The Nationals returned home with a chance put the series in a vise. They know now there will be a Game 5, and the smart money is on a return trip to Houston — and not for just one game, but a Game 7. Both these teams are too talented, too resilient and too tenacious for a short series. The World Series, chances are, is going to be a slog, and it is going to be a bare-knuckle fight.
“Yeah,” Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said past midnight after Game 3. “I never really thought any other way, and I don’t think they would allow themselves to go down that path.”
The Nationals’ 4-1 loss Friday night was about as dead-even as a three-run game could be. The Astros delivered on their chances, and the Nationals stranded an army. It left the Nationals holding a 2-1 series lead, and some subtle advantages beyond the one-game game lead. It also brought the 107-win Astros back from the brink, a place the 2017 champions never even entertained reaching.
“Oh, 3-0?” reliever Joe Smith said. “Yeah, no, no. I was pretty confident we were going to win today. I expected us. We’re a good team, man. … I didn’t think we’d sweep or anything like that. You’re in the World Series. It’s the two best teams in baseball playing each other. It should be good games. It shouldn’t be over in four or five.”
In their clubhouse after Game 2 and on their flight to Washington, the Astros repeated simple mantras. Don’t panic. Relax. The talent is here. We’ve been here before. Keep it simple, have good at-bats and play clean baseball. They accomplished all of those in front of a crowd both clubhouses classified as frenzied.
“It reestablishes us in this series,” Hinch said. “When they come into our ballpark and beat Gerrit and Justin, that’s a big punch. They threw a big punch at the beginning of this series. Now, we’ve got enough experience and enough feel about how series go that we knew, we win today, get a little mojo back on our side, get a little bit of momentum, start to swing the bats a little bit better, we’re not afraid of playing in any venue. But a win was huge for us to sort of reenergize the fact that this series is clearly not over.”
It is, in fact, a slugfest. One at-bat typified the new tenor. In the fifth inning, Hinch pulled Zack Greinke for reliever Josh James to face Ryan Zimmerman. “I’m well aware it’s his ballpark,” Hinch said, and he wanted a power right-hander for the moment.
James got ahead, 0-2, and then sent Zimmerman spinning to the dirt with a high-and-tight fastball that James said got away from him. Zimmerman dusted himself off and got the count back to 2-2.
Catcher Robinson Chirinos watched six hours of video the day before Game 1, studying Nationals’ at-bats dating back to 2017. One nugget he mined: “I know Zimmerman chases the change-up,” Chirinos said.
James threw one, but too far inside to tempt Zimmerman. Chirinos called for back-to-back change-ups with the next pitch. James shook him off, and Chirinos sensed he wanted to throw a slider. Chirinos stuck to his belief. He called another change-up.
“If we threw the 3-2 changeup close to the zone, he was going to swing and miss,” Chirinos said.
James started it over the inside corner, and as it dove inside and off the plate, Zimmerman whiffed at what would have been ball four.
“I knew if I got relatively in the zone, around the zone, I could get him to swing,” James said.
The series now will be defined by that kind of intimacy. The Astros entered Game 3 with an imperative to solve Juan Soto, who terrorized them in Houston. In Game 3, he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts, including looking to end the game, and a walk. The Astros did not find a reliable plan, other than to not approach him with any one strategy.
“We didn’t stay in one area, and we didn’t get him out the same way twice, really,” Hinch said. “It was more of an endgame, cat-and-mouse approach on trying to keep him from getting the same look twice.”
“Tonight, everybody executed against Soto,” Chirinos said. “We beat him tonight.”
The Astros will hand the ball in Game 4 to Jose Urquidy, a 24-year-old right-hander who buzzed through the New York Yankees for 2 2/3 innings in Game 6 of the ALCS, striking out five with mid-90s heat and an array of offspeed pitches. He has power, but relies on artistry, “a good feel for the baseball,” Chirinos said. Urquidy is ticked for Houston’s rotation next year, but this postseason he has been used in short spurts, and for Houston it will likely turn into a bullpen game.
Even in defeat, the Nationals showed they will not roll over, and that matters for reason well beyond morale. By applying pressure all game, even if threats went unfulfilled on the scoreboard, the Nationals forced Hinch to deploy his best relievers. They saw all Houston’s best relievers — James, Brad Peacock, Will Harris, Smith and closer Roberto Osuna.
"When you play in a team in the AL or in another division, it's nice to get at-bats off those guys because you don't see them very often,” Nationals shortstop Trea Turner said.
At the outset, a long series seemed to favor the Astros. To start, they would only play more home games if the series went the distance. The construction of the Nationals’ bullpen also made it more likely they would either win a short series or not win at all. The Nationals trusted only two actual relievers, and if the series extended, the Astros’ familiarity with them would diminish the effectiveness of Daniel Hudson and Sean Doolittle.
The actual series has not played out that way. Washington’s Game 2 blowout enabled Martinez to stay off both his ace relievers, and he wisely kept both holstered in Game 3 as Houston’s lead stayed at three into the latter stages. And so three games into the series, the Nationals hold a 2-1 lead despite using Hudson and Doolittle just once each.
The other secret about the Nationals’ bullpen: It doesn’t look horrible anymore. A season’s worth of evidence suggests that may not last, but it’s true. Going anywhere near the Nationals’ bullpen required a hazmat suit all season. In the postseason, it has suddenly become decent and inched its way in the direction of trustworthy. A rogue’s gallery of Fernando Rodney, Joe Ross and Wander Suero punched up four scoreless innings Friday.
“It still had that feeling it was only a matter of time before we were going to push a couple across,” Doolitte said. “But it allowed us to save our back-end guys and not give them another look at me or Huddy or Tanner [Rainey], so with [Patrick] Corbin going tomorrow and Max [Scherzer] after him, we're still in a really good spot.”
The Nationals still hold the advantage. But they know now, if they don’t didn’t know before, it will not be easy to win their first world championship. There may still be a celebration in Washington. But first, there will be a hell of a series.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/26/astros-deliver-counterpunch-game-foreshadowing-what-could-be-long-bruising-world-series/
2019-10-26 12:00:00Z
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