Muncy's 409-Foot Blast Completes ATH's Six-Run Comeback

Houston led 6-0 through four innings and looked like it had this one locked up. Then the Athletics scored six runs in the fifth, and Max Muncy finished the job with a solo shot to center in the seventh.

Houston came out swinging from the first pitch. Isaac Paredes hit a sacrifice fly to center to score Peña, then Jose Altuve crushed a 370-foot homer to left center that brought home Alvarez and made it 3-0 before the Athletics had even blinked. The damage kept coming in the second, when Altuve drew a walk that forced in another run, pushing the lead to 4-0. Paredes added a two-run shot to left in the fourth — 350 feet, Peña scoring again — and suddenly Houston was sitting on a 6-0 cushion that looked, for all the world, like a comfortable afternoon at the ballpark. Cristian Javier was dealing, too: 4.0 innings, 8 strikeouts, and the Athletics' lineup was going nowhere fast.

Then the fifth inning happened, and it happened all at once. Brian Serven launched a 402-foot three-run homer to left center, scoring Walton and Hernaiz and cutting the deficit to three. The Athletics weren't done. A double to left from one of their hitters scored Bolte and moved Gelof to third, and then Tommy White singled to right, plating both Gelof and Butler to tie the game at 6-6. Six runs, one inning, and a 6-0 lead was suddenly nothing. The story of the night was that fifth inning — a complete demolition of what had looked like a finished game. Serven finished 2-for-4 with 3 RBI and a run scored; Henry Bolte went 3-for-5 and scored the run that started the avalanche.

With the game knotted at 6-6, it fell to Max Muncy to end it. In the seventh, he hit a solo home run to center — 409 feet — and the win probability swung from 69% in Houston's favor to 49%, a 21-point shift on a single swing. That's the kind of at-bat that defines a game. Jack Perkins wasn't sharp — 5 innings, 5 walks, 1 earned run — but he kept Houston from pulling further ahead while his offense found its footing. Kai-Wei Teng was excellent out of the Houston bullpen, striking out four over 1.2 scoreless innings, but it wasn't enough to hold the lead that had already evaporated. Final: Athletics 7, Astros 6. Houston's pair of big bats — Altuve and Paredes each with a homer and 3 RBI — weren't enough when the bullpen couldn't protect a six-run advantage.