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Two from first in the National League

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2019-10-12 MaxScherzer

Thanks large to Max the Knife, it’s “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and two from first in the National League” . . .

Max Scherzer wanted to be a Cardinal when he grew up. That’d teach him. He got to be a Tiger for long enough. Then he got to be a very wealthy National. Earning every last dollar of his delicious contract long enough before this year’s National League Championship Series.

And thanks to himself and Anibal Sanchez making for a little deja vu all over again, the Nats are halfway to their first World Series.

Now, remember, that’s only halfway. But right now the Nats can’t be feeling anything other than that all the way won’t necessarily be the hard way, if not no way.

That was 2013: Sanchez and Scherzer were Tigers who kept the Red Sox hitless through five in back-to-back American League Championship Series games. This is 2019: they  kept the Cardinals hitless through five or more in back-to-back NLCS games. The first teammates to do it once against a single team became the first to do it twice likewise.

They just hope the net result this time isn’t what it was six years ago. In 2013 the Red Sox still went all the way to a World Series triumph. In October 2019 the Nats would prefer that the Cardinals not even think about it.

Sanchez lost his would-be no-no to a pinch hitter with two out in the Game One eighth Friday night. After dueling Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright magnificently, matching him strikeout for strikeout and keeping the Redbirds unbalanced at the plate, Scherzer lost his to Cardinal first baseman Paul Goldschmidt leading off the Game Two seventh Saturday afternoon.

And, after he rid himself of the next three Cardinals swiftly enough to end his afternoon, what was Max the Knife’s reward?

Oh, nothing much except credit for a win and a late spell of hair-raising before Daniel Hudson nailed down the 3-1 final in Busch Stadium. Everything was as succulent as the Nats could ask until reliever Sean Doolittle nailed two outs to open the bottom of the eighth and Paul DeJong rapped a clean single to right center.

Then Jose Martinez pinch hit for Cardinals reliever Andrew Miller, a day after he broke Sanchez’s no-no in the same role. After wrestling Doolittle to a tenth pitch, Martinez hit a nice, neat line drive right at Nats center fielder Michael A. Taylor. All Taylor had to do was stand still, let the ball come right to him, hold his glove up for the catch, and breathe as he threw the ball back in.

But Taylor inexplicably pushed in a few steps, then broke right back realising he’d come in too short, and by the time he was back for a flying leap the ball flew over his outstretched glove and toward the wall. DeJong whipped his horse and galloped home with the Cardinals’ first run since the fourth inning of Game Five in their division series.

Just like that Taylor threatened to negate the first-swing leadoff yank off Wainwright that he sent about six or seven rows into the left field seats in the top of the third. Just like that, it may have felt more than a little that the Nats’ splendid, mostly self-made fortune was about to get waylaid by a tax collector.

Lucky for him and the Nats that Doolittle didn’t give the Cardinals the chance for their mostly dormant bats to awaken any further. He got Dexter Fowler to fly out almost promptly to erase the side.

And then Nats skipper Dave Martinez baffled just about everyone with Natitude except anyone paying attention to the past performance papers. With a lefthander already in the game, Martinez brought in Patrick Corbin, his already-designated Game Four starting lefthander, to open the bottom of the ninth against lefthanded hitting Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong.

Martinez remembered what the Cardinals probably wanted to forget, that Wong came to the plate having gone 0-for-5 with two strikeouts against Corbin previously. The last thing Martinez wanted was Wong reaching base somehow and turning the bases into a track meet. And, sure enough, Wong obeyed the script. On 0-1 Corbin lured him into a simple ground out to second base.

Then Martinez brought Hudson in to finish it off with Goldschmidt flying out to left and Marcell Ozuna popping out to first.

The game actually might have ended 1-0 if Cardinals manager Mike Shildt hadn’t blundered his way into a pair of Nats insurance runs in the top of the eighth. With first and second and one out, and after pitching coach Mike Maddux confabbed with Wainwright on the mound, Shildt elected to let his veteran righthander pitch to lefthanded Adam Eaton.

Eaton—who came into Game Two with a lifetime 1.169 OPS (5-for-11) against Wainwright. With the lefthanded Miller ready to go in the bullpen. Shildt paid more attention to Eaton’s so-far game-long struggle to hit in the peculiar Busch Stadium shadows than to Eaton’s history with Wainwright. And the shadows long enough progressed to the point where they weren’t quite so bothersome at the plate.

What was bothersome was Eaton ripping one right past a diving Goldschmidt at first, up the right field line, and off the sidewall, letting Matt Adams (Scherzer’s pinch hitter with a one-out double) score standing up and Trea Turner (following Adams with a shuttlecock single to right center) to follow him, Turner diving across the plate like an Olympic swimmer with the third Nats run.

That’s the way to [fornicate] up anyone getting in your Cardinals’ way, Skip.

Scherzer and Wainwright put on yet another clinic in knocking the balance to one side Saturday afternoon, each righthander leaning at least as much if not more on breaking balls just off-speed enough to keep the hard hit balls down to a minimum and keep their defenses working possible overtime. Even running several deep counts Max the Knife thrust when he absolutely had to.

“I came in and my arm didn’t feel great,” he told reporters after the game. “But around the fourth or fifth inning I felt like everything kind of loosened up in my shoulder. I was able to find my arm slot and I was driving my fastball into locations where I wanted.”

Each struck out eleven batters; each threw first-pitch strikes two-thirds of the time; it was the duel of the masters that Wainwright described before Game Two as the next best thing to an early Christmas present. It sure didn’t hurt that the odd shadows crawling across the field for a little more than half the game made things very conducive to smart, sharp pitching.

Which is exactly what both teams and their fans expect on Monday night when Game Three begins in Nationals Park. When Jack Flaherty, the Cardinals’ boy wonder who all but ruled the National League from the mound in the season’s second half, tangles with Stephen Strasburg, a former boy wonder who carries a 1.32 lifetime postseason ERA on his jacket.

And since the Nats now have three reasonably reliable bullpen bulls to call upon, it won’t be quite as simple as just hoping Flaherty knocks the bats right out of the Nats’ hands. The Nats don’t let their bats get knocked away that way for very long these days.

The Cardinals’ starting players are now 2-for-54 in the NLCS. If they don’t figure out how to recalibrate their bats and hit, and fast, Flaherty can no-hit the Nats himself including strikeouts for every out, and the Nats will still find a way to win.

“I’ve got a lot of confidence in our hitters,” Wainwright said after the game. “I think our hitters are going to do something special in Washington.” With Strasburg looming and Corbin right behind him in Game Four, they’d better.

Right now they’re saying, “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and two from first in the National League.” The Nats are too smart, too aware of their past postseason plotzes, to let this thrill knock them off task just yet.

Long suffering? Washington overqualifies.

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2019-10-12 WashingtonNationals

Their host city hasn’t had a World Series title since before Calvin Coolidge earned his only elected term to the White House.

It seems a few people of my acquaintance were less than thrilled over my defense of Clayton Kershaw. Not that they disagreed with defending him but they disagreed with my assessment of Joe and Jane Dodger fan running Kershaw jerseys over in the parking lot after division series Game Five’s demolition.

As one replied to me elsewhere, those jerseys were their property and if they want to deface or damage them, that’s their right. And she was right. It’s also their and anyone else’s right to make asses of themselves if they choose. Fair is fair. But since fair is fair, not every Dodger fan made such asses of themselves Wednesday night. That, I could have made more clear.

And for not doing so, I offer Dodger fans a sincere apology. Nobody likes seeing their heroes go yet another year with nothing to show for a splendid season. The Dodgers didn’t expect to win seven straight National League Wests with nothing to show for them, and neither did their fans.

I’m not thrilled that the Mets of whom I’ve been a fan since the day they were born didn’t quite stay the season’s distance. But who the hell am I to complain?

I’ve seen the Mets win five pennants and two World Series in my lifetime. Dodger fans of my age can point to eleven pennants and five World Series conquests since I was hatched. I’d say twelve pennants and six World Series, but I was a month away from my hatching when the Boys of Summer finally made next year happen in 1955.

The Dodgers have a measly 31 years since their last World Series win. I don’t want to make Dodger fans feel any worse than they’ve felt this week, and even Dem Bums winning all those Brooklyn pennants from 1941 to 1953 only to get slapped back down by the Yankees didn’t hurt that badly.

But it probably hurt worse that it took until 1955 for the Dodgers to bring a World Series title to Brooklyn at all, the only one Brooklyn ever knew, when the Dodgers were in the National League since the presidency of Benjamin Harrison.

Nothing personal, Los Angeles Dodger fans, but you really haven’t suffered that long even if you have taken it on the chin, in the belly, and anyplace else you can think of for seven straight years. And you’ve only been barred from the Promised Land since the last year of the Reagan Administration. I can name you fans beyond the Brooklyn fans New York’s politicians forced the Dodgers to abandon who took it a lot longer.

You think the Dodgers got destroyed when Howie Kendrick hit the grand slam Wednesday night? Try the litany Peter Gammons, then of the Boston Globe, ran down after the Red Sox went from one strike away from the Promised Land to disaster in Game Six of the 1986 World Series:

[W]hen the ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs, 41 years of Red Sox baseball flashed in front of my eyes. In that one moment, Johnny Pesky held the ball, Joe McCarthy lifted Ellis Kinder in Yankee Stadium, Luis Aparicio fell down rounding third, Bill Lee delivered his Leephus pitch to Tony Perez, Darrell Johnson hit for Jim Willoughby, Don Zimmer chose Bobby Sprowl over Luis Tiant, and Bucky (Bleeping) Dent hit the home run.

And there’d be fourteen more years to come, right up to the moments Grady Little read Pedro Martinez’s heart while ignoring his tank and Aaron Boone hit the home run that had the 2003 pennant attached.

Red Sox fans, among whom I’ve also been one since the 1967 pennant race, waited longer to get back to the Promised Land than Dem Bums waited to get there in the first place. They waited 86 years between Babe Ruth’s last World Series victory with them and the 2004 Idiots; they’ve had four World Series rings to celebrate this century. Red Sox Nation has no real reason to complain again. Yet.

Cub fans waited from the Roosevelt Administration (Theodore’s) to the last days of the Obama Administration for another return to the Promised Land. And from the day I was hatched until 2016, many were the Opening Days in Wrigley Field when the first pitch of the season was accompanied by a Cub fan holding up a sign saying one of two things: “Wait ’till next year!” Or, “This Year is Next Year.” (With or without “Alas” at the end.)

Thomas Boswell reminds us that since the turn of this century the Angels, the Cubs, the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Giants, and the Astros ended World Series droughts that add up to (wait for it) 434 years. America herself isn’t even close to that old yet. And the Angels and the Astros brought themselves their first trips to the Promised Land ever. Think about that.

Think, too, about the Indians, who’ve gone 72 years without another claim on the Promised Land and got their last one around the Berlin Airlift. Not to mention how close they got in 2016. Good to the last minute, practically. Think, further, about the Rangers, who haven’t reached the Promised Land in their entire franchise existence (59 years). Or the Padres, who haven’t reached it in fifty years.

Brave fans? They had eleven straight division championships and fourteen out of fifteen. They have five pennants and one World Series ring to show for it. They’ve had three division titles, four NLDS losses, and a wild card game loss since. That ain’t easy, Clyde. (Thank you, Phil Harris.) Neither was the ten-run beating they took in the first inning of the fifth game of their just-ended division series, either.

Ten straight divisions without seeing the Promised Land trumps seven straight most of the time. Those Braves won their World Series a year before. In franchise terms, they went 43 years between the Miracle Braves’ conquerors in 1914 and the Warren Spahn-Henry Aaron Braves in Milwaukee taking the Promised Land in 1957. I’ll leave it to Brave fan and Dodger fan to slug that one out for now.

But there’s a team that just won Game One of the National League Championship Series and hasn’t gotten to the Promised Land in their entire 49-year franchise history, either. Representing since 2005 a city that hasn’t seen the Promised Land since Calvin Coolidge was a month from winning his only elected term as an American president.

Oops. Better not lean on that too hard. The Nationals got to this NLCS by breaking the Dodgers’ backs. And if they overthrow the Cardinals for a date with either the St. Elsewhere Yankees or the Gray’s Anatomy Astros in the World Series and then overthrow one or the other of those bloodied-but-unbowed behemoths . . .

C’mon. There are and have been real baseball fans in Washington for eons, and only a nano-fraction of them carry government identification. And they’ve put up with at least as much crapola as any Cub, Red Sox, Phillie, White Sox, or Brooklyn Dodger fan in creation ever had to bear.

I don’t remember any Cub, Red Sox, Phillie, White Sox, or Bum fan hearing their heroes’ owners tell the world, “The fans like home runs, and we have assembled a pitching staff that is certain to please them.” Old Senators owner Clark Griffith is said to have come up with that in the 1940s.

I can’t think of any out-of-town observer hanging the Cubs, the Red Sox, or the old Brooks with a comparable observation that became a lifetime (and not even close to always accurate) watchword: “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.”

Brooklyn was abandoned only once. Boston proved too much the seat of Red Sox Nation for the Braves to stay. St. Louis proved too much Cardinal Country’s capital for the decrepit Browns to even think about staying. The Mack family was too tapped to hold onto the Athletics before their successor owner moved them to Kansas City. (And, made them practically a 1950s Yankee finishing school while they were at it.)

But at least the City of Boo-therly Love (Those people would boo at a funeral—Bo Belinsky) still had the Phillies. (Who went 28 years between World Series titles, by the way, not to mention 97 years in the National League before winning their first.)

Do you remember how long Kansas City had to wait between their abandonment by the A’s and the birth of the Royals? Try two years. Do you remember how long Seattle had to wait between the Pilots’ heist to Milwaukee and the birth of the Mariners? (Who also haven’t seen, never mind won a World Series in half a century.) Seven.

Washington had it happen twice, when the original Senators moved to Minnesota for 1961 and the Second Nats’s own owner kidnapped them to Texas for 1972. Washington fans waited 33 years for the national pastime to return to the nation’s capital. Settling for rooting for the somewhat adjacent Orioles—who, by the way, haven’t seen the Promised Land since the first Reagan Administration.

Fine thing to happen to one of the American League’s charter cities.

But no Washington fan—ever—turned an outfield wall deodorant soap ad into a classic insult. That bright idea is said to have happened in Philadelphia: “The Phillies use Lifebuoy . . . and they STILL stink!”

And no Washington fan ever painted an addendum on either Griffith Stadium’s or RFK Stadium’s occupancy advisory: “Occupancy by more than 35,000 unlawful. AND UNLIKELY.” A Dodger fan in Ebbets Field thought of that during the 1930s.

And no matter how they got it, no matter the shenanigans that brought the Montreal Expos to the Beltway, no matter the shenanigans of the nation’s largest organised crime family headquartered there, guess what happened when they returned.

Former Senator Joe Grzenda handed President George W. Bush a ball to throw for the ceremonial first pitch. The ball Grzenda wasn’t able to pitch to Yankee second baseman Horace Clarke at the Second Nats’ final home game ever, because heartsick fans lost it and stormed the field, forcing a forfeit.

And from there, “in that decrepit, rodent-infested RFK Stadium, the team drew 2,731,993 fans” (Boswell) in 2005. “Do you know the first year that the New York Yankees ever drew that many people? Try 1998.” It took them a mere seven years to get good. They’ve stayed that way ever since for the most part.

The Nats finished eleventh in National League attendance this season but they still drew 2,259,781 to Nationals Park. And they weren’t even close to being all or mostly bureaucrats, Congressmanpersons, or White House crawlers, either. Stephen Strasburg might have been just the most vocal Nat lamenting for more home game support, but the Nats aren’t bereft for love.

They’re just bereft of even one year’s lease for the Promised Land. Their home city’s been bereft of it for almost three times as long. And if you think Nationals Park will be devoid of a red, white, and blue racket audible from coast to coast when the NLCS moves there for Game Three, think again.

Washington’s put up with enough from its largest business. So has the country. It’s long past time that Washington and the country caught even a temporary break. Washington hasn’t seen the Promised Land in 95 years. That’s not as long as the Phillies and the Cubs were deprived. But for a baseball town, Bugs Bunny was wrong: 95 years does seem like forever.

Nothing personal, Yankees and Astros. You’ve been wonderfully deep and gutsy teams this year. You’ve earned the chance to determine which of you is going to win not just the American League championship trophy but possibly the Nobel Prize for Medicine. You’re fun to watch, you’re as admirable as the week is long, and you’re an example to us all of survival under attrition.

But you, Yankees, with your forty pennants and 27 World Series trophies. You don’t know the meaning of the word “suffering,” you and your fan base who seem to continue thinking you’re entitled to play in, never mind win, every World Series.

You, Astros? You’ve owned the American League West for a third year running and had a whale of a World Series win at the end of the first of those seasons. You’re too good and too smart to be deprived again any time soon.

Whichever one of you gets to the World Series, if the Nats get there (you, Cardinals, can just hurry up and wait, too, with your 23 pennants and eleven World Series triumphs), it will not be the end of life as you or we know it if they push, shove, nudge, bump, or bomb you to one side and themselves to the Promised Land. I promise.

Slop go the Cardinals

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2019-10-11 AnibalSanchez

Anibal Sanchez, appreciating the man who busted his Game One no-hit bid and the plate ump who called the game, as he leaves in the bottom of the eighth . . .

It looks as though the Cardinals have something else to worry about beside the Nationals’ three aces. There was a joker in the Nats’ deck Friday night.

And what he did in Game One of the National League Championship Series would have been a laugh and a half if he hadn’t had to face a pinch hitter who slapped a clean single off him in the bottom of the eight.

For seven and two-thirds innings Anibal Sanchez threatened to become baseball’s third postseason no-hit pitcher. He threw nothing like the hard stuff usually delivered by Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin. Slop tossing doesn’t begin to cover it.

If you could swear you saw marshmallows going up to the plate until Jose Martinez delivered his hit, your eyes weren’t playing tricks. Sanchez’s fastest pitch barely crosses 90 miles an hour. His split finger fastball is more split than fast. His changeup is called a butterfly, but real butterflies come in like a squadron of fighter jets by comparison. His cutter wouldn’t cut a sheet of paper.

But they move. He moves them all around the strike zone. He and the Nats watched one after another Cardinal batter check in at the plate determined to hit that slop into the Mississippi River and wondering why their biggest swings were barely good for summer day camp softball hitting among ten year olds.

“I just tried to keep focused on every pitch that I’m going to throw,” Sanchez told reporters after the Nats finished what he started, a 2-0 Game One shutout in Busch Stadium. “I don’t want to miss any kind of pitch in the middle in the zone against those guys.”

He succeeded in ways even he probably didn’t fathom. He threw 103 pitches and—count ’em!—only two of them hit dead center of the strike zone while only two more hit immediately around it.

One of the two hitting dead center damn near meant disaster in the bottom of the eighth, when Tommy Edman, playing right field in Game One for the Cardinals, sent a cannon shot toward the right side. Nats first baseman Ryan Zimmerman picked the perfect moment to channel his inner Superman, diving like the Man of Steel on takeoff to snap his mitt around it before it landed for a base hit to short right.

Sanchez thought right then and there that he’d have a shot at finishing the no-hitter. A fly out later Martinez thought otherwise, pinch hitting for Cardinals reliever Ryan Helsley, sending a full-count splitter into center for a clean base hit. The only Cardinal hit of the night.

“He was just hitting his spots and keeping us off balance all night,” said Edman, “and we just didn’t execute our plan very well.”

Time was when Sanchez threw harder, particularly what Gomes called “the power slider.” On Friday night he made a statement on behalf of junkballers the world over. You don’t need power to survive on the major league mound no matter what you throw. Especially when the other guys are about as good with off speed pitching as a hay fever sufferer is with pollen.

“When you kinda lose the power slider,” Gomes said of Sanchez, “there’s power in there (his heart) and power up there (his mind).” Pointing to his chest and his head. “He went out there, controlled the zone, controlled everything they were doing,” Gomes continued. “It’s almost like you get kind of a chuckle off them. When a guy like that can manipulate his speeds it’s pretty amazing.”

Manipulate his speeds? Sanchez’s swiftest pitch wouldn’t have equaled speed four on a Mixmaster. He folded ingredients, blended them gently, maybe mashed a few potatoes, but he wasn’t anywhere near enough power to roll out the attachments.

Almost the moment Martinez pulled up at first in the eighth, Nats manager Dave Martinez went to the mound to lift Sanchez for Sean Doolittle. The Busch crowd bathed Sanchez in a standing ovation that seemed six parts appreciation and half a dozen parts thank-God-he’s-finally-out-of-there.

Sanchez waved his glove in gestures of appreciation to the Cardinal who’d busted the no-no and to plate umpire Phil Cuzzi, who called the pitches. Hopefully, he had a similar gesture or word for Cardinals’ starter Miles Mikolas, whose own six splendid innings went for nothing partly because Sanchez was bound to hog the headlines.

“I had a rough regular season,” said Mikolas, the owner of a 4.16 regular season ERA. “I’m doing my best to make up for it in the postseason.”

Mikolas and six Cardinals relievers did their best to keep the Nats off their own game plan at the plate. Sure, they scored their first run thanks to a leadoff double by second baseman Howie Kendrick and a two-out double by catcher Yan Gomes in the second, and their second run thanks to a one-out triple by right fielder Adam Eaton and Kendrick’s two-out single in the seventh.

But they went 2-for-12 with men on second or beyond, stranded first and second in the sixth and the ninth, and the bases loaded in the fifth and the seventh. They could have gone for the Cardinals’ throats and settled for a couple of raps on the mouth. Lucky for them Sanchez’s lone walk and two accidental hit batsmen came to naught for the Cardinals, too.

The walk, to Wong with one out in the fourth, got dangerous after Goldschmidt flied out, when Wong stole second and took third on Gomes’s throwing error, but Sanchez got Ozuna to foul out to third baseman Anthony Rendon.

Pinch hitter Randy Arozarena—he who sent Cardinal manager Mike Shildt’s foul postgame rant viral for a spell after they won their division series—got plunked with one out in the sixth and stole second himself, then got pushed to third while Fowler grounded out to second, but Wong lined out softly to center to end that one.

And Yadier Molina with two out in the seventh got kissed between his shoulder blades with one of Sanchez’s butterflies but Matt Carpenter grounded out to first unassisted for his trouble.

Doolittle was on call for the end because Daniel Hudson was on quick paternity leave with his wife giving birth to their daughter. Not one Nat begrudged Hudson. “I think the mood of the guys in the bullpen,” Doolittle said afterward, “[was] we really wanted to find a way to pick him up and allow him to enjoy a really special moment with his wife and his family.”

“Apparently,” their skipper said, “the baby didn’t want to come out until later on this morning.”

Doolittle did his part, getting the asked-for four-out save almost effortlessly, luring Dexter Fowler into an eighth inning-ending grounder to third before throwing Kolten Wong out on a leadoff bunt attempt, luring Paul Goldschmidt into grounding out to Zimmerman at first unassisted, then striking Marcell Ozuna out swinging to end the game.

Thus did the Cardinals lose an NLCS opening game without having to deal with the Nats’ vaunted Big Three starting pitchers. Amend that. Sanchez just gave them a Big Enough Four. Almost surprisingly, considering he had a 3.48 road ERA this year and the Redbirds took two of three from the Nats in a regular season Busch set.

They also didn’t have to deal with the Nats’ fully-A lineup. Center fielder Victor Robles was still missing in action nursing a hamstring strain and catcher Kurt Suzuki was still under concussion protocol after taking one off his wrist into his face from Dodger pitcher Walker Buehler in Game Five of their division series.

And they couldn’t push Sanchez out of the game early enough to force the Nats into a Wander Suero option out of the bullpen, Suero occupying Hudson’s spot for the time being, knowing full well that Hudson, Doolittle, and maybe Fernando Rodney are the only three Nats bulls these days who don’t sink Washington’s antacid market.

But this was essentially the same Cardinals lineup that bastinadoed the Braves for ten first-inning runs two days earlier. The problem: they’re vulnerable to off speed stuff thrown by pitchers who know how to keep the stuff away from the middle of the plate. The only pitch Sanchez threw dead center busted up his no-hitter.

Even Max the Knife, Stras, and Prince Patrick should be making notes: don’t live on your fastballs with these Cardinals. And this is not the time to take the middle ground while you’re at it. Sanchez didn’t believe in the middle ground Friday night, and neither, really, did Doolittle, which is why Gomes had one more hit than the entire Cardinal lineup.

“Why any pitcher who can throw decent off speed stuff ever gives this team a fastball within the general vicinity of the strike zone is a mystery,” agrees St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Ben Frederickson. “The Cardinals’ inability to adapt on the fly resulted in their eleventh and most costly shutout of the season.”

Maybe the least surprised man in the house was Zimmerman, the Nats’ elder in the house. “Ever since Anibal came back from being injured, he’s been one of our most consistent, if not our most consistent, pitcher, which is hard to do with the other guys we have,” said the first baseman, referring to the hamstring issue he incurred in May.

“He doesn’t get overlooked but it’s such a different kind of pitching,” Zimmerman continued. “But tonight was obviously vintage Anibal. I’ve seen him do that for almost fifteen years but tonight was special.”

It may be just as special if not more so when Scherzer goes mano-a-mano with Adam Wainwright in Game Two Saturday. Even if Wainwright isn’t the pitcher he used to be thanks to too many injuries. Far as Wainwright’s concerned, getting to face Scherzer is an early Christmas present.

“We have similar games,” the Cardinals’ righthander said. “We’re both attacking with high-velocity fastballs at the top of the zone and nasty sliders and changeups.” Then, he paused thoughtfully. “I would have loved to have reinvented myself into Max Scherzer, that would have been amazing. It just didn’t work that way.”

It never does. There’s only one Max the Knife. And the Nats need him to slice, dice, and carve as deftly on Saturday as he did to the Dodgers in the division series.

A nation of Natitude?

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2019-10-11 WashingtonNationals

The Nationals don’t want the party to have stopped at Dodger Stadium.

It stood to reason that if the Nationals could and did flatten their way past the Dodgers in the division series, you had to like their National League Championship Series chances. Especially when one Astro gave them a terrific endorsement going in.

“They’re legit,” said Alex Bregman, the Astros’ third baseman, when he and their Game Five conqueror Gerrit Cole were asked if they were relieved that the Dodgers wouldn’t remain in the postseason picture.

“They’re legit. The Nationals got three legit starters, similar to what the ‘Stros have,” Bregman continued. “We were in the same spring training complex so we face them all the time. Tell you what, it was no shock that they won that series. We know what they’ve got. They’re good.”

When the man who’s liable to add an American League Most Valuable Player award to his trophy case if Mike Trout doesn’t endorses you, take it right to the safe deposit box. Smile a few moments before you slide it in and lock the box back up. Then get back to business.

Not that the Nats need any reminder.

Remember: this is the team that was 19-31 on 23 May, after the Mets humiliated them in a four-game sweep in which they were out-scored 23-13 and the demands for manager Dave Martinez’s head on a plate hit critical mass.

The team that went 80-38 from there, including a season-ending eight-game winning streak against what remained of the Phillies and the Indians and 36-18 in August and September. Not that there weren’t hiccups and missteps along the way, but 36-18 down the stretch is championship-caliber baseball any way you conjugate it.

They held their own against other contenders collectively; their total record against their fellow contenders was 43-43; the best records against them came out of their own division. The Mets went 12-7 against the Nats; the Braves went 11-8.

But the Mets—whose own manager faced season-long calls for his own execution and finally did go to the guillotine a few days after the season ended—didn’t have enough to stay in the races. And the Braves got thatclose to pushing the Cardinals home early from their division series before the Cardinals upended and then demolished them.

The bad news is that Shildt—who had an image as being so mild-mannered normally that he made Clark Kent resemble Donald Trump—was about as gracious in triumph as a flock of vultures swooping upon carrion.

Even allowing that it wasn’t intended for prime time, and wouldn’t have gotten there if a Cardinals spare part hadn’t been foolish enough to capture it on video and post it on Instagram, Shildt’s rant left him an image as an unsportsmanlike winner dancing on the graves of a team his Cardinals left looking like the victims of a terrorist attack in the first inning of their final division series game.

The Dancing Nats—whose dugout high stepping, boogieing, and Gene Kellying after big moments has become a rather endearing trademark not restricted to the kids we should let play but enjoyed even by the grizzled veterans who’ve rediscovered their fountains of youth—would love nothing more than to go Soul Train on Shildt’s and the Cardinals’ graves.

And they may not be alone. Shildt just might have given enough of the nation a case of Natitude.

Shildt has since apologised—for the rant having been made public at all, not for the drift of it; for the expletives undeleted but not the sentiment. “I apologize if my language offended anyone,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quotes Shildt as saying.

It is not something I like to represent. It’s not to be excused. I will say that I’m flawed. I have my moments. I grew up in a clubhouse and one of the crosses I bear is my language. I’ve done a nice job over the many years of curbing that. Trying to represent always myself and this organization in a positive light with class and dignity. It’s regretful that that was able to get out.

He still thinks the Braves started some excrement and the Cardinals finished it. (The Cardinals weren’t thrilled about Braves center field star Ronald Acuna, Jr.’s, shall we say, exuberance, which is rich coming from a team that has a couple of exuberants itself.) And he still thinks his Cardinals are going to fornicate up any and all comers and that nobody fornicates with them.

He may be in for a big surprise when the Cardinals and the Nats sink into their NLCS.

Among the four last teams standing now the Cardinals had the weakest regular season record. They were closer to being shoved out of their division series than the Nats really were. Their starting rotation has one bona-fide freshly-established ace (Jack Flaherty), a former ace (Adam Wainwright) who can still pitch up in the apparent sunset of a splendid if injury-disrupted career, and a third starter (Dakota Hudson, no known relation to River Phoenix) who’s just that, a quiet and often efficient third starter.

The Nats have three legitimate aces. When you have Patrick Corbin as your third starter behind Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, you’re the next best thing to Houston’s Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Zack Greinke. And you might even be equal, almost.

Corbin and Greinke have something in common this postseason. They’d be aces on almost any other staff, and they both got destroyed in division series appearances. Corbin got his redemption shot already; working the division series out of the pen, he atoned for his Game Three disaster with critical, spotless relief in Game Five. Greinke won’t get his shot until he starts Game One of the American League Championship Series.

The Nats can also hit. And how. They took a team .265/.342/.454 slash line into the postseason to the Cardinals’ .245/.322/.415. The Cardinals overall hit just a sliver better than the Nats in the division series rounds, and there’s no arguing with that Game Five early-and-too-often attack, but they’re not as powerful an offense as the Nats overall. If the Cardinals seem like comparative mosquitoes, the Nats seem like a can of Raid.

Put each team in the field, though, and the Cardinals may have a big advantage. They went from being the National League’s worst defense for errors in 2018 to the league’s best in 2019. It was like America going from Pearl Harbour one minute to winning World War II the next. And the Cardinals’ pitchers are mostly ground ballers while the Nats aren’t exactly a pure ground ball-hitting team.

But the Nats have a flair for the dramatic, and we’re not talking eighth-inning game-tying singles or walk-off sacrifice flies. When Dave Roberts pushed his luck with Clayton Kershaw in Game Five, Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto answered almost immediately how nice it wasn’t to fool with either Mother Nature or Kershaw’s sad postseason fortune.

And when Roberts pushed his luck with Joe Kelly and the bases loaded without an out even further, Howie Kendrick—talk about awakening a sleeping giant!—pushed it right over the center field fence and right through the Dodgers’ heads. (Speaking of which, Roberts may not be handed his head after all; the Los Angeles Times says people “with knowledge of the situation” say Roberts will be back in 2020.)

“You got to give credit to the Nationals,” Roberts said post mortem, while accepting the complete blame for the Dodgers’ destruction, “the way they played and came in here and won a series.”

But the Cardinals won’t face a Braves-like kid corps augmented with one smart but vulnerable veteran on the mound. And Martinez and his Nats still have to worry about their entire bullpen not named Daniel Hudson and Sean Doolittle. The Cardinals pray Martinez forgets. Everyone else prays otherwise.

It’s not that the Cardinals’ bullpen is invulnerable. They took a possibly fatal hit losing Jordan Hicks to Tommy John surgery in late June. And their pen men seem to like playing with matches a little too much themselves.

But if you thought Curt Schilling was cruelly emphatic wearing a towel over his head over Mitch (Wild Thing) Williams’s relief, watch Scherzer, Strasburg, Corbin, Sanchez, and Nats Nation whole if anyone but Hudson and Doolittle get the call. They’ll be forgiven for donning hazmat head masks. This NLCS could well come down to which bullpen fights fires with the least full gasoline tanks.

The Nats may have discovered a secret weapon, however: rookie Tanner Rainey. He got the job of getting rid of a pair of righthanded Dodger hitters in Game Five. He got a harmless popup to shortstop and an even more harmless fly out to right. Side retired. Leaving Rainey with a division series jacket of five hitters faced and nothing worse than one base hit. Plus fastball, wipeout slider in the making. One less arsonist for Nats Nation to fear. Maybe.

“To win these type of games against this type of teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers, your stars have to be stars,” said Nats general manager Mike Rizzo in the middle of a celebratory champagne flood. “Our stars were stars tonight, and I think that’s what carried us through.”

These Cardinals aren’t those Dodgers. These Cardinals didn’t just post the single best winning season in franchise history only to be destroyed in the end by a swarm of Nats whose franchise-best season, including their Montreal years, was 2012’s 98-winner. And these Nats don’t have a manager who made them look like sore winners after their arguable finest hour.

Forget life, John Lennon, wherever you are. Baseball is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Neither the Braves nor the Dodgers planned to be imploded out of this postseason. The Rays just didn’t have enough to finish pushing the Astros through the wall up against which they pushed them; the thumping Twins went limp against the Yankees far sooner.

The Yankees vs. the Astros will combine a duel of the titans with a rivalry for who gets baseball’s version of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. The Nats vs. the Cardinals didn’t exactly get through their seasons unscathed, but their overseers aren’t likely to discover that many missing players in the nearest emergency rooms, either.

This nation’s taken enough on the chin (not to mention the gut and the heart) from Washington ever since the Nats first arrived for 2005. From Washington, not the Nats. The lowest moments in Nats history don’t approach to within even two national borders of the lowest in Washington’s.

And there’d be few things more fun, for a nation that too often seems to have forgotten how to have it, than the prospect of the Nats making it “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and first in the National League” by washing Shildt’s mouth out with soap. If not an appropriately named box of Tide.

Slam, dunk, don’t stop the dance

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2019-10-09 HowieKendrick

Howie Kendrick swinging for a lifetime’s worth of filet mignon on the Washington house.

Dave Roberts learned the hard way Wednesday night that it takes the same number of moves to get destroyed as it takes to start unfathomable destruction. One.

And a one-time Dodger and Angel alike named Howie Kendrick got reminded all over again just how quickly you can go from a prospective bust—including three fielding errors all division series long—to a game-busting hero with one swing that looked so effortless it looked concurrently as if you could have done under sedation.

Fifteen years ago, with his Red Sox three outs from being swept out of an American League Championship Series, Roberts stole second on Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera to start the unlikeliest comeback of maybe all time. The 2004 Red Sox didn’t lose another game on their way to breaking their actual or alleged curse.

But this is 2019. Roberts is now a reasonably respected major league manager with a fourth straight first place finish and fourth straight postseason trip on his resume. And the way this trip ended Wednesday night sends lesser men past the nearest tavern and right to the distillery to drown themselves in the vats.

And Kendrick, 0-for-4 as he checked in at the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out in the top of the tenth, delivered one swing that’ll save him a small fortune in Beltway filet mignon dinners for the rest of his life.

It nailed the Dancing Nats’ trip to the National League Championship Series with a 7-3 division series Game Five triumph. Their motto now might be the name of a vintage song by rock legend Bryan Ferry: “Don’t Stop the Dance.” And they danced the 106 game-winning Dodgers home for maybe the most bitter winter of their existence since maybe their Brooklyn generations.

For the rest of his life Roberts is liable to face demands to know why he didn’t quit while he was ahead, 3-1 to be exact, accept Clayton Kershaw’s inning-and-threat-ending strikeout of Adam Eaton in the top of the seventh, pat Kershaw on his Hall of Fame-in-waiting fanny with a hearty “Thank you Kersh!” and go to his real bullpen post haste.

But Kershaw didn’t get his pat on the fanny. He got to open the eighth. He got battered back to back on back-to-back pitches by Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto. The first flew just over the left field fence, the second flew into the first couple of rows of the right field bleachers. Vaporising young stud starter Walker Buehler’s magnificent evening’s work and bringing the Nats back from the living dead.

Then Roberts reached for Kenta Maeda. And Maeda promptly struck out the side. Forget the second guessing. This was time for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth guesses.

Roberts got what he’d asked for out of Kershaw to end the seventh. Why on earth push his own and Kershaw’s luck, knowing only too well that Kershaw’s Hall of Fame resume already has the long-enough sidebar of postseason humiliation as an attachment?

Because, he acknowledged after the defeat, he liked Kershaw against Rendon and Soto just a little bit more.

“[T]he success that Clayton’s had against Soto with the two-run lead, I’ll take Clayton any day in that situation,” Roberts said after the game. “I just think it’s one of those where it was easy for me to get Clayton, with the low pitches to get Rendon and to go out there and get Soto. And to have Kenta behind him. That was my thought, and not have Kenta go through Soto.”

Ancient history teaches that a Cardinals manager named Johnny Keane refused to even think about hooking Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in a threatening World Series Game Seven because he had a commitment to Gibson’s heart. Roberts has the same commitment to Kershaw’s. Keane and Gibson got a World Series win. Roberts and Kershaw got humiliated.

The problem is that Kershaw, one of the nicest men and beloved teammates in the game, goes into a postseason with a hellhound on his trail. And he knows it, sadly enough. After reinventing himself this season as a pitcher who can and does survive on guile to go with the smarts he’s had since his peak seasons, Kershaw couldn’t outsmart Rendon and Soto when he needed to most of all. More acutely, Kershaw can no longer deny what people have said of his postseason work for too long.

“Everything people say is true right now about the postseason,” he said after Game Five, soberly but sadly. “I’ve had to do it so much. I don’t know. It might linger for a while. I might not get over it. I don’t know.”

Roberts went with Kershaw’s heart. He should have gone with his own head. He let sentiment and heart overrule baseball. Oh, he got Maeda not going through Soto all right. He just had to watch Soto drive a second stake into the Dodgers’ heart to get it. Then, he sent Joe Kelly out to work a spotless ninth but pushed his luck yet again.

With further viable bullpen options to spare, a luxury Nationals manager Dave Martinez didn’t have, Roberts sent Kelly almost inexplicably out to work the tenth. Where Kelly walked Eaton on six pitches, surrendered a double to Rendon that was ruled ground-rule when it stuck in the fence, and handed Soto the intentional walk.

And, after Kendrick fouled off a nasty enough breaking ball, where Kelly served him a fastball toward the low inside corner. Not low enough. Kendrick drove it right over the center field fence. You thought the Nats were baseball’s greatest dancers before? Kendrick sent them into dugout moves even Soul Train never busted.

It isn’t just Kershaw for whom Roberts has to answer. Where was Kenley Jansen? Where was young lefty Adam Kolarek? Dodger fans will ask those two questions for the rest of the century. When not asking why Roberts still trusted Kelly despite his shoulder issues and season’s disasters. “Trust Kelly more than your closer Kenley Jansen,” said manager turned MLB Network analyst Kevin Kennedy. “I don’t have an answer for that. Does  Dave?”

The answer may or may not determine Roberts’s future in Los Angeles.

But what a moment it must have been for Martinez, when Kendrick exploded and Nats center fielder Michael A. Taylor hustled in and took a dive to snag Justin Turner’s game and series ending sinking liner. Game Five was the Nats’ entire season in microcosm: early and often faltering; later and often flying. The guillotine built for Martinez in May has been put into storage.

The only bad news for the Nats on the night might have been Stephen Strasburg. He was left almost an afterthought after the Nats’ late game destruction. He merely shook off Max Muncy’s two-run homer in the first and Enrique Hernandez’s leadoff solo bomb in the second to keep the Nats in the game almost as deftly as Buehler seemed to own them.

He’s gone from the world’s most feted draft pick to a pitcher who’s fought injuries to become good, often excellent, and periodically great. He’s comfortable with himself. He’s unflappable to the point that some people mistake him for emotionless. And he knows what he’s doing on the mound even when he’s punctured early.

“The first couple innings, I didn’t hit my spot, and they made me pay for it,” said the 31-year-old righthander who still looks like he’s at freshman orientation despite the beard that’s all grown up from having been born a mere goatee. “As a starter, you just kind of learn how you’ve got to trust your stuff, trust that it’s going to come to you. And it did.”

Tanner Rainey dispatched the Dodgers in order in the seventh. And Patrick Corbin—who’d been so badly humiliated in Game Three—got his chance for redemption in the eighth. Other than plunking Turner Corbin got it, zipping through the inning, including back-to-back strikeouts on Cody Bellinger and pinch-hitter David Freese.

Then it was Daniel Hudson shaking off a one-out single in the ninth. Then it was Kendrick obliterating Kelly and the Dodgers in the tenth. Then it was Sean Doolittle, who had his moments of doubt and disaster on the season before finishing up at reasonable strength, getting three including Taylor’s game-ending swan dive.

There wasn’t a Hunter Strickland or Wander Suero to be found. For all anyone knows, they were under strict orders not to move even their pinkies in the bullpen—under penalty of death, if need be.

“Today’s the biggest game of the year,” Martinez likes to say, to his players and to anyone else who cares to listen, “and we want to go 1-0 today.” He got what he asked for and more. It got the Nats to the second National League Championship Series in franchise history. (Their first? In 1981—as the Montreal Expos.)

For a very long time the article of faith, though not always accurate, was “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” These Dancing Nats have a better than even shot at making it, “Washington—First in war, first in peace, and first in the National League.”

It’d beat the living hell out of everything else attached to Washington these and most days.