Nationals in seven: Go figure
If home-field advantage no longer means anything in baseball, perhaps the rules should be changed to allow the visiting team to bat second. That from a guy who maintains that the second game of a doubleheader should be played first.
This is written in the wake of a World Series that defied almost every convention on the books. Washington, in a headline last printed when newspapers were using hot lead, is the champion of Major League Baseball. And after a Fall Classic that the phrase “walkoff hit” was rendered obsolete.
Houston, the American League champion, earned home-field advantage by virtue of a regular season-high 107 wins. That was fairly earned in the heat of battle and not through a tweaking of rules that involved winning the midseason All-Star Game. The Astros survived playoff crucibles against Tampa Bay (five games) and New York, winning a second AL championship in three years on what would be the last walkoff hit of the playoffs, Jose Altuve’s two-run homer off Yankee Aroldis Chapman in the 10th inning of ALCS Game 6.
Washington looked like a party crasher by comparison, the Nationals associated with postseason failure after relocating from Montreal in 2005. Suspicion was raised about the 2019 Nationals after they lost slugger Bryce Harper to free agency and further after starting
19-31. Earl Weaver, the late Baltimore manager, claimed a team couldn’t get serious about pennant contention until 20 games above
.500. Here were the Nationals in an early hole minus one of their franchise players and with an untested manager and age-old problems in the bullpen.
Baseball experts became too busy spinning a possible World Series rematch (2017) between the Astros and Dodgers or, an ageless October rerun, Dodgers and Yankees to see the Nationals coming. Unable to catch Atlanta in the NL East, the Nationals settled for coach seating as host to the league’s wild-card game.
Unleashing on Oct. 1 the first rounds of what the old-time Yankees called “five o’clock lightning,” the Nationals rallied past Milwaukee 4-3. That sent Washington to
Los Angeles for the NL championship series and, though ace Clayton Kershaw lost Game 2, the Dodgers put the Nationals in their place, it seemed, with a 10-4 rout for a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five set.
Anyone still doubting the Nationals should have been converted after Washington, returning west for what loomed as a Dodger coronation, turned baseball’s ruling order on its head. Back-to-back homers in the eighth inning off Kershaw forced a 3-3 tie in Game 5 that Howie Kendrick snapped with a 10th-inning grand slam off Joe Kelly, when everyone was expecting Dodgers closer Kelsey Jansen on the mound.
It would not be the first Game 7 victory on the road for Washington, nor would it be the last that the losing manager’s handling of pitchers would be questioned.
St. Louis, tired and worn out from a September chase to the NL Central title, was overmatched in four straight by the Nationals, who never trailed in any game. Washington proved so dominant that baseball experts, those deep thinkers again, reasoned that six days off before the World Series would bring the Nationals back to earth, as if it were nearing midnight and Cinderella must return her magic slipper.
A World Series then that by its marquee alone, Astros vs. Nationals, represented something fresh and exciting turned absolutely bewildering.
Regardless of the matchup, one of baseball’s eternal truisms proved accurate again: In a short series, favor the team with the best pitching. (Or if in doubt, go with the team whose manager handles his staff better.)
Houston rated a pre-Series edge because of recent October experience (winning the 2017 Series and reaching the 2018 ALCS) and two 20-game winners, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole. Washington could retaliate with Stephen Strasburg (staff-high 18 wins) and Max Scherzer, although with the Nationals’ tradition of blowing leads in postseason, it was thought that their bullpen could not be trusted with any lead.
Form took an immediate beating with Washington winning 5-4 and 12-3 at Houston, beating Cole and Verlander behind long-ball hitting by five different players. Carryover momentum lasted just long enough for Zack Greinke to quiet the Nationals’ thunder in Game 3, 4-1. A World Series parade in Houston, perhaps after a Game 6 sweep, appeared likely after the Astros, by 8-1 and 7-1, kept Washington winless in World Series home games since 1924.
Strange thing, though: Neither team with the series lead could sustain its edge after a day off. The Nationals’ big bats returned with a vengeance in Game 6, 7-2, and again in their third winner-take-all triumph of the postseason, 6-2 Wednesday night.
Washington’s Dave Martinez, a baseball lifer who waited a long time for field command, was generally praised for not dwelling on a Game 6 umpiring controversy that might still be raging if the Nationals had not padded a 3-2 lead. Strasburg, a former No. 1 overall draft choice, worked into the ninth inning, like one would expect of a Gibson or a Seaver, while Verlander, still without a World Series win, turned into the hard-luck symbol of this postseason.
Houston’s A.J. Hinch subjected himself to second-guessing for not using Cole in relief when Washington, down 2-0 in Game 7, surged ahead 3-2 in the seventh. At the least, snubbing the 20-game winner in the biggest game of the season amounts to a poor bargaining chip for the Astros in negotiations with Cole, a prospective free agent.
So we have the world champion Washington Nationals, which rolls off the tongue no easier than when the New York Mets were the anointed ones after the 1969 Series. Then again, in a decade that produced the first World Series title for Houston — and the first in 108 years for the Chicago Cubs — no one should be surprised at what the national pastime offers any longer.
Whether Washington repeats next year is less interesting to me, frankly, than how quickly Donald Trump invites the Nationals for a presidential greeting and whether any player on a team representing the nation’s capital refuses for political reasons.