Cole shows why he’s money
Duel of aces is not to be with Nats’ Scherzer out; neck pain
WASHINGTON — The Houston Astros handed the ball to Gerrit Cole, and he gave them a firm grip on the World Series.
Minus ailing Max Scherzer, the Nationals were no match in this Washington wipeout.
Cole looked exactly like the man who dominated baseball most of this season, bouncing back from a Game 1 clunker to pitch the Astros to a 71 win Sunday night and a 32 lead.
Slumping rookie Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa each hit an early tworun homer off emergency starter Joe Ross. George Springer added another drive, and Houston won its third straight at Nationals Park.
What a turnaround, too — outscored 177 overall at Minute Maid Park, Houston hammered Washington 193 at Nationals Park.
Scherzer beat Cole in the opener, and was the Nats’ best hope to slow Houston. But Scherzer was scratched 31⁄2 hours before game time because of an irritated nerve near his neck, which could finish him for the Series.
Houston heads home with two chances to claim its second Series title in three years. Justin Verlander gets the first try when he starts against Stephen Strasburg in Game 6 on Tuesday night.
Cole threw threehit ball for seven innings, nicked only by Juan Soto’s home run in the seventh, and struck out nine — eight on breaking balls.
“I just thought that we needed to execute better pitches this time out, and I didn’t realize that that was how we got that many strikeouts,” Cole said. “I guess the situation just called for breaking balls in that spot.”
Cole’s mix of 99 mph heat and sharp breaking balls induced a bevy of bad swings from the Nats. It might’ve been his final start for Houston — he’s eligible for free agency and figures to command a steep price.
Standing tall on the mound, Cole was unflappable in the face of 43,910 fans who went from fired up to furious to flatout frustrated.
The crowd gave Ross, a Bishop O’DowdOakland alum, a huge ovation when he walked onto the field for warmups, sympathetic to his situation — he had pitched two innings in almost a month.
But when President Trump was shown on the videoboard for about 10 seconds before the fourth inning, watching from a suite, the fans let loose with boos and broke into a brief but audible chant of “Lock him up!”
The fans weren’t finished, either.
Cole ended his outing by getting Victor Robles on a called third strike, a pitch the TV zone showed to be off the plate. The crowd soon began a derisive chant at umpire Lance Barksdale.
“It’s tough. I think ultimately some of those pitches were off the plate,” Cole said.
Cole escaped a firstandthird, noout jam in the second, then breezed into the seventh.
“I just made some good pitches,” he said.
Before the game, all the attention was on Scherzer and the switch to Ross.
“Totally get the Max Scherzer shock of going from one of the top pitchers in baseball to a young kid, but we don’t — we’re not going to highfive,” Houston manager AJ Hinch said.
Alvarez, normally the Astros’ designated hitter, quickly justified his spot in left field. He launched a drive to leftcenter in the second.
Correa made it 40 with his homer in the fourth and Yuli Gurriel added a twoout RBI single in the eighth.
Springer’s 15th career postseason home run — seven in the World Series for the 2017 Series MVP — finished off the rout.
Astros sorry: Astros owner Jim Crane sent a letter to a Sports Illustrated reporter to apologize for his team accusing her of trying to “fabricate a story.”
In the letter that Stephanie Apstein posted Sunday on Twitter, Crane wrote that he was apologizing and retracting the team’s initial statement calling her professionalism into question after she published a story Monday reporting that Astros assistant general manager Brandon Taubman profanely taunted a group of female reporters after the Astros’ ALCSclinching victory Oct. 19 against the Yankees.
After the SI story was published, the Astros called it “misleading and completely irresponsible.” Other reporters corroborated what Apstein wrote, and Taubman was fired Thursday.