner, when Gray puts a pitch right into the hot zone portion of the hot zone graphic Fox had put over the strike zone. Couldn’t you see the red, Gray? You throw at the blue squares!

It’s all for naught, though, as Marwin Gonzalez flies out to left. We’ve got our first hit of the game, but are still waiting on that first run.

Sanchez’s first at-bat as a DH goes a lot like every other Yankees’ DH at-bat: it ended with an out. Man, Lance McCullers looks impossible to hit when that curve is working. It’s thrown so hard (for a curve), and the break is huge. Greg Bird can tell you all about it now that he’s back in the dugout after swinging through one.

Starlin Castro grounds out on the second pitch, and McCullers is through two frames on 22 pitches — 19 fewer than Gray.

1st inning

Austin Romine is behind the plate tonight, not Gary Sanchez, with Joe Girardi saying it has to do with how Sonny Gray will pitch with the change. Sanchez is still in the lineup, but as the designated hitter. Hey, it could work out: Yankees’ DHs haven’t done much in the postseason.

Gray has made one other postseason start, but it lasted just 3-1/3 innings. He also struggled a little down the stretch, posting a 4.58 ERA in September: the Yankees will need the version of Gray they hoped they were trading for to show up and face the powerful Astros’ lineup.

So far, so good, as Gray sits down the first two batters he faces — George Springer and Josh Reddick — on eight pitches. He walks Jose Altuve on four pitches, which is probably the smart move once Gray got to 3-0 on him — why give Altuve something he can hit easily?

Carlos Correa goes down with a groundout to short, and Gray’s first inning is a solid one despite the walk.

Lance McCullers didn’t make a start in the ALDS, but he did throw three relief innings against the Red Sox in the one game Boston managed to win. It wasn’t necessarily McCullers’ fault, as he gave up two runs out of the 10 total Astros’ pitching allowed, but Houston will still need more separation between his runs and innings tonight.

You’re going to see a lot of curveballs from McCullers, even if David Cone is sitting on his couch watching this game calling all of them sliders.

Brett Gardner was not his usual patient self, grounding out on the second pitched he saw. Aaron Judge followed that up with a strikeout on a curve underneath the zone — he’s still chasing a few too many of those for his own good.

Didi Gregorius, batting third, hits one to center right in front of the warning track, and we’re on to the second inning.