What a wild trip this World Series has been.
Remember a week and a half ago when the Houston Astros, baseball’s self-proclaimed smartest kids in the room, were self-immolating over a now-fired executive’s repugnant taunting of three female reporters? The subsequent schadenfreude when the feel-good Washington Nationals became the fifth visiting team since the advent of the DH in 1973 to win the first two games of the Fall Classic? The begrudging appreciation of a phenomenal Astros team that rebounded to win the next three games on the road?
The drama of Max Scherzer’s neck spasms, the symbolism of the heavy boos for U.S. President Donald Trump at Nationals Park, the viral-on-social-media exhibitionism to raise breast cancer awareness? Then, Stephen Strasburg’s dominance to force a decisive seventh game?
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Equal parts gong show, theatre and riveting competition, all of it, capped spectacularly by a 6-2 comeback victory for the Nationals over the Astros on Wednesday night — the road team prevailing in all seven games of the Series.
It’s the first championship for a franchise that until this year knew only October heartache, dating all the way back to the team’s days in Montreal, where Rick Monday’s ninth-inning homer in the decisive fifth game of the 1981 NLCS still haunts Expos fans.
Imagine that.
Scherzer, having received a cortisone shot and a couple days of treatment including chiropractic work, took the mound like a lion king reclaiming his pride. He hit 97 m.p.h off the hop and snarled his way through five innings, allowing only a Yulieski Gurriel homer in the second and a Carlos Correa RBI single in the fifth, as the Astros went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position against him. The gutsy performance will cement his legacy.
For a while, Houston’s stream of missed opportunities looked unlikely to matter as Zack Greinke, who’d struggled through the post-season, was unhittable. The right-hander faced only one batter above the minimum through six, surrendering a single and a walk. Defensively, he put on a clinic, gobbling up any ball hit hard or soft his way.
Then in the seventh, the Nationals — trailing for the fifth time in as many elimination games this month — started coming. Anthony Rendon, a beast as the games wore on, turned on a middle-down changeup and hammered it over the wall. After Juan Soto walked, Astros manager A.J. Hinch ended Greinke’s night and called on Will Harris to make his fifth appearance of the Series.
Howie Kendrick greeted the right-hander’s first pitch, a down-and-in curveball, by shooting it off the foul pole in right field to put the Nationals ahead, 3-2. Roberto Osuna, whose controversial acquisition last summer was being profanely justified by former Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman during the clubhouse celebrations after the ALCS victory, escaped further damage that inning.
But Osuna was burned for a run in the eighth, as Adam Eaton walked, stole second and scored on a single by Juan Soto, the all-world 21-year-old who delivered the winning hit in the wild-card game to start Washington’s run and knocked in seven runs against the Astros.
Eaton’s two-run single in the ninth off Jose Urquidy, taking over after Joe Smith loaded the bases, pushed the game out of reach.
Left-hander Patrick Corbin, signed to a $140-million, six-year deal last off-season, pitched three shutout innings of relief behind Scherzer, allowing only two hits, while Daniel Hudson closed things out in the ninth.
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Good for Huddy
The Nationals acquired Daniel Hudson from the Toronto Blue Jays on July 31 for single-A right-hander Kyle Johnston, seeking an upgrade for their beleaguered bullpen.
The veteran righty provided that and plenty more, pitching to a 1.44 ERA over 25 innings in 24 games with six saves and allowing only a single run over nine post-season outings, three of which were in the World Series.
Ken Giles was also on the Nationals’ radar, but clearly they got the guy they needed. Hudson struck out Michael Brantley for the final out, whipping his glove before being dogpiled on the mound.
Bunting is stupid
In the second inning, there was blood in the water. Gurriel opened the inning by lining a middle-down slider over the left-field wall to put the Astros up 1-0. Yordan Alvarez and Correa followed with singles. Scherzer looked to be legitimately in trouble. Then Robinson Chirinos, owner of two home runs in the World Series, tried to bunt this 95.1 m.p.h heater.
Predictably, he popped it up and surrendered an out. Josh Reddick proceeded to ground out before George Springer lined out to left field. Inning over.
Now, Scherzer is the OG and there’s merit in trying to grind out another run off him. But coming off the neck injury, he wasn’t peak Mad Max. He was vulnerable in the spot and making him earn the extra out would have been more taxing. The Astros had a mere 10 sacrifice bunts all season, and although Chirinos had two of them, small-ball isn’t their game. And in playing for an extra run, they ended up adding none.
The bigger issue for Houston is in going 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position. But when they had a chance to go for the jugular, they didn’t.
Weren’t we going to let the kids play?
At the beginning of the season, Major League Baseball ran an ad campaign featuring a number of the game’s young stars at a news conference, starting out with rote answers before dropping the clichés to instead brag about their upcoming exploits.
At the end of it, Mike Trout is asked if there’s anything he wants to say. “Just let the kids play,” he replies, an overt message to the messianic zealots of the so-called “Right Way to Play,” whatever that is.
Well, all it took was Alex Bregman carrying his bat up the first-base line after a Game 6 homer and Juan Soto dropping some revenge mimicry later in the contest to get the pious harrumphing about disrespect, the way things should be done, blah, blah, blah.
The conversation is so, so tired.
Was the Bregman bat carry odd, off-putting even? Sure. Was Soto’s follow-up act awesome? Totally. Was anybody harmed in the making of this entertainment? Absolutely not.
Baseball can be intense, tough, competitive and – gasp – fun all at the same time. There’s always a line that shouldn’t be crossed and the thresholds on that will inevitably vary. But as Astros manager A.J. Hinch said before the game, “I don’t want to go too far the other way where all of a sudden we’re not allowing any of the celebrations or any of the bat flips or any of the high exuberant celebrations in dugouts, the handshakes, the hugs, the dancing in the dugouts. All that stuff is fun for the younger generation of fans that we’re trying to get interested in the sport.”
Later he added, “Being respectful to the game, being respectful to your opponent, not crossing that line is something that we always need to preach to our players. But I want our fans to know our players and the personalities that come with it within the realm of sportsmanship.”
That’s a good, balanced take. And to err on the side of caution, just let the kids play, already.
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