Sweeping capital improvement
Cole’s usual stuff, homer barrage lift Houston closer to second title
WASHINGTON — The crowd wore red and rose as one, serenading a spot starter soon to be shellacked. Chants of Joe Ross’ name engulfed the night air. Ross revved up an atmosphere the Astros almost entirely extinguished.
Red towels twirled. Fortythreethousand people yelledn in unison “Let’s go Joe!” The 26yearold reliever stood for a start he had no business making.
To field a fitting end to Washington’s wretched weekend, ace Max
Scherzer was scratched from an anticipated duel with the Astros’ Gerrit Cole. The Nationals were now reliant on Ross to deliver a direly needed win. Baseball creates storybook scenarios like no other sport. Maybe another would be authored here.
Sentimentality soon segued into a sobering reality. The Astros have awoken.
“The confidence has always been up, even when we came here down two,” Houston catcher Martin Maldonado said. “We knew what we had to do coming into here — play the game the way we’ve been playing all year. And we did.”
Washington waited 86 years for World Series baseball. Houston delivered a dismantling. The Astros neutralized the Nationals in every which way, wringing their pesky offense and pounding their pitching. The authoritative attitude with which they play, absent for most of two home losses, seemed to return.
A 71 win Sunday in Game 5 supplied an apt end to this threegame
Astros evisceration. Houston is nine innings away from its second World Series title. It sends Justin Verlander to the mound Tuesday in Minute Maid Park.
“They’re going to be the hardest 27 outs we’ve gotten all season,” Astros reliever Joe Smith said.
Embroiled in both on and offfield uncertainty upon arrival Thursday, the Astros exited Nationals Park on the cusp of a championship.
“The off day for us really helped us reset,” said Houston’s George Springer, who smacked a tworun homer in the eighth. “Maybe kind of stop pressing a little bit. I don’t know. I said when we got beat the other night that this was not the time for us to feel sorry about ourselves.”
Slumping sluggers broke out. An upstart rookie upstaged a frettedover, freeagent acquisition in Game 4. Cole conducted a pitching clinic in Game 5, buoyed at long last by the bats that were all but impotent in the two losses that started this series.
Twentyseven innings were
played inside Nationals Park. Not once did the home team take a lead. The Astros outscored them 193. Their pitching punched out 27 batters and yielded five extrabase hits. Washington got one hit with runners in scoring position.
“We just take the mentality like we took during the regular season,” Cole said. “We’re just going to kind of put one foot in front of the next, respond to the challenges that come our way and you shower off the mistakes, and celebrate the amazing plays.”
In his last start of the season, perhaps his final an Astro, Cole threw seven innings of onerun ball. He struck out nine. Memories of an unflattering, fourrun performance against Washington in Game 1 faded.
Seven of his nine strikeouts came against a sublime slider. Two others were against the curveball. Juan Soto smacked a solo home run against the righthander in the seventh, supplying the only mistake on his line.
“We knew the adjustments we had to do to get through the lineup,” Maldonado said, “The first game that he pitched, he didn’t have the secondary stuff. It doesn’t matter how hard you throw, you’re going to get hit. Today we did a good job mixing the slider, mixing some changeups and the curveball any time he want.”
Cole’s most lethal arsenal did not arrive until the later innings. It mattered little. Washington mustered five baserunners while he worked. Two advanced to scoring position. The dominance would work in a duel against Scherzer. Ross took his place.
Scherzer’s scratch occurred only four hours before game time. It sent Houston hitters hurrying to the video room. Astros manager A.J. Hinch made no changes in his starting lineup after the abrupt announcement. Save springtraining appearances and two innings in Game 3, Ross was a relative unknown.
Ross relies on a sinker and spins a slider. Fiftyfour of his 78 pitches were either or. The Astros swung and missed only six times. Hard contact was constant. Eight of the balls they put in play were struck harder than 99 mph. Two left the ballpark.
“We don’t take anything for granted,” Astros second baseman Jose Altuve said. “We all know Scherzer is one of the greatest pitchers ever … This game, you don’t take anything for granted, you have to go out there and perform.”
Ross rolled two double plays to extract himself from any further trouble. The five innings he fired were admirable given the absurd circumstance. Two swings from Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa supplied all four Houston runs. Cole required little else.
Alvarez did not play in either of the first two games inside this National League ballpark, relegated only to two rather meaningless pinchhit plate appearances during two Astros wins.
Soon, the ballpark was dead, beaten by baseball’s best team that has regained some of what it lost.
“We didn’t give up,” Altuve said. “A lot of teams, down 02 and losing at home, it’s not easy. We stayed confident. We believed in ourselves. We’ve been playing great — what we’re doing is amazing — but we have to go out there and win one more.”