Eduardo Perez and Tim Kurkjian discuss the difference Jackie Bradley Jr. made in Game 2 and why he's better than what his stats say. (1:15)

BOSTON -- It's never easy in postseason baseball.

With the final swing of the game Sunday night, Alex Bregman sent the ball sailing out toward left field. In any other park in the major leagues, it's a majestic -- but routine -- fly ball. At Fenway Park, with the Green Monster looming so close, a brief moment of terror permeated the old ballpark. If the ball landed in the Monster seats, the score would be tied, and Boston's three-run lead in the ninth shattered with a remarkable two-out rally.

Bregman knew it was short. "I missed it," he said. "If I got it, it would have been on the street behind Fenway Park."

Left fielder Andrew Benintendi drifted back to the warning track. "It wasn't too close," he said. "Obviously it was really high. I think [the pitch] got in on him a little bit. I was about a step in front of the wall. I knew right away it wasn't going to be a home run."

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With that, the game was over, Craig Kimbrel had tight-roped his way to the save after giving up a run, and the Boston Red Sox defeated the Houston Astros 7-5 in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. The series goes back to Houston tied up and maybe the presumed demise of the 108-win Red Sox was a little premature.

Before the game, manager Alex Cora laughed lightly when asked if this was a must-win game. He wasn't insulted by the question but was merely reacting to the obvious: It's not a must-win game until the other team has three wins. The relaxed nature of his answer helps explain in small part why this team won 108 games. They expect to win. Of course they do: They won 108 games!

"We're going to show up today," Cora insisted.

Still, down 0-2 heading to Houston would have been a major problem against a team that hasn't lost two games in a row since August.

"This was a big one," Benintendi said. "This is probably as close to a must-win, I thought, as it can get, but in the end, it's not necessarily a must-win."

Reliever Matt Barnes, who retired all four batters he faced, put it even more succinctly: "We needed to win tonight's game."

The Red Sox even won a postseason game started by David Price -- a sentence never before written other than in an alternate universe where postseason David Price is a hybrid between Sandy Koufax and Mariano Rivera. Price didn't get the win, falling one out short of the necessary five innings, but he didn't get the loss either.

Instead, that went to Gerrit Cole, who gave up two runs in the first inning and three more in the third on Jackie Bradley Jr.'s three-run double off the Green Monster. From the always reliable files of "You Can't Predict Baseball," Cole had made 33 starts this season, including his outing against Cleveland in the division series, and hadn't given up five runs in any of them. His streak of 34 consecutive starts going back to last season without giving up five-plus runs was the third-longest active streak, behind only Aaron Nola (37) and Jacob deGrom (35).

Cole settled down after the 30-pitch third inning to go six, but the two-out, 2-1 fastball to Bradley ended up being the key hit. He wanted it low and away, but it was low and not away enough, and Bradley poked it off the wall in left.

Bradley had been 1-for-17 with the bases loaded in the regular season. In the first inning, he grounded out to second with the bases loaded to end a threat.