Pitching carries Cubs once again
The Washington Nationals kept insisting Monday night they are just as good as the Chicago Cubs, the defending World Series champions.
Really, they kept saying, even better. They talked about bad breaks, unlucky bounces, bloop hits and line drives that were caught, but all that matters at this time of year is the scoreboard.
The Cubs, 2-1 winners over the Nationals, are just one victory from a third consecutive trip to the National League Championship Series, leading the best-of-five series 2-1.
The Nationals are one loss away from bowing out in the first round for the fourth time in six years.
“We don’t feel like we’re getting beat or embarrassed,” Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy said. “We feel we’re just as good as this team. Or not better.
“We just have to come (Tuesday) and show
who we are.”
The Cubs might have outscored the Nationals by one run in this series, but the way they’re winning it’s as if they’re taunting the bad boys from the NL East.
Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who got the game winner on a two-out bloop single in the eighth, was screaming, “Respect me, respect me,” when the ball landed in between three Nationals.
Rizzo was seething, he said, because first base was open, the Nats chose not to intentionally walk him and he wants to “make guys pay.”
But the Cubs are really making the Nationals pay from the pitching mound.
Sure, it’s the Nationals who for the second time this series had a starter — Max Scherzer, on this night — flirt with a no-hitter.
Scherzer, pitching his first full game in 15
days after a strained hamstring, retired the first nine batters he faced and didn’t give up a hit until one out in the seventh. It came just two days after Stephen Strasburg went 5 2⁄3 innings before giving up a hit.
Yet, it’s been all for naught, as the Cubs starting rotation has stolen the show.
Their starting trio of Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester and Jose Quintana on Monday have gone
18 2⁄3 innings, yielding just six hits and one earned run.
For those keeping score, that’s a 0.48 ERA.
“We got it done because our pitching was so good, quite frankly,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “Give Scherzer a lot of credit, man, to come off that injury like he did and pitch as well as he did. That was phenomenal.
“You had to match that great pitching performance with another one. And we did.”
If it wasn’t for left fielder Kyle Schwarber’s two errors on a routine fly ball that put Murphy on third base, scoring on Ryan Zimmerman’s ensuing double, the Nats would have been shut out for the second time in three games. They have scored earned runs in just two of 27 innings, producing just 11 hits.
They are batting just .121 in the series and have just as ugly a
.200 on-base percentage and .231 slugging percentage.
Trea Turner, their leadoff hitter who stole 46 bases in just 98 games, has yet to reach base in 16 plate appearances, striking out five times with 11 ground outs.
The Nationals, who scored the most runs and hit the most homers in franchise history, are running out of time.
Sure, it’s easy to say now that perhaps Nats manager Dusty Baker should have left Scherzer in the game, having thrown 98 pitches, when he came to the mound with one out in the sev- enth inning. He looked at catcher Matt Wieters. He talked to Scherzer. Neither convinced him that Scherzer should stay in the game.
“I knew you guys were going to second-guess that,” Scherzer said, “but those guys are paid to make a decision They’ve done their homework. They are making the best decision for the team. I understand it. I was juiced out of my mind with adrenaline, but I understood it.”
The Cubs bullpen, with Carl Edwards Jr. getting the win, gave up just one hit in 3 1⁄3 innings. The Nationals bullpen gave up three hits to Scherzer’s one in their 1 2⁄3 innings of work, including Rizzo’s backbreaking blooper off Oliver Perez, a soft fly ball that hung up in the air but landed just outside the reach of Jayson Werth in left field, Michael Taylor in center and Turner from shortstop.
When the game ended, the Nats couldn’t let it go, with Werth and Turner huddled around their replay monitor, seeing if anything could have been done differently.
“In the moment, it’s a tough call for someone to get there and call it, because you’re not going to hear it,” Werth says. ”It’s a tough one. Just kind of an unlucky bounce. What can you say, it’s playoff baseball.”
The time of year where the Cubs have thrived, and the Nats have wilted, with the spotlight burning its brightest.
“We’ve won two in a row before,” Zimmerman said. “We can do it again.”
They’ve just never done it in October.
The Cubs are the latest to show them how it’s done.