'I just got beat': Astros' Lance McCullers says Phillies rocked him without tipped pitches in World Series Game 3

PHILADELPHIA – Perhaps Lance McCullers Jr. and the Houston Astros would feel much better about his unprecedentedly futile World Series outcome if he did, in fact, tip his pitches.

It seemed obvious enough: The Philadelphia Phillies ambushed him for five home runs in the pivotal Game 3 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday night – most ever given up by a pitcher in a postseason game – and rolled to a 7-0 victory that seemed over after two innings.

Surely McCullers, a good pitcher and a 29-year-old veteran of five postseason campaigns, was signaling a tell, a dead giveaway, to Phillies hitters. That Bryce Harper had a good idea what was coming when he blasted what catcher Martin Maldonaldo termed a “lazy curveball” for a two-run home run to start the fusillade in the first inning.

That Harper, as captured by network TV cameras, passed this information on to teammate Alec Bohm, who ambushed another first pitch for a second-inning home run. And that both the information and the production became contagious throughout the Phillies lineup until Brandon Marsh in the second inning and then Kyle Schwarber and finally Rhys Hoskins in the sixth inning finished him off with longballs.

But no, the Astros insist, and the Phillies wisely declined to state, McCullers wasn’t blatantly telegraphing the pitches to come.

GAME 3: Phillies put on power display from the outset vs. Astros 

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He was just flat-out bad, and perhaps that’s the most unsettling element for a heavily-favored Astros club that very likely will need him to start and win a Game 7 for them to win this World Series.

McCullers has given up just 0.7 home runs per nine innings over his seven-year career. The five home runs he gave up in Game 3 were one more than he gave up in eight starts after his return from a flexor tendon injury.

He insists he did not give it away.

“I just got beat, man,” McCullers said after an odd outing where he struck out six in 4 ⅓ innings and kept the Phillies either out of play or on the ground in all but one at-bat, a lazy flyout to center.

Save, of course, for those five home runs.

“This has nothing to do with tipping,” he insisted. “I’m not going to stand in front of you guys and blame something. I was out there and they beat me, and they beat us and that’s it.”

It is a chilling outcome the Astros are not yet ready to accept: That the Phillies are simply better. Yet their predicament is starting to grow dire.

The Astros face a 2-1 deficit in this World Series, along with the pressure that comes with losing World Series in 2019 and 2021. This year was supposed to be different, what with the Astros winning 106 games and drawing an 87-win Phillies team that, sure, was red-hot but also objectively outmanned.

Game 4 may prove the last chance for that concept to take hold.

The Astros will start Cristian Javier, who shut out the Yankees into the sixth inning of ALCS Game 3 and was, as Maldonado put it, “one of the best, if not the best, pitchers in the big leagues. We believe in what he can do.”

And the Astros already toppled Game 4 Phillies starter Aaron Nola in Game 1. That’s nice.

Yet these Phillies are now 6-0 at Citizens Bank Park in this postseason. Harper, now more than ever fulfilling his superstar destiny, has clubbed six postseason home runs.

And suddenly, the Astros have been shut out for 12 consecutive innings and 22 of the last 24. It doesn’t much matter why or how many home runs McCullers gives up if the Astros muster just five hits, as they did Tuesday against ice cold Phillies lefty Ranger Suárez.

“I don’t know. I just thought we didn’t put together anything offensively,” third baseman Alex Bregman said of the McCullers concerns. “We didn’t score any runs. We gotta do a better job on the offensive side of the ball if we want to win.”

Unless they win three consecutive games – two here and Game 6 on Saturday at Minute Maid Park – the Astros will have little choice but give McCullers another go in a Game 7. His misdeeds in the clinching Game 4 of the ALCS – four runs surrendered in five innings – were largely erased by a Jeremy Peña three-run homer.

No such luck Tuesday. And now, he and Maldonado will go back to the lab and figure out what went wrong, such as the hanging curveball to Harper that started the barrage. It was an unsurprising pitch choice – McCullers throws a majority of sliders and curveballs – but not great execution.

“Listen, I am who I am,” he says. “I’m going to throw a lot of off-speed. Everyone knows that. But it was not a well-located pitch.

“It could have been a well-located pitch and the same thing.”

And that’s the scarier proposition: To which Phillies can the Astros dare pitch?

That will be Javier’s problem tomorrow. McCullers can only hope he’ll get that second chance.

“Nothing else I can do now but prepare for a Game 7, because I still believe if we get to that point, I’m the best guy to take the ball and I just gotta pitch better,” he says.

“That’s it.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lance McCullers, Astros say he wasn't tipping his pitches vs. Phillies