Sanchez powers sleep-deprived Nationals to win against Cubs
CHICAGO — Aníbal Sánchez got to sleep Thursday, at least a lot more than his teammates, and proceeded to make the Chicago Cubs look like the club running on nothing but fumes. The rest of the Washington Nationals, the ones who should have been dragging after flying in from Pittsburgh in the dead of night, followed Sánchez’s lead.
Sánchez came to Chicago a day earlier to sidestep the travel fatigue. Then he turned in his best start of the season Friday afternoon, giving up just one hit and two runs (one earned) in 8 1/3 innings, pacing the Nationals to a 9-3 win at Wrigley Field. Sánchez was complemented by an offense that bullied Chicago with 14 hits. He even added two singles and an RBI at the plate. This could have been penciled in as a loss when the schedule was released last summer. But the Nationals bucked that logic, convincingly, winning for the 10th time in 12 games to improve to a season-best 14 games over .500 at 71-57.
It is, after all, hard to win baseball games against any team in any city at any point of the year. Logistics only made the Nationals’ task tougher Friday. They played the night before in Pittsburgh, starting at 7:15 p.m., and didn’t get to their Chicago hotel until after 1 a.m. Central time. Players looked dazed in the clubhouse a few hours before first pitch. Victor Robles was trying to sleep at his locker, his head tucked behind a rack of shirts, his headphones on, until a reporter asked to speak with him.
After the Nationals beat the Pirates, 7-1, their third win in the four-game series, manager Dave Martinez leaned back in his PNC Park office and joked with reporters: “Can you play tomorrow? … Can you play tomorrow? … Who can hit around here?” Then Martinez sat in another office, in another time zone, and put the same names in the same order on his lineup card.
“I talked to everybody last night and this morning, and they all were ready to go,” Martinez said of repeating his lineup despite the tight turnaround. “These guys understand what we are playing for.”
What the Nationals are playing for, here at Wrigley this weekend and in the weeks that will follow, is separation atop the National League wild-card standings. The Nationals entered the weekend series with a 1 1/2-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. But the Cubs led the Cardinals by only a half game in the NL Central, making them one of many teams chasing Washington.
And Sánchez held them back from the start, leaning on his four-seam fastball and mixing in his diving change-up when up in counts. The Nationals took the lead right away, once Adam Eaton roped Jon Lester’s 11th pitch into the right field seats.