Kings Of The Road

Hey Washington, how many years has it been since you won a World Series?
Signs point to...

Everyone loves to see their home team win. For most people it's why you go to the game. (See also: Detroit, Tampa Bay, Miami.) And what's more exciting than a big win at home, maybe a walkoff, maybe a dominant pitching performance, in a big situation like, oh, say, a World Series?

Mmm, yeah, about that. Picture 305,072 people holding those golden World Series tickets, and not one of them getting to see a home victory? Feels unprecedented, doesn't it? (Because it was, maybe you've heard.) But it was the ideal World Series if you're a fan of bottoms of the 9th.


Ace In the Hole

It is the very rare team that makes it to any World Series without at least one ace pitcher. And there have been plenty of great Game-1 matchups over the years-- Clayton Kershaw/Chris Sale last year, Mike Mussina/Curt Schilling in 2001, Greg Maddux/Orel Hershiser in 1995; Bob Gibson/Denny McLain in 1968. But from the moment we knew our two combatants, you didn't just hear about Scherzer and Cole in Game 1. You also heard Strasburg and Verlander in Game 2. And Greinke and Corbin in Game 3. With Anibal Sanchez hanging around, even Game 4 came up. In a year of record strikeouts and conspiracy theories about the postseason baseballs, this thing had a chance to be the first World Series where neither team ever got a base hit. At least not in the first 6 or 7 innings.

Yeah, that would be why they play the games. Trea Turner sent the second pitch of the Series right back at Gerrit Cole, who was unable to get the glove down in time and watched it trickle behind second base for a leadoff single. That was Turner's fifth leadoff base hit in a postseason game, giving him half of the Nats/Expos franchise total. Although he got left at second, George Springer then led off the bottom half against Max Scherzer with a 7-pitch walk, the first time both leadoff batters reached in a World Series Game 1 since Ian Kinsler and Rafael Furcal in 2011. Jose Altuve promptly followed with a single, and Yuli Gurriel's double took the wind out of the Nationals' sails early.

However, leave it to the "original National", Ryan Zimmerman, whose MLB career exactly matches that of the Washington Nationals, having come to D.C. in 2005. In the 2nd he unleashed what was obviously his first World Series homer, but also the first by a Washington player since Fred Schulte on October 7, 1933. Schulte, however, was also stationed in left field for that previous WS game played by a D.C. team, and in the 10th inning he made a leaping effort on Mel Ott's long fly, but momentum carried him over what was only a 3-foot-high outfield fence, and the umpires awarded Ott what would become the series-winning home run.

For the casual fan who might not have followed the adventures of Juan Soto, Game 1 provided a great opportunity for the TV announcers to gush over him. Might as well give them something to gush about. Game-tying, leadoff home run in the 4th inning onto the train tracks in left field (the ball never did come down). You've no doubt seen the list of youngest players to homer in a World Series, on which Soto now follows Mickey Mantle, Miguel Cabrera, and Andruw Jones. The Nats are the first team in postseason history to have a player younger than 22 and a player older than 35 homer in the same game-- and thanks to Zim's dinger earlier, they've now done it twice! The first one kinda got lost in the hype; Soto was followed by Howie Kendrick's grand slam in the Division Series finale in Los Angeles.

So that's two homers off Gerrit Cole, but as broadcasters are fond of saying, at least they're solo shots. Of his 29 longballs in the regular season, 25 came with the bases empty, the highest percentage of any pitcher who gave up at least 20 total dingers. The Nats would instead find a different way to get to him, with two singles, a walk, a forceout, and finally a Juan Soto double to collect 3 runs in the 5th and tag Cole with the loss. Soto still hasn't turned 21, so he's now the third-youngest player with 3 RBIs in a World Series game, after the Andruw Jones 2-homer game, and a name you don't see often on these lists-- Joe Garagiola for the Cardinals in 1946. Soto would go on to single and steal a base in the 8th, becoming the first player with 3 hits, 3 RBIs, and a stolen base in a WS game since Moises Alou of the Marlins in 1997. Only two other cleanup hitters (we're talking any age now) have had a homer, a double, a single, and 3 RBIs in a Series game, and one of them watched Soto do it. That was Carlos Correa in 2017 Game 5 against the Dodgers; the other was for the Dodgers, Roy Campanella in 1955.

Remembering all that "ace" stuff that had been hyped before the series, the Astros did stick to their game plan of trying to get into the Nationals bullpen early. They drove Scherzer out of the game after just 5 innings that required 112 pitches (and easily over 2 hours). Max hadn't gotten a win on the minimum 5 IP since a meaningless season finale in 2016 when the Nats were just setting up the rotation for the playoffs. And George Springer did provide a little late, uh, spring in the Astros offense, homering off Tanner Rainey to start the 7th and then knocking in a run with a double off the screen that protects the Astros bullpen. The homer, of course, earned him lots of notes about being the first player to go deep in five straight World Series games over multiple seasons; Reggie Jackson and Lou Gehrig each did it in four straight. Springer also walked twice; along with his April 19 performance at Texas, he became the first leadoff batter in Astros history to have a 2-walk, 2-extra-base-hit game twice in the same season. He's also the first leadoff batter in team history-- in any game-- to have 2 XBH, 2 BB, 2 RBI, and score 2 runs in a loss, and the first for any team to do it in the postseason.

But while Springer got them back to 5-4, ultimately Sean Doolittle shut the door by not letting him score the tying run in the 8th, and then retiring three straight in the 9th. Doolittle also got a 4-out save in Game 1 of the League Championship Series against St Louis, and is the sixth pitcher to have multiple Game-1 4-out saves in the same year. Obviously that wasn't possible before 1969, but the others are Tug McGraw (1980), Goose Gossage (1981), Al Holland (1983), Rick Aguilera (1991), and Jeurys Familia (2015). And as mentioned, never getting that fifth run back stuck Cole with his first loss in exactly 5 months (May 22 vs White Sox); he joined Andy Pettitte (2005 NLCS 1) as the Astros' only pitchers to give up 8+ hits, 5+ runs, and take a loss in a postseason game. And the last pitcher for any team to give up 5+ runs and 2+ homers in Game 1 of a World Series? Why that's only the guy who pitches tomorrow-- Justin Verlander for the Tigers in 2012.


Texas Two-Step

So just as long as Verlander doesn't duplicate that 5-run, 2-homer performance from 2012 (he also did it in 2006, for what that's worth), the Astros have a good chance at jumping right back in this thing, yes? Uh... yes?

Don't blink. JV walked Trea Turner on four pitches, Adam Eaton singled, and Anthony Rendon doubled to center to make it 2-0 after only three batters. You can certainly argue that he's facing better competition in October, but in 34 regular-season starts Verlander gave up only 12 earned runs in the 1st inning, and multiple runs only twice. In five postseason starts it's 9 and 3. But of course, staked to this 2-0 lead, Stephen Strasburg comes out flat also. Jose Altuve double, Michael Brantley single, and Alex Bregman homer that would have given the Astros the lead had Altuve not gotten thrown out stealing third, the first CS of third in a World Series since Bret Boone of the Braves did it against the Yankees in 1999.

So now with the teams locked at 2-2, let's declare a mulligan for both pitchers and start over. Now we get the pitching we had expected, although you wouldn't exactly call it a "duel". It was more of an escape act, with Verlander allowing five more baserunners, and Strasburg six, despite no more runs scoring through the 6th. The Nationals actually had a hit in each of the first five innings; if that looks familiar, it's because they did the same thing in Game 1 on Tuesday. The only other teams to do that in back-to-back World Series games are the 1932 Cubs and 1923 Yankees.

Finally as both Verlander and Strasburg blow through 100 pitches, something has to give. But even Kurt Suzuki probably didn't think it would be Kurt Suzuki. In fact, he described the "floating" feeling he got after hitting a leadoff homer in the 7th that also gave the Nationals a 3-2 lead, the Nationals' first go-ahead homer in the 7th or later at Minute Maid Park since Austin Kearns took Doug Brocail deep on May 6, 2008. (All such things are obviously a first in Nats World Series history, which is why you won't see a lot of those type of notes.) After a walk to Victor Robles, it's time to get Verlander out of there after 107 pitches and in danger of going down 0-2 in the series, especially if they give up any more runs.

Mmm, yeah, about that. Ryan Pressly did manage to get two outs. Unfortunately the rules say you need three. So two more walks and three straight singles served to blow the doors off of this one before Alex Bregman could say "ground ball". He bobbled one to lose whatever small chance he would have had aganist Howie Kendrick, then knocked down a Ryan Zimmerman roller but compounded his own problem by throwing the ball away for another run. By the time Josh James finally got that third out, the Nationals had recorded the first 6-run inning in a World Series since the Royals had one in 2014, and the first by a visiting team in the 7th or later since the Marlins did it in Cleveland in 1997. It was the Nationals' 12th game this year with a 6-run inning, trailing only the Yankees (13).

James was sent back out for the 8th and apparently he didn't get the memo about the third out either. Oh, he did strike out three batters, but Victor Robles ended up on first after a passed ball, and then Adam Eaton put the Nats in double digits with a dinger. Eaton earned a "random combo alert" by having a sac bunt earlier in the game; only four players have had a sac bunt, a homer, scored 2 runs, and driven in 2 runs in a World Series game. The others are Tom Tresh (1962) and Hector Lopez (1961) of the Yankees and the Pirates' Fred Clarke in 1909. Michael Taylor's solo shot in the 9th would be the final nail in a 12-3 drubbing, the first time any Washington team has won a postseason game by more than 4 runs. The Nats hadn't scored 12 runs in Houston since tagging Roy Oswalt (and a bunch of other peopple) on May 31, 2010. The Nats also became the first team in World Series history to homer in the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings of the same game. Honorable mention to Martin Maldonado, who came in as a defensive replacement and homered in the 9th for that final Astros run. Only three other players have hit a World Series homer in the 9th inning when trailing by 10 or more: Bill Bathe of the Giants in 1989, and the others were in the same game. Hank Bauer and Mickey Mantle both did it in Game 2 of the 1958 classic in Milwaukee after starting the inning down 13-2.


How Do You Measure 86 Years

As the saying goes, if only the Nationals could have saved some of those runs. Or if their special "runners in scoring position" bats didn't get lost on the flight from Houston to Washington. Or maybe they just got caught up in the pomp and circumstance of it all.

D.C. is no stranger to big events. There's an inauguration every 4 years, marathons and parades and rallies and protests abound, the Independence Day celebrations on the Mall draw hundreds of thousands each year (and force the Nationals to play one of the two 11 am starts in MLB, the other being Boston's Patriots' Day game). But as you've probably heard, it had been eighty-six years since a World Series came to town, and let's just say the tickets for this one netted more than 4 bucks.

The Sunday Star, October 8, 1933 (via Library of Congress)
Unfortunately the only "run"s to be found in Washington were those by Congress for re-election next year. Zack Greinke and Anibal Sanchez continued our tradition of sending really good pitchers out to the mound, and George Springer and Anthony Rendon continued our tradition of breaking up the no-hitters in the 1st inning. The Astros put up single runs in the 2nd and 3rd thanks to doubles by Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve, and the Nats wasted the first of many threats when Victor Robles grounded into a double play. Asdrubal Cabrera struck out to leave bases loaded in the 3rd. Robles did make it 2-1 with a 1-out triple in the 4th, but the next two batters couldn't bring him in for the tie. That was, however, the first triple in Washington's World Series history among their four teams that have played in one. Combined with Adam Eaton's three-bagger in the NLCS, it doubled the franchise's postseason total of triples to four.

However, Altuve would double and score again in the 5th as he and Springer continue to chase each other not just on the Astros' postseason home-run list, but the extra-base-hit one as well. Altuve also had a multi-double game in Nationals Park on June 17, 2014; his two, plus Miguel Tejada in a suspended game on May 5, 2009, are the only ones they've ever had there. The Nationals, possibly copying Houston's approach against Scherzer and Strasburg, ran up Greinke's pitch count (and the length of the game, yawn) to finally bounce him in the 5th, one out shy of even qualifying for the win. For as much as we hate the 5-inning rule, tell any Astros fan that they'd throw Cole, Verlander, and Greinke in the first three games of the World Series, and none of them would get a win?... But as it turns out, Ryan Zimmerman would strike out to strand two more batters in that inning and eight for the game already.

Robinson Chirinos would promptly homer in the 6th; combined with Martin Maldonado in Game 1, the Astros joined the 1962 Giants (Ed Bailey & Tom Haller) as the only World Series teams to have multiple catchers go yard. That also ran Anibal Sanchez out of the game after 10 hits allowed; the only other pitcher in Nats/Expos postseason history to allow 10 knocks was Steve Rogers in the 1981 Division Series, and he ended up with a 3-1 win. The Nats stranded two more against Will Harris in the 6th, although Robles did steal a base on a botched hit-and-run. That gave him the fun distinction of being the first player with a triple and a steal in a World Series game since Devon White of the Marlins did it exactly 22 years earlier. Since 2005, only one other Nationals batter had done those two and grounded into a double play, Danny Espinosa on June 19, 2015.

Amazingly, however, in the Series that was supposed to be all about dominant starters and shaky bullpens, the last three innings passed with only three harmless baserunners, two of them on infield singles, as the Astros recorded their first win in Washington since they were back in the National League (April 19, 2012). Since we've spent all night harkening back 31,429 days to the previous World Series game in Washington, it's fitting that the 4-1 final was only the second WS game in D.C. where the home team scored only 1 run, the other being a 2-1, 11-inning loss to the Giants in 1933. The Nats also picked a fine time to score 1 run and leave 12+ runners on base for the first time all season; combined with Houston's 10 LOBs it was two shy of the 9-inning World Series record for such a thing. That 12th strand-ee was not secured, however, until Juan Soto got rung up for the final out of the game. And if there's anything you heard more on Friday than "first World Series game since 1933", it's that Friday was Soto's 21st birthday. Hopefully someone bought him a drink after this one. He joined Ryan Zimmerman (September 28, 2007) as the only Nationals batter with a 3-strikeout game on his birthday, and is the second batter in World Series history to "celebrate" with a game-ending strikeout. Doc Crandall of the 1912 Giants did it in Game 1 against Boston's Smoky Joe Wood.


D.C. Gridlock

Game 4 was widely billed as the proverbial "bullpen game", although we didn't really like that title for a game where Patrick Corbin is starting. True, he did throw 21 pitches in Game 1 when the Astros drove away Max Scherzer after 5 innings, but that was his normal "throw day" anyway. And no, Jose Urquidy isn't exactly a household name, but he's been decent ever since making his MLB debut in July, getting through 5+ innings in four of his seven starts. So we're not sure why everyone was expecting this game to get cobbled together by seven people getting 4 outs each.

At the outset, though, it did look like the Nationals might end up in that situation. They had "bullpen activity" in the 1st inning when Corbin gave up four straight singles and 2 runs, only escaping the inning when Anthony Rendon was able to step on third to start a double play. The Astros became just the third road team this century to have 4 hits in the 1st inning of a World Series game, joining the 2016 Cubs and 2014 Giants (both of whom won the title, might we add), and for all the talk about them scoring first, the Astros entered this game 28-2 on the year when they put up multiple runs in the 1st inning. Those two losses... were Games 1 and 2 of this very same World Series.

The Nationals, of course, would again be stymied with runners on base, though they only had two against Urquidy. He did give up a harmless single to Anthony Rendon in the 1st, however, meaning that in this overhyped series with All The Pitching Aces, Games 1 through 4 all saw both teams get a hit in the 1st inning. Remember all those no-hitter threats from Sanchez and Scherzer and Verlander just a couple weeks ago? Instead 2019 would be just the second World Series where there was a hit in each of the first eight 1st innings (so, Games 1 through 4). The other was 2004 between the Red Sox and Cardinals, and that one didn't have a Game 5.

Meanwhile, Corbin was in trouble again in the 4th when Carlos Correa drew a walk and then Robinson Chirinos homered for the second game in a row. Other than George Springer-- whose 5-game streak was snapped on Wednesday-- he's the only Astros batter ever to homer in back-to-back WS games. He's also the first Houstonian ever to homer in B2B games at Nationals Park; Carlos Lee did it in their final series at RFK, July 16-17, 2007. And we mentioned Martin Maldonado's homer in Game 1, but don't forget Kurt Suzuki also had one for the Nats to start that 6-run rally in Game 2. That made 2019 just the second World Series with four dingers hit by catchers; in 1972 Oakland's Gene Tenace had that many just by himself (and, oh yeah, Johnny Bench chipped in one also). Chirinos would also double (and get thrown out at the plate) in the 9th, the first catcher to homer and double in the same WS game since Gary Carter of the Mets did it at Fenway in 1986.

The vaunted Nationals offense, however, still couldn't find those bats, going 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, and watching their only run of the game come on a bases-loaded groundout by Juan Soto. And that was after Urquidy had done his required 5 innings; he would join Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton as the only Astros starters to allow 0 runs, 2 hits, and get a win in a postseason game. No Houston pitcher had ever posted that line in Washington (and their last to do it in Montréal was Mike Scott in 1987).

But of course the play of the game comes immediately after Corbin leaves the game as well. Kyle Tucker, batting in the pitcher's spot, draws a 5-pitch walk from new mound-occupier Tanner Rainey. Then George Springer walks. Then Fernando Rodney gives up a single to Michael Brantley. And two pitches later, the always-fired-up Alex Bregman shoots one of Rodney's flaming arrows just inside the left-field foul pole for the second grand slam in Astros postseason history. The other was by Lance Berkman off Kyle Farnsworth, by then with Atlanta, in the 2005 Division Series. Thanks to one of those 1st-inning singles off Corbin, he also joined Morgan Ensberg (2005 NLDS) and Carlos Beltran (2004 NLDS) as the only Astros batters with 5 RBI in a postseason game. No player had collected 3 hits and 5 RBI in a World Series game since Albert Pujols' 3-homer game in 2011. And in his long career of shooting arrows, Rodney had given up only one other slam, to Marco Scutaro (then of the Red Sox) on July 28, 2010.

A quivering Rodney (see what we did there?) would promptly issue three more walks to load the bases and run the risk of the first multi-slam game by a team in postseason history. As it was, we've already got the second half-inning in World Series history where any team issued five walks; the Cardinals gifted them to the Yankees in Game 4 of the 1926 affair. Rodney also became the first Nats pitcher in over 8 years to give up three walks and a homer while getting only 1 out; Henry Rodriguez did that against the Marlins on July 26, 2011, in what was clearly not Game 4 of the World Series. (In fact, no pitcher for any team had ever posted that line in a WS game.) However, Kyle Tucker would strike out to end the inning as the Astros batted around. Recall that Tucker led off the frame with a pinch-hit walk. And thus he was also the third player in postseason history to pull off one of our favorite tricks, batting again with no official position. He can't still be a pinch hitter because he's not replacing himself. Yet he also hasn't assumed a position in the field because the inning hasn't ended. The only others to pull this off (note the -9 theme) were Don Demeter of the Dodgers in 1959 Game 6 and George not-the-actor Burns of the Philadelphia A's in 1929 Game 4. The only other Astros batter to do it this year was Myles Straw back on August 25.

The 8-1 final ranked as both the third-largest win in Astros postseason history and the third-largest loss in Nationals postseason history. The last time the Astros topped Washington by 7+ runs was when Bud Norris "outdueled" Edwin Jackson to an 11-4 count on April 19, 2012. And with our series now gridlocked (appropriate for Washington) at 2 games each, that guaranteed a Game 6 on Tuesday and made 2019 the longest start-to-finish baseball season in major-league history. The 2014 campaign, which also began with two international games (in Sydney), lasted nearly 222 days, a mark which would be broken shortly after Game 5 ended on Sunday. (We do not have exact times for every season, but trust us that none of the others before this chart even approached 220 days.)



We can't say for certain, but it's a good bet that the 2019 squad was also the first Washington team to take a plane to their World Series games. The others were probably only slightly removed from the third boxcar and an 8-by-12 four-bit room. Intermission!



Landslide

Even if you don't follow politics closely, you probably recognize the name Sheila Jackson Lee. She's been "The Representative From Houston" since well before Houston blew up into a megaplex that now comprises parts of 10 Congressional districts. Crawford Street was in her district long before it had a ballpark on it. So she knows a thing or thirteen about winning consecutive trips to Washington. We have no idea if she gave the Astros any pointers, but darned if they didn't pile on again.

Sunday's game was, of course, the long-awaited (if by "long" you mean "since Game 1") rematch of Game 1 between Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer... until it wasn't. Scherzer awoke to neck and back spasms that kept him from even getting out of bed at first, and aren't the Nats suddenly lucky that Game 4 wasn't a true "bullpen game" after all. They still had Joe Ross in reserve; while he's technically come out of the bullpen for most of the second half, all 35 of his appearances in the previous three seasons were starts, with an average of about 5½ innings each. So off he goes to try and salvage one home game for the Nats. And he didn't pitch all that badly. In the regular season we wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow at his line. But when you combine the Nationals' cold bats of the last couple games, with a trying-to-bounce-back-from-Game-1 Gerrit Cole, 4 runs and 2 homers was just destined to be insurmountable.

It was somewhat amusing that in this series of aces, Joe Ross was the first pitcher to post a hit-free 1st inning (remember both teams had hits in each of the first four games?). He also made the Nationals the first team since the 1980 Phillies to have a different starting pitcher in each of the first five games of a World Series, something that's now a no-brainer with the format and all the travel days. The first of those homers would come from Yordan Alvarez in the 2nd, he of the .204/.278/.265 slash line in the postseason and his last homer on September 21. Alvarez just turned 22 in June, and combined with Juan Soto's dinger in Game 1 (when, as you might have heard, he was still only 20), it's only the second World Series in history where two players younger than 23 each homered. The other time it happened was for the same team-- Joe Medwick and Bill DeLancey of the 1934 Cardinals-- and in different games. (Wait for it.)

Once again the Nationals would get two hits in the 2nd but find Victor Robles grounding into a double play to end any hope. Alvarez singled again in the 4th, after which Carlos Correa uncorked his 11th career postseason homer (he's behind Springer and Altuve on that list that keeps flip-flopping), another 2-run shot that would give the Astros more than they needed in this one. Houston also hit a pair of multi-run homers in Game 4 (Chirinos and then Bregman's slam), becoming the first team in World Series history to do that in back-to-back games with both of them on the road. Springer would add yet another 2-run bomb in the 9th, and remember those 1980 Phillies who were the last to begin with five different starters? They were also the last to allow three multi-run homers in a single game, when Amos Otis and Willie Aikens hit them for the Royals in Game 4 that year.

The aformentioned Juan Soto did connect for the first home run of his 22nd year, basically the only blemish in 7 innings of Cole. Since the questionable outing in Game 1 was at home, Cole did extend a streak of nine straight road starts where he threw at least 5 innings and gave up no more than 1 run. The only other pitcher in Astros history to pull that off was Roger Clemens across the 2004-05 seasons. And Soto's other homer of the series, of course, was also off Gerrit Cole in that Game 1 victory; Joey Gallo of the Rangers was the only other player to take Cole deep twice this season.

Alvarez, who also singled and got erased on a double play in the 7th, was the youngest Astros batter with 3 hits including a homer, batting 6th or lower in the order, since Richard Hidalgo did that in Pittsburgh on September 17, 1997. Tack on 2 runs scored, and he's just the second Houston hitter, of any age, to have that line in Washington; Morgan Ensberg did it in their second-ever game at RFK, July 22, 2005. Springer, who doubled prior to his 9th-inning homer, broke a tie with Lou Brock for the most extra-base hits in World Series history by a leadoff hitter (he has 12). He also walked twice, matching his Game-1 line of 2 hits, 2 walks, 2 runs scored, and 2 RBIs. In the first 114 fall classics, know how many folks did that? One-- Earle Combs of the 1932 Yankees. And now Springer did it twice in a week.

And look at those scores (or, if you're a Nats fan, maybe don't). 4-1, 8-1, 7-1. No team in World Series history had scored 0 or 1 in three straight games with all of them at home, and the Nationals hadn't done it against the same opponent since the Diamondbacks-- with Micah Owings, Brandon Webb, and both once- and future-National Livan Hernandez-- visited in April 2007. The Astros had never won three straight games in Washington, by any score, and regardless of whether they were in the same series or not. And going into Game 5, we heard the fun tidbit on the radio broadcast that the Nats were trying to avoid their first 3-game losing streak since July 25, 26, and 27. Check your October calendar. Those three straight losses to the Astros? 25, 26, and 27.


Just Hold On, We're Going Home

The Astros always knew they'd be heading back to Houston following their weekend fling in D.C.; after all, that's where their home is. Their hopes of taking a trophy with them were dashed after Game 2, and at that point, the Nationals probably weren't expecting to make another trip to back to Houston either. But here we are back at Minute Maid Park, with literally the only difference being that it's now Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Oh yeah, and the series just went from 0-2 to 3-2. So let's see what happens when, for the first time this series, we do get our long-awaited rematch of aces. Both Strasburg and Verlander started out shaky in Game 2, giving up 2 runs each in the 1st. They settled down but both teams worked each other's pitch count and drove the starters out of the game by the 7th inning. Of course on the way out, Verlander allowed that infamous leadoff home run to Kurt Suzuki that started the Nationals' 6-run rally. So stop us if you've heard this one. Leadoff single by Trea Turner, Adam Eaton with a sac bunt that blew up baseball Twitter with "why are they bunting in the 1st inning?, are they trying to only score 1 run?". To be fair, that's all they scored in any of the prior three games, so might as well get it now.


George Springer doubles on Strasburg's first pitch, the second pitch bounces him to third, Jose Altuve drives him in, and it certainly seems that our starters are jet-lagged again. Alex Bregman deposits one in the Crawford Boxes, and Yuli Gurriel comes very close to doing likewise with the very next pitch. The Nationals get two runners in both the 3rd and 4th but can't score either of them. (Yeah, this part sounds familiar too.) Finally in the 5th the Nats figure out the issue-- rather than stop at various bases and get stranded there, just homer a couple times and flip this thing right back in your favor. Eaton, who was not bunting this time, ties us up at 2-2 and then Juan Soto gives the Nats the eventual game-winner, although it's way too early to know that yet. Since we must have a Juan Soto "age" note every time he does something, this one is among the more impressive ones: He became the youngest player to hit a third World Series home run by over 2 years, breaking the mark of Charlie Keller who hit his on October 8, 1939, a few weeks after turning 23. The 5th also marked the first time the Nationals had hit multiple homers in an inning at Minute Maid Park since May 31, 2010, by Carlos Maldonado and Ryan Zimmerman.

Then we get to The Play. With the Nats still clinging to a 3-2 lead (and life in the series), and having now knocked Verlander out of the game, Trea Turner hits a squibber back to pitcher Brad Peacock, whose throw is a bit offline and causes Yuli Gurriel to reach back for the catch-- in the process making contact with Turner who was running past him and knocking the ball free. Plate umpire Sam Holbrook-- he of the "Outfield Fly" controversy in 2012-- calls Turner out for interference and sends Yan Gomes, who had made it all the way around to third, back to first where he started. Davey Martinez throws a fit, and a 5-minute conversation ensues with the replay center in New York, which-- at least according to The Official Postgame Explanation-- turns out to not be an actual review, but a discussion of whether the play was even reviewable. Answer: No. We still think Martinez may have had a case for protesting the game, not over the actual interference call, but over the sending of Gomes back to first, given that he was forced and had almost certainly reached second safely before the interference occurred. (We actually saw a similar protest in a double-A game in 2015.) Martinez, meanwhile, would become the first person ejected from a World Series game (not counting Sunday's flasher incident) since Bobby Cox in 1996. In classic Bobby Cox fashion, he got run not because of a bad call at second base, but for cussing out the home-plate umpire on his way off the field after the first argument.

As it turns out, the replay and/or protest wouldn't have mattered much, and plus Martinez got to watch Anthony Rendon's subsequent homer from a nice comfortable couch somewhere. The out by Turner just meant the difference between 5-2 and 6-2, and either way it was the first time the Nationals had hit 3 homers at MMP since July 11, 2009, off reliever Felipe Paulino. And Rendon would finish off the festivities with a 2-run, 9th-inning double against Chris Devenski to join Arizona's Danny Bautista (2001 Game 6) as the only players in World Series history with 3 hits and 5 RBIs in a potential elimination game. He also became just the second Nats player ever with a 5-RBI game in Houston (forget the 3 hits), along with Jose Vidro on April 8, 2006.

And we mentioned Verlander getting knocked out of the game in the 6th, but unlike Game 2, we didn't say the same about Strasburg. Because after those two 1st-inning runs-- and a postgame admission that he may have been tipping pitches-- Strasburg worked his way through seven more frames and several more jams, finally acknowledging to "manager" Chip Hale in the 9th that he knew he was out of gas. There still hasn't been a World Series complete game since Johnny Cueto in 2015, but Stras did become the first to go at least 8 IP and get a win, without finishing the game, since Derek Holland of the Rangers in 2011. He's also the first Nationals pitcher NOT named Scherzer to throw 8+ innings and strike out 7+ in an American League park; the only two ever to do it for the Expos were Pedro Martinez and Jeff Juden in the first year of interleague play, 1997.


Rollin' Down 95

Because Game 7. Is there a better way to settle a championship than one game for all the Tostitoes? (This is our personal theory on why the Super Bowl is such a huge event every year.) Max Scherzer woke up ready to go this time, facing Zack Greinke in a game that felt a lot more like a matchup of mortals, as opposed to the showdowns we expected out of the gate last week. After allowing a solo homer to Yuli Gurriel, Scherzer seemed to be in a constant jam as Houston had multiple baserunners in four of the first five innings. However, he managed to escape all except the last one despite a lot of contact. What better way to wrap up the Year Of The Strikeout than by having Greinke and Scherzer fail to fan anyone until Anthony Rendon whiffed to end the top of the 4th? The last World Series game that went 3 full innings without a strikeout by either team was in 1996 when Greg Maddux matched up with the Yankees' Jimmy Key in Game 2.

By the time Carlos Correa drove in a second run in the 5th, Baseball Twitter was very much doubting whether Scherzer should still be in the game, and they got their answer when he failed to appear for the 6th after 103 pitches. He had become the first pitcher to allow 11 baserunners in a World Series Game 7 since Pete Vuckovich of the Brewers in 1982, and would have been on the hook for the loss as well. However, in one of those questionable moves that is only magnified and over-scrutinized by the stage of Game 7, A.J. Hinch pulled Zack Greinke in the top of the 7th after he allowed a solo homer to Anthony Rendon. After 6 we were already preparing the "complete game" notes based on his only being at 67 pitches. Instead, the usually-reliable Will Harris trots in from the bullpen, and there's a reason we say "usually". Howie Kendrick launched a 2-run, lead-flipping, and ultimately championship-winning homer, just the second such homer ever hit in the 7th or later of a winner-take-all postseason game. Pittsburgh's Hal Smith took Jim Coates of the Yankees deep in 1960; obviously the Pirates then gave that lead back before winning on Bill Mazeroski's walkoff. Rendon, meanwhile, had also homered in Game 6 and became the fifth player ever to go yard in 6 and 7 of the same World Series, joining Mickey Mantle (twice), Roberto Clemente, onlooker George Springer, and "one of these things is not like the other" Allen Craig.

Harris, who had been handed a 2-1 lead, was the first pitcher to blow a save in a winner-take-all World Series game at home since Roger Moret of the Red Sox in 1975. When the Astros couldn't get off that hook, he also became the first to record 0 outs while getting a blown save and a loss in any postseason game since Donne Wall of the Padres in 1998.

In a "normal" rotation, Patrick Corbin would have started in Game 3 and again in 7, but given the Scherzer situation, he ended up being deployed out of the bullpen and became the first pitcher ever to make 3 starts and 5 relief appearances in the same postseason. (Obviously this wasn't really possible until we went to three rounds in 1995, but "lies, damn lies, and statistics", right?) Corbin promply shut down any attempt at an Astros comeback by holding them to just 2 singles in 3 innings, and retiring one of those on a double play. The last pitcher to throw 3+ scoreless in relief and get a win in a World Series clincher was Larry Sherry of the Dodgers in 1959-- and three of the six who've ever done it have a Washington connection. Remember that "last World Series game in Washington" in 1933 where Mel Ott's homer carried Fred Schulte over the fence for the win? Dolf Luque of the Giants got the win in that game while pitching 3+ scoreless innings. And it also happened in 1924 when Walter Johnson pitched the final 4 innings in relief and Earl McNeely's walkoff double secured Washington's only World Series title.

Someone get us a copy of The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune tomorrow. Guessing the headline won't be quite this big.

Sorry, we mean Washington's only other World Series title.
This might take some getting used to.

The vast majority of factoids in this post, and all our posts throughout the year (feel free to peruse those archives on the right, this happens every Sunday night during the regular season), come from the invaluable Baseball Reference Play Index which can be yours too for as little as $3 a month. Much thanks and love to them, Retrosheet, SABR, Stats LLC, and other Twitter "stat mavens" who inspire or enhance ideas. See you next year (although there might be a rogue post or two before then).

-Tons of Fun

Just three weeks ago we had 10 teams with a dream of hanging another banner from the rafters (or, in a couple cases, a banner at all). You usually see this quote from former commissioner Bart Giamatti after the World Series ends, but "[baseball] is designed to break your heart". For eight of those teams it already has. And thus that banner will be the second one ever for either Hous-ton or Washing-ton (in case you wondered about the title). This is the first time two "-ton"s will compete for baseball's ultimate prize, and we even included Arlington (Texas) and Bloomington (Minn.) in that. But before those teams get their -ton of pressure later this week, let's look back at the fun they had getting there.


Running the Cards

Plenty of card games (Hearts, Euchre, Pinochle, 500) are based on the concept of taking tricks, and most of these games also have some special term (running, "nello", "going alone", "shooting the moon") for either taking all the tricks or none of them.

If you've got designs on running all the cards, it's probably a good idea to have at least a couple of aces. But it's rarely a good idea to play them right away. Let's see what this 10 of clubs will draw out before unleashing the big guns.

Enter Anibal Sanchez for Game 1 of the NLCS. And that 10 of clubs silenced every other club, at least the ones coming out of the St Louis dugout. One through nine go the Cardinals in the first three innings. Kolten Wong works a walk in the 4th but meh. Randy Arozarena, remarkably still on the team, gets hit by a pitch and steals second. But that's still not a hit. When Marcell Ozuna flies out to right in the 7th, Sanchez has set the Nats/Expos record for longest postseason no-hitter, which Max Scherzer held for barely 2 years. Now granted, Anibal Sanchez does already have one no-hitter-- thirteen years and four teams ago as a 22-year-old rookie with the Marlins. Only Nolan Ryan had ever thrown two of them 13 years apart. And only the baseball gods could unleash this coincidence on us: The Cardinals had been no-hit through 7 innings twice in their posteason history, by Red Ruffing of the Yankees in 1942 and Jim Lonborg of the Red Sox in 1967. Both those no-hitters got broken up with 2 outs in the 8th. So you know what has to happen when pinch hitter Jose Martinez wanders to the plate with 2 outs in the 8th. Clean line-drive single that Michael Taylor later admitted he thought about diving for, but then also realized the game was still only 2-0 and it could be an inside-the-parker if he missed. That also cleared up any confusion about whether to let Sanchez try and finish the game after 103 pitches; Sean Doolittle would get 4 outs in just 15 pitches to render Martinez's single the only hit of the game for St Louis.

That Jim Lonborg game in 1967 was another of the three postseason games where the Cardinals ended up with only 1 hit; the other was 2004 NLCS 5 against Houston, which comes up at least once per series because of Jeff Kent's walkoff homer to break a scoreless tie. The Cardinals hadn't been shut out on 1 hit at home, in any game, since Daniel Descalso broke up Yovani Gallardo's no-hitter in the 8th on May 7, 2011.

This also created a rough loss for Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas, who gave up an early run on doubles by Howie Kendrick and Yan Gomes, but then cruised through 6 innings while striking out 7. That one run was enough to tag him with the loss, the third in Cards postseason history to pull that off. Matt Morris lost a 1-0 decision to Arizona in the 2001 Division Series, and none other than Steve Carlton was on the opposite side of that Jim Lonborg near-no-hitter in the '67 World Series.

For the Nationals, it could certainly have been a game of missed opportunities; they still scored only 2 runs despite collecting 10 hits and 5 walks. The last time Washington turned 10+ hits into 2 or fewer runs, and still won, was in Jordan Zimmerman's no-hitter on the final weekend of the 2014 season. The franchise hadn't done it in a road game since an all-Canada affair between Montréal and Toronto, appropriately on Canada Day 1997. And Doolittle became just the second Nats/Expos pitcher to get a 4-out save in a postseason game, joining Jeff Reardon in the 1981 Division Series against Philadelphia.


Maxed Out

So after that 10 of clubs was a nice surprise, you actually can bring out the aces. For the Nationals that means Max Scherzer and, wait a minute, didn't we just do this? Kolten Wong draws a walk but remains the Cardinals' only baserunner for 3 innings. And then 4. And then 5. Well, at least we don't have to look up any more no-hitter notes. Although it was the first time the Cardinals had been held hitless through 4 innings twice in the same postseason. And just as Scherzer looks to regain his title of the longest no-hitter in Nats postseason history (the one Sanchez broke yesterday), Paul Goldschmidt finally comes through with a single to start the 7th. Like Taylor before him, Juan Soto said he briefly thought about diving for the ball, but this one wasn't nearly as close a play, and plus this game is still 1-0 as well. Taylor's homer in the 3rd was the only scoring to this point, as Scherzer and Adam Wainwright both fanned 11 opponents. The only other starters to match 11-K games in the postseason were Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw in the opener of the 2015 NLDS.

Waino was already on the hook for the loss with only that one run, but Adam Eaton's double in the 8th added two more and knocked him out of the game. He became the first Cards pitcher to strike out 11 in a home game and lose since Woody Williams against the Reds on August 18, 2004. However, Waino did have a road game where he did the same thing-- May 25, 2010 at San Diego. And only four other Cards pitchers have had two such games in the live-ball era: Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Harvey Haddix, and Sam Jones. Meanwhile, back in Scherzer's corner, that hit deprived us of seeing what would happen if Davey Martinez tried to remove him at 110 or 120 pitches with the no-hitter still going. Matt Adams hit for Scherzer in the 8th after that single by Goldy, giving Max his fourth game with the Nationals where he allowed 1 hit and struck out 11+. All other pitchers in franchise history have done it three times combined. He also became just the fourth pitcher, for any team, to do it in the postseason, joining (!) Anibal Sanchez, then his teammate with Detroit in 2013; Roger Clemens in 2000; and Baltimore's Moe Drabowsky in 1966.

Jose Martinez would come up with a pinch-hit double in the 8th to at least get the Cardinals on the scoreboard this time (and prompt a lot of calls from Redbirds faithful about, why isn't he starting?). Martinez joined Allen Craig (2013), So Taguchi (2006), and Bob Skinner (1964) as the only Cardinals with a pinch-hit double and a pinch-hit single in the same postseason series. And NLCS Games 1 and 2 would be the first time in the history of the current Busch Stadium (2006) that St Louis had been held to 3 hits in back-to-back games. They hadn't done it at the old park since May 12 and 13 of 2000 against the Dodgers (Darren Dreifort & Chan Ho Park).


It's A Hit!

Our house of Cards would move to the nation's capital for Game 3, and it's true in most card games (though not all) that an ace beats a jack. That axiom would hold on Monday when the ace was Stephen Strasburg and the Jack was Flaherty. Having apparently taken their off-day to study the "objectives" part of the rule book, Marcell Ozuna figured out how to get the Cardinals a base hit before the 7th inning. (Though he promptly got caught in an unforced rundown, so clearly didn't finish the whole chapter.) And it would be the bottom of the 3rd when the Nationals broke out against Flaherty, with Anthony Rendon and Howie Kendrick each hitting RBI doubles to lead a 4-run inning. That was the first time in 2019 that the Nats had scored 4+ in a frame against the Cardinals; St Louis was the only National League opponent against whom they didn't do it at least once in the regular season.

With Strasburg dealing again, Mike Shildt made a curious decision to pinch-hit for Flaherty in the 5th inning, ending his start after just 78 pitches. That would lead to John Brebbia taking the mound in the Nationals' half of the inning, which would then lead to Kendrick and Ryan Zimmerman hitting another pair of RBI doubles to nearly seal the Washington victory at 6-0. The Nationals became just the second team, after the 2007 Red Sox, in postseason history to have four RBI doubles in the same game. When Brebbia also hung a leadoff homer to Victor Robles in the 6th, he joined Mark Petkovsek (1996 NLCS) as the only Cardinals pitchers to give up 3 extra-base hits while getting only 2 outs.

Kendrick would add another two-bagger in the 7th and finish off the scoring at 8-1, becoming the 17th player (and first for Nats/Expos) with 3 doubles in a postseason game. Ben Zobrist was the previous, in the 2015 ALCS at Toronto. Having turned 36 in July, Kendrick is also the fourth-oldest player ever to have 3 extra-base hits in a postseason game, after Craig Biggio (39 in 2005), Willie Stargell (39 in 1979), and Larry Walker (37 in 2004). He's the first player in Nationals history with 3 doubles and 3 RBIs in the same game; the last Expos batter to do it was Vladimir Guerrero on June 2, 2001. And only Albert Pujols (2011 NLCS 2) and then-Giant Freddy Sanchez (2010 WS 1) had posted that line in any postseason game.

Meanwhile, although not threatening the no-hitter, Strasburg would complete 7 innings like Scherzer and Sanchez before him, striking out the side around three singles in the 7th, and getting charged with an unearned run only because Juan Soto slipped and missed everything when trying to get the ball back in from left field. The last team to have three consecutive starters throw 7 innings and allow 0 earned runs in the postseason was the 1974 World Series champion Athletics, who did it in that year's ALCS behind Ken Holtzman, Vida Blue, and Catfish Hunter. And the last opposing pitcher for any team to strike out 12, walk 0, and allow 0 earned runs against the Cardinals was Corey Kluber back on May 13, 2015.


We'll Take The Rest

At some point in your card game, if someone is trying to run the table, they might get to a point where the outcome is inevitable, the cards are such that they are guaranteed to take every remaining trick without losing the lead, so they just throw the whole hand down and say, thank you very much. That would bring us to Game 4.

Patrick Corbin hasn't achieved "ace" status yet, but by now he probably qualifies as a face card. One of those cards where, if you've been counting, you know that the ace and king were already drawn out, and you can play this queen without worrying about it losing to anything. Corbin started by striking out the first three Cardinals batters (here we go again!), becoming the second Nats/Expos pitcher in postseason history with 3 K's in a 1st inning. The first? Max Scherzer in Game 2! It would, however, be quite a while before Corbin got back out there to fan #4 batter Marcell Ozuna as well.

That's because Dakota Hudson, to continue the card analogy, folded. Or went all-in with a pair of 3's, or whatever you'd like. You know how it went. Trea Turner leadoff single. Adam Eaton double. Sac fly. Double. Walk. Kolten Wong drops a relay throw at second that certainly should have gotten one out if not started a double play. Two more singles. And Hudson is mercifully removed from the game before having to face the aforementioned Patrick Corbin, to whom he has already handed a 5-0 lead. Turner then bats again and finishes off the beatdown with a single off Adam Wainwright to score the last two inherited runners and gave the Nats their first 7-run 1st inning since that famous 25-4 game against the Mets last July. Turner also had a pair of 1st-inning hits in that game as well, and is the first player in Nats/Expos history to pull that off twice. He's also just the fourth for any team to do it in a postseason game, joining Chuck Knoblauch (2000 ALDS), Jerome Walton of the Cubs (1989 NLCS), and the Yankees' Bob Cerv (1960 WS).

At this point, the rest of the game (and the series) is pretty much elementary. The Cards do have one glimmer of hope when Corbin loads the bases in the 5th and then our buddy Jose Martinez-- who is finally starting-- doubles home 2 runs to get as close as 7-4. But Corbin comes back to strike out Paul Goldschmidt and Ozuna again to finish the day with 12 strikeouts. Combined with Scherzer and Strasburg, it's the first three-game streak in Nats/Expos history (regular season or post-) where their starting pitcher fanned at least 11 in each game.

Dakota Hudson, meanwhile, became only the third Cardinals pitcher in the live-ball era to get 1 out, give up 7 runs, and take a loss. Mark Petkovsek, whom you may remember from Game 3 for giving up 3 XBH and getting 2 outs in 1996, also had this line in a regular-season game in June 1998, along with Bob Forsch in May 1977. Only one other pitcher for any team had posted the 1-and-7-plus-a-loss line in a postseason game... and that was Mike Foltynewicz against the Cardinals last week, in that NLDS Game 5 where St Louis had a 10-run 1st. No team had posted a 7-run frame on offense, and allowed one on defense, in the same postseason since the 2007 Red Sox-- and then both the Nationals and Cardinals did it with the start of Game 4.



The NLCS brought to you by all things Joker. And not the movie. The ALCS, on the other hand, will be a different game entirely. Take your pick. Or should we say, go fish. Intermission!



Turns, Flops, and River Avenue

Okay, so we switched card games. But unlike the NLCS where there was little drama beyond the initial dealing, its AL counterpart took many strange turns, right up until the very last pitch.

After sweeping the Twins in the Division Series, the Yankees had four off-days to regroup, reset the pitching rotation, and otherwise enjoy autumn in New York. That meant Masahiro Tanaka against a group of Astros hitters who had just escaped a 5-game series with the Rays. Oof. We will thank Kyle Tucker for smacking a line-drive single in the 3rd, although we didn't yet know that would be the only hit off Tanaka. If that sounds kinda familiar for a Game 1, it's because Anibal Sanchez did the same thing for the Nationals the day before, although he waited until the 8th inning to give his up. In the 51-year history of League Championship Series play, it's the second time that both of them have had a Game-1 starter allow just 1 hit... and the other time was last year when Gio Gonzalez and Chris Sale did it. Tanaka would become the fourth Yankees starter to give up 1 hit in a postseason game and get a win, joining Roger Clemens, David Cone, and Orlando Hernandez, who all did it in a two-season span (1999-2000).

The only other baserunner Tanaka allowed in his 6 innings was a walk to Alex Bregman, and wouldn't you know it, both Bregman and Tucker got erased on double plays. That made Tanaka the first Yankees pitcher to throw at least 6 innings and face the minimum over his entire outing since David Cone's perfect game on July 18, 1999. And the only other Yankees pitcher to allow 2 baserunners and get a win in a postseason game... was Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956. The Astros did manage 2 hits off the bullpen, but still were shut out on 3 or fewer for the first time ever in the postseason, and the first time ever by the Yankees.

Meanwhile, on offense, Game 1 turned into The Gleyber Torres Experience, as the 22-year-old doubled home the Yankees' first run in the 4th, homered in the 6th, and dumped in a bases-loaded 2-out single in the 7th. That gave him his third career game with a single, double, homer, and 4 RBI, the most ever by a Yankees hitter before turning 23. Mickey Mantle "only" did it twice. Annnnd then sure enough, just as we're readying the rest of those notes, Gleyber puts the cap on the 7-0 final score with a 9th-inning groundout to score DJ LeMahieu. Only two other Yankees-- Hideki Matsui in 2004 and Bernie Williams in 2001-- had ever had 3 hits and 5 RBI in a postseason road game, and only two others for any team had posted a 5-RBI postseason game at a younger age. The record, like many things age-related, belongs to Andruw Jones in the 1996 World Series; Addison Russell of the Cubs also had a 5-RBI game in the 2016 fall classic and beat Torres's age by 3 weeks.


Highlights At 11

If you're the Astros (or any team, for that matter), the last thing you want is to go to New York down 0-2. Especially after getting thumped 7-0 in Game 1 of the series. You at least feel good that Justin Verlander is back on the mound, but the question is which James Paxton will show up for the Yankees-- the one from June and July who gave up 6+ runs four times, or the one who rattled off 10 straight wins in August and September?

Naturally, of course, the answer is a little bit of both. Paxton gave up an RBi double to Carlos Correa in the 2nd, then two more singles in the 3rd before Aaron Boone-- whose team won Game 1, remember-- decides to pull him after only 51 pitches. Chad Green would retire the next six Astros batters, making Paxton just the third Yankees postseason starter in the last 60 years to only give up 1 run but not finish the 3rd. And the others had better excuses-- CC Sabathia did it in the rain-suspended ALDS game in 2011, and David Wells left the 2003 World Series against Florida with a back injury. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge broke through against Verlander with the Yankees' first lead-flipping homer in a postseason game since Johnny Damon took Cleveland's Jake Westbrook deep in the 2007 ALDS. After Green has exhausted his supply of 26 pitches, even though 21 of them were strikes, the ball passes to Adam Ottavino, and George Springer quickly passes it back almost to the train tracks above left field. That saddled Ottavino with his eighth blown save this year, the most for a Yankees pitcher since Mariano Rivera in 2001. After the Yankees require three more pitchers to get out of the inning (yet strike out four batters thanks to a wild pitch, just the third 4-K inning in postseason history), we are tied 2-2. And now we wait.

DJ LeMahieu runs into an out at home plate to end the top of the 6th. After which we go 4½ innings, 36 batters, NINE pitching changes (make it stop!), and just over 2 hours without a base hit. If you've done the math, you realize that we are now in extra innings, and Brett Gardner-- who got that infield hit in the 6th on which LeMahieu was thrown out-- also gets the next hit of the game in the 11th. Josh James, however, manages to strike out Gary Sanchez after the latter fouled off eight pitches, and finally Carlos Correa says, I've had enough of this, let me dump the very first pitch of B11 halfway up the lower deck in right field. And if it sounds a little déjà vu that Correa hit a walkoff in ALCS Game 2 against the Yankees, it's because you're still in 2017. When he really did do the exact same thing, just in "double" form instead of "homer". That was also the Astros' only other walkoff anything against the Yankees, including in the regular season, and the first postseason walkoff homer surrendered by New York since David Ortiz took Paul Quantrill deep in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS.


Flip Flop Fly Ball

That tying homer off the train tracks in Game 2 was the 12th of George Springer's postseason career, jumping himself back ahead of Jose Altuve who has 11. Altuve must have gotten wind of this, and realizing that we list ties alphabetically when tweeting out these leaderboards, he wasted no time saying give me my "record" back. After Springer grounded out to start Game 3, Altuve mashed his own 12th postseason homer off Luis Severino, who then got into-- but also out of-- a bases-loaded jam with only that 1 run. Altuve also hit a 1st-inning homer at Yankee Stadium against J.A. Happ on June 23 and is the first Astros batter with two there in the same season.

Gerrit Cole worked into and out of his own bases-loaded jam in the bottom half (amazingly, for the first time in a long while, both teams got hits in the 1st inning), and Game 3 wound up being the first postseason game where both teams stranded the bases loaded in the 1st since the Giants and Cardinals in the 2002 NLCS. Josh Reddick led off the 2nd with another homer, the first time Severino's ever allowed dingers in the 1st and 2nd innings of the same game, and the first game in Astros postseason history where they've hit them. But then we wait some more. Cole uncharacteristically walks five batters but the Yankees can't ever manage any hits to drive them in. In fact an otherwise-harmless Edwin Encarnacion double is all they managed against him from the 2nd through the 7th, while the Astros have grown their lead to 4-0 thanks once again to Adam Ottavino. Although it was Zack Britton who threw the wild pitch to score one of the inherited runs, it was Ottavino who started the 7th with a walk and a single, the third time this postseason he's appeared in a game and not recorded an out. Only Scott Schoeneweis of the Angels (2002) and Jesse Orosco of the Orioles (1996) had done that in postseason history. (Yeah, we know. Wait for it.)

Never do the shutout notes early. Because Gleyber Torres is still in the game, and Gerrit Cole is now out of it by the time we reach the 8th. So Torres unleashes the inevitable shutout-breaking solo homer against Joe Smith, and having drawn two of those walks from Cole, Gleyber is the first Yankees batter with a homer and two walks in a postseason loss since Hideki Matsui did it against the Angels in 2005. But when Roberto Osuna got the final 3 outs, the Yankees had just their second postseason game ever where they scored 1 run and stranded 10 or more on base. The other was a 3-1 loss to Minnesota in the opener of the 2003 Division Series. Game 3 was also the 14th time this year that Gerrit Cole threw 7+ innings, allow no more than 1 run, and got a win. That broke a tie with Roy Oswalt (2005) and Dallas Keuchel (2015) for the most in Astros history.


We Rain As One

We mentioned at the end of our Division Series post that this would be just the fourth postseason that had a game every single day from October 1 through 16. Except we forgot one little thing. With the Nationals sweeping their series, there would suddenly only be one game on the 16th. And because it's at Yankee Stadium, it's outdoors. And those things falling from the sky are not rally towels, though those might have come in handy to soak up a little bit of the 1.83 inches of rain that fell on Central Park that day alone-- as much the previous 43 days combined. So let's just say we're not playing baseball, and we'll be forced to give up our travel day on Friday instead. This does, however, create a situation where both teams can go back to their Game 1 starters, Greinke and Tanaka, on normal rest.

Neither was particuarly sharp, although Greinke held on a little longer than Tanaka this time. That's despite walking three batters, including a bases-loaded pass to Brett Gardner, in the 1st inning. It was only the second game of Greinke's career where he'd issued three walks in the 1st; the other was April 16, 2007, and the opposing starter that day was now-teammate (then-Tiger) Justin Verlander. And while it is just the 1st inning, Gardner's walk was the first go-ahead one for the Yankees in a postseason game since Steve Avery passed Wade Boggs in the 10th in 1996 WS 4 (aka The Jim Leyritz Game). However, Gary Sanchez would strike out with the bases loaded to end that inning and end the Yankees' threat. In the 2nd New York had two runners on before Aaron Judge struck out to end the inning. (There's a theme here.) The Astros finally got to Tanaka in the 3rd with a 4-pitch walk, a Josh Reddick single, and George Springer's 3-run homer to retake that home run title that he's been flipping with Altuve all month.

The Yankees, now down 3-1, finally knock Greinke out of the game in the 5th, but Gleyber Torres and Edwin Encarnacion both strike out with the bases loaded to end that one. And Chad Green made their missed opportunities that much worse by giving up another 3-run homer, this one to Carlos Correa, for a 6-1 Astros lead in the 6th. The Astros, mostly by virtue of being in the National League until 2013, had never hit multiple 3- or 4-run homers in a game in the Bronx, but had still only ever done it three times in Queens. And those were all at Shea: Brad Ausmus and Geoff Blum in 2002; Bob Watson and Lee May in 1973; and Denis Menke and Jim Wynn in 1969. Gary Sanchez makes up for his 1st-inning strikeout with a 2-run bomb in the 6th to get back to 6-3. But after DJ LeMahieu gets an automatic double when his fair ball jumps into the extended netting down by the foul pole, Judge records yet another inning-ending strikeout, the Yankees' fourth of the game with runners in scoring position. They had not pulled that off in a postseason game since doing it six times in Game 2 of the 1978 World Series against the Dodgers.

In the 8th it's time for Adam Ottavino again, and while you can blame a lot of this one on the defense, Alex Bregman's leadoff double is squarely on him. LeMahieu then makes an error to allow Yuli Gurriel to reach, and guess what that means for Ottavino. After 10 pitches, he's done again, and yet again he's failed to record an out. After just tying the record for such a thing two days ago, he now owns it outright with his fourth 0-IP appearance in the same postseason. Torres would promptly commit another error while trying to charge a grounder and cut off Bregman at the plate, and there was more of the same in the 9th when Yordan Alvarez sent a slow roller to Torres at short and it went right under his glove. That led to the 8-3 final score, but was more notably the Yankees' fourth defensive error of the day, their most in a postseason game since Game 2 of the 1976 ALCS at Kansas City. Thanks to all those walks and inning-ending strikeouts, the Yankees also managed to strand 10 baserunners, creating the very unusual final linescore of 3-5-4-10. No team had hit that exact combo since April 21, 1972, when the Giants did it... also in a loss to the Astros.


Friday Night Lights

As mentioned, we weren't originally supposed to be playing a game on Friday. The 18th was supposed to be that big exciting travel day back to Houston if Game 6 had to happen. To accommodate that lack of travel time, Game 5 even started at the non-TV-friendly time of 7 pm, which frankly is becoming a good idea for all postseason games considering they regularly take over 4 hours. But anyway. Our point is that you definitely wanted to be on time for Game 5, because if you only saw the last 8 innings, well, you pretty much already missed it all. George Springer started things with a slow roller that James Paxton just missed, his third leadoff hit at Yankee Stadium to also lead all Astros players in that category. Within the next 12 pitches we've had a passed ball, a groundout, a walk, and a wild pitch to score Springer with the first run of the game and cause the Internet to gush with a bunch of notes about the Astros being 77-19 this year when they score first. However, this year there's been one team who consistently could care less about those notes, and they're over in the other dugout. And 12 pitches into Justin Verlander's outing, he's already given up a leadoff homer to DJ LeMahieu to tie the game, a single to Aaron Judge, and a double to Gleyber Torres. For Torres that was his eighth extra-base hit of the postseason, joining Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui, and Bernie Williams on that single-season list. And the big blow came when Aaron Hicks, of 1 hit in 10 prior ALCS plate appearances, cranked a 3-run homer to propel the Yankees ahead 4-1. Verlander also gave up a pair of 1st-inning homers on a slightly smaller stage in Cincinnati on June 18; it's the first time in his career he's done it twice in a season. The Yankees hadn't begun a postseason game with three straight hits since the 2003 ALDS against Minnesota, and hadn't scored 4 runs in a postseason 1st inning since the 2000 Division Series at Oakland.

Still, there's eight more chances for the Astros to come back and render that trip back to Houston obsolete (well, at least for one team). Paxton ends up never having a 1-2-3 inning, but the Astros also end up with one and only one baserunner in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th-- none of whom score. Meanwhile, Verlander-- who apparently missed the memo about the game being at 7:00-- is back to normal and retires 20 of the next 21 batters following the Hicks homer. Tommy Kahnle puts two runners on in the 7th but Zack Britton escapes that jam, and then it's 12-up, 12-down as we limp to the end of the game without so much as a 3-ball count. So the amazing news is that you actually saw a postseason game end shortly after 10:00. Oh yeah, and-- for the first time this postseason-- both teams scored in the 1st inning. For the Yankees, it was the second postseason game where they scored 4+ in the 1st but none after that; the other was a 5-1 win against Brooklyn in 1955. But if you thought this game couldn't make postseason history, well, there's always something. It's the first playoff game ever where both teams scored in the 1st inning... but then neither of them scored again after that.


Six Of A Kind

Okay, we realize this requires a seven-card hand and either multiple decks or a couple of wilds. But Minute Maid Park does have several decks, and Game 6 was nothing if not wild. After the team planes followed each other back to Houston in the early hours of Saturday morning, leaving Newark at midnight and landing just before 3 am, both managers opted to go with another "bullpen day" just in case they needed to keep that last ace in their pocket for a potential Game 7. Chad "Green" ended up much closer to "blue" after watching Jose Altuve smack a 1st-inning double, his 19th career extra-base hit in the postseason. That tied Carlos Correa and left him behind only George Springer (23); not only are they flip-flopping spots on the home run list, they're doing it with total XBH also. After a walk to Alex Bregman, and immediately following an oh-so-helpful Mound Visit, Green then hung a shoulder-high fastball that Yuli Gurriel somehow snuck over the wall into the Crawford Boxes for a 3-run homer. The Astros had never hit a 3- or 4-run homer in the 1st inning in their postseason history, and only Alex Bregman (May 2017) and Carlos Lee (June 2008) had ever hit them against the Yankees. And once again, the Astros are still 77-20 when they score first and the faithful at MMP have those orange towels going crazy. Not so fast, y'all.

After retiring the first five Yankees in order, Brad Peacock-- who actually threw the 9th inning of Game 5 last night-- gave one of those runs back in the 2nd when Didi Gregorius doubled. Peacock was the first pitcher in Astros history to "start" a game after pitching at all the day before, and the fourth in postseason history to do it after finishing the prior game. The others only go back to 1924 (Firpo Marberry of the Senators), 1910 (Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown), and 1906 (Guy "Doc" White). Much like Game 4, Brett Gardner strikes out to end that threat, and then Ryan Pressly gets Gregorius on a slow roller with the bases loaded in the 3rd. Jose Urquidy, the Astros' fourth pitcher, would end up with their longest outing-- 8 outs including 5 strikeouts-- but not before surrendering a home run to Gio Urshela to put the Yankees right back in this thing. It also blew up our Twitter feed with folks wondering if one "U" player had ever homered off another before. (Yes, though not in the postseason, and very sadly not involving Ugueth Urbina.)

The Yankees got singles from Judge and Gregorius in the 7th and 8th but had them both erased on double plays. The Astros hold a 4-2 lead at this point, but squander a bases-loaded opportunity for more runs in B8. And haven't you learned by now what the Yankees will do with that. Recall that A.J. Hinch was holding Gerrit Cole out for a potential Game 7. We said, put him in now, you need 3 outs for the pennant. Instead we got the usually-reliable Roberto Osuna who gives up a line-drive single to Urshela. Now the tying run is at the plate, and after a 10-pitch battle with DJ LeMahieu, the tying run is back at the plate-- after circling the bases with a 2-run season-saving homer to make it 4-4 and make us delete half a dozen notes. The Yankees' last tying or go-ahead homer in the 9th inning of a postseason game was by Raul Ibañez, and it's not the one you're thinking of. It was the game after his famous walkoff-- Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS against Detroit. The only other players to hit such a homer when trailing by 2 or more in a potential elimination game are Albert Pujols-- also in Houston, off Brad Lidge in 2005-- and Brooklyn's Carl Furillo in 1953.

Aroldis Chapman gets 2 outs and starts the scramble for those same extra-inning notes from the last time we played here on Sunday. Springer draws a 5-pitch walk. And darned if Altuve isn't really tired of Springer catching up to him on that home-run list. Take that. Oh yeah, and take this pennant while you're at it. You've undoubtedly seen the list of pennant-winning walkoff homers; since the LCS became a thing in 1969, it's Chris Chambliss (1976), Aaron Boone (2003), Magglio Ordoñez (2006), Travis Ishikawa (2014), and now Altuve. The last three of the five were of the multi-run variety. Friend Of Kernels Jacob Pomrenke of SABR has tracked all pennant-clinching games, including those in the regular season, and identified 21 walkoffs total, the most famous still being The Shot Heard 'Round The World. Ignoring the whole walkoff thing for a moment, it was Altuve's 20th career postseason extra-base hit (remember he hit 19 earlier in the game), and his third game with 2 XBH and 3 runs scored. The only other player in postseason history to have three such games is Albert Pujols. And Osuna, despite blowing the save by giving up the LeMahieu dinger, also got a "BS win" since he was still technically in the game at the end. He did that twice during the regular season and is the first Astros pitcher with three since Jose Valverde in 2008. But the baseball gods have a fun treat in store. Because the last pitcher for any team to give up a homer, blow a save, and then turn around and get the win... was Saturday's loser, Aroldis Chapman, in that 10-inning rain-delayed World Series Game 7 three seasons ago.

For the Yankees, Urshela did manage to collect 3 hits including a homer, joining Derek Jeter (2005) and Jorge Posada (2002) as Yankees to do that in a game where they got eliminated. Green was the fourth starter in their postseason history to give up 3 earned runs, not start the 2nd inning, and have the team still lose-- even though DJ's homer got him personally off the hook. The others (all of whom did take the individual loss as well) were Art Ditmar in 1960, Bob Turley in 1958, and Whitey Ford in 1953. This season marks the 14th time, including World Series play, where the Yankees have been eliminated from the postseason on the road. The Astros of course bounced them two years ago as well. Of those 14 times, the only other city where it's happened twice is Detroit (2006 & 2012).

And finally, let's step back and look at that Astros' boxscore. 6 runs on 6 hits. They drew 6 walks. They struck out 6 times. And they left 6 runners on base. (Did we mention it's Game 6?) The last team to hit all those 6's exactly was the Angels against Tampa Bay on May 30, 2003. Care to guess how many times it's now happened in the live-ball era? Your first five guesses don't count.



And while the AL Championship series went fairly long with a bunch of twists and turns, the number of days that the Nationals will have off to sit around and think about things? Yeah, that's 6 also. We were sad when this streak got broken last year, but for 9 straight seasons from 2009 to 2017, the team who won its pennant first, and thus had longer to sit around and wait before playing again, lost the World Series. (Another, still-true, oddity that makes that possible is that the two pennants have not been claimed on the same day since 1992.) Since the three-round format debuted in 1995, teams with 6 or more days off are 3-3 at winning the fall classic, although two of the wins were the first two years of the format before MLB had all the scheduling down. It then happened each year from 2006 to 2009, with three of those four teams losing. But an 86-year curse worked for the Red Sox (from Bos-ton, by the way) not so long ago. And the last time a World Series came to Washington was 1933... 86 years ago. See ya Tuesday.

Ten-Four

At the close of the regular season last Sunday, we said farewell to 20 teams whose 2019 campaigns had come to an end. And, as happens every year, the postseason field of 10 was very quickly cut to four as six more teams found their seasons "over and out".

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Trouble Brewing

It's one of those hypothetical debates you see in baseball circles all the time: If your season came down to one game, who would you want on the mound? You can't go wrong answering Max Scherzer to that question, and fortunately for the Nationals-- who were faced with this conundrum in the Wild Card game on Tuesday-- he's on their team.

Unfortunately for Scherzer, not every game can be perfect. A six-pitch walk to Trent Grisham to start the game isn't ideal, but it's not a huge deal yet. Until Yasmani Grandal smacks the very next pitch into the seats in right. It was the fifth 1st-inning homer in Brewers postseason history, the first on the road, and the first time their second batter of the game hit a 2-run bomb. (The other 1st-inning homers were by Christian Yelich, Corey Hart, and Ryan Braun twice.) And even a 2-0 deficit isn't too bad given that it's early, but then Eric Thames leads off the 2nd inning with another homer. Since coming to the Nationals in 2015, Scherzer had never before had a game where he gave up longballs in both the 1st and 2nd innings, and the Brewers had only hit them once before in postseason history. That was 2011 NLCS 6 against the Cardinals when Hart, Rickie Weeks, and Jonathan Lucroy all went yard.

Scherzer finally settled down and got through 5 innings without any more damage, and Trea Turner got 1 run back with a solo homer in the 3rd. Stephen Strasburg would enter in the 6th and give up a line-drive single on the very first pitch he ever threw in a major-league relief appearance, but then Thames grounded into a double play. Still the Nationals couldn't break through... until they got some help in the bottom of the 8th. After Josh Hader struck out two batters, but also gave up a single, a walk, and a hit batter to load the bases, before Juan Soto stepped to the plate.

You know the play. The one where Soto dumps a single into right and Grisham is too anxious to gun down the tying run at the plate, that he misses the ball and the Nationals score not just the tying run, but the go-ahead one as well. Soto only gets credit for tying the game (the last run scores on the error), but he still became the youngest player in postseason history to have a multi-run hit in the 8th inning or later. The old record, which he broke by over a year, was "only" held by Mickey Mantle, who hit a 2-run homer in Game 2 of the 1953 World Series. It was also the Nationals' first bases-loaded single where all three runners scored (regardless of how) since Felipe Lopez also hit one against the Brewers on September 17, 2006. When Milwaukee failed to mount a comeback in the 9th, Hader would join Jeremy Jeffress (NLCS 2 last year) and Bob McClure (1982 WS 7) as the only Brewers pitchers to get a blown save and a loss in the same postseason game. And it was the first time in the Brewers' fairly-brief postseason history that they'd been eliminated via a 1-run loss.


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Rays Of Hope

Just in case Tuesday's NL Wild Card game didn't get off to a fast-enough start for you, might we introduce Yandy Diaz. It's okay if you've never met him before; he played less than 90 games for Cleveland in the previous two seasons before getting caught up in the three-team trade that sent Carlos Santana to Cleveland, Edwin Encarnacion to Seattle, and Jake Bauers from Tampa Bay to Cleveland. But Diaz got the nod as the Rays' leadoff batter in Wednesday's winner-take-all game, and five pitches later, he had put the Rays on top 1-0 with the first leadoff homer in their postseason history. It was the second one ever hit in a postseason game at Oakland Coliseum, and that includes the A's (who don't have any). Pete Rose took Catfish Hunter deep to start Game 5 of the 1972 World Series, which the Reds won to send the series back to Cincinnati.

Diaz's homer was also just the second leadoff homer the Rays had ever hit at Oakland Coliseum, and the other belonged to someone who was also part of this year's AL playoffs-- as a manager. Rocco Baldelli took Dan Haren deep on August 11, 2006. But similar to the Brewers jumping out early on Tuesday, the Rays-- and Diaz-- weren't done. After Matt Duffy led off the 2nd with a single, Avisail Garcia launched a 2-run shot to make it 3-0. And then Diaz came up again to start the 3rd, still just the Rays' 10th batter of the game, and homered again for a 4-0 lead and the abrupt departure of Sean Manaea. Diaz joined B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria, both in the 2008 ALDS against the White Sox, as the only Rays players to homer in their first two plate appearances of a postseason game. Tampa Bay hadn't had a road game where they homered in each of the first 3 innings since Steven Souza and Kevin Kiermaier did it at Yankee Stadium on September 8, 2016. And Manaea's claim to fame? Well, he was the first A's starter to allow 3 homers while getting no more than 6 outs in a home game since the great Todd Van Poppel did it against the Angels on May 1, 1996.

Ramon Laureano did get 1 run back in the bottom of the 3rd (sound familiar?) after a 3-base error by Michael Brosseau. But unlike the NL game, there would be no further game- and season-altering errors in the late innings; Diego Castillo, Nick Anderson, and Emilio Pagán held the A's to just 3 baserunners in the final 4 frames. Tommy Pham added another solo homer to make this the Rays' second-ever game where they clubbed four dingers at Oakland Coliseum; the other was May 29, 2018, and included a back-to-back-to-back off Daniel Gossett. The 5-1 final gave the Athletics their first postseason game where they scored only 1 run and it came on a sac fly.


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Ten-Five

Alas, the Rays got only a brief moment to enjoy their Wild Card victory, because their next task was the buzzsaw that is the Houston Astros. In response to that "which pitcher would you want" question at the start of our post, A.J. Hinch doesn't have one choice, he has three. And some would argue, don't throw your best pitcher(s) out there early, save them on the chance that you lose the first or second game and need an ace or two to get you back into the series.

But here we are with the predictable Astros lineup of Justin Verlander in 1, Gerrit Cole in 2, and Zack Greinke in 3. If we told you in advance that one of the four Division Series would be a sweep, you'd bet on this one. But Tyler Glasnow came out matching Verlander early in Game 1, despite the latter not allowing a hit until the 5th inning-- something he's done in three straight postseasons now. Glasnow escaped a bases-loaded jam in the 3rd but a 2-run homer by Jose Altuve in the 5th spelled his departure after 76 pitches. Only George Springer (2017 WS 4) and Jeff Kent (2004 NLCS 5) have homered for Houston in the 5th or later to break up a scoreless tie in a postseason game. (That Kent game will pop up several more times.) Brendan McKay didn't fare much better, allowing 2 hits but then watching the right side of his defense have a failure to communicate resulting in a 4-0 Astros lead. After Yordan Alvarez and Yuli Gurriel hit back-to-back doubles to make it 6-0 in the 7th, Verlander finally departed, becoming the second Houston pitcher to throw 7+ innings and allow only 1 hit in a postseason game. The other was Brandon Backe, who kept that 2004 NLCS Game 5 scoreless so that Kent could hit the walkoff. The Rays escaped the shutout with 2 runs off Ryan Pressly but ultimately gave Verlander his eighth win in a "Division Series" game, passing John Smoltz and Andy Pettitte for the most in that round since it was added in 1995.

With Cole starting in Game 2, it was more of the same; in fact, of the 10 total postseason games played between Tuesday and Saturday, the only two that did not have a run in the first inning were the ones in this series. It would be the 4th until Alex Bregman finally connected against Ian Snell; Bregman also hit a go-ahead homer in ALDS Game 1 in each of the previous two postseasons and is the first Houstonian to hit three such dingers at home. Ah, but look a little closer at those previous two homers. The 2017 one, against Boston, broke a scoreless tie, albeit in the 1st inning. That game was on October 5. The 2018 homer? Broke a scorelss tie against Cleveland, this time in the 4th inning. Date of that game? October 5. Guess what Saturday was. October 5. Only two other players in postseason history have homered on the same date in three straight calendar years, and Bregman is the first whose homers all gave his team the lead. Francisco Lindor did it for Cleveland in 2016-17-18 (October 4), and Albert Pujols did it in NLCS play with the Cardinals on October 17 of 2004-05-06. Seven other players have hit postseason homers on the same date in three different years; Pujols is on that list as well, along with Steve Garvey, Mickey Mantle, David Ortiz, Frank Robinson, Alex Rodriguez, and Bernie Williams.

Cole, meanwhile, has already struck out seven Rays batters by the time Bregman goes yard, and it turns out he's not even halfway done. He promptly fans the side in the 5th, all swinging, and temporarily breaks his own Astros postseason record with 13 strikeouts against 0 walks when Ji-Man Choi whiffs in the 7th. The offense adds a second, unearned, run in the 7th, and finally in the 8th Cole runs out of gas. Travis d'Arnaud needs 10 pitches to strike out, after which Kevin Kiermaier laces a first-pitch double off the wall in right, and with it still being only 2-0, it's time for Cole to go. On the way out, he walks his final batter (Willy Adames, which is why that other record was temporary), but still finishes with his second 15-strikeout game of the season (September 8 vs Mariners). Only J.R. Richard in 1979 and Don Wilson in 1968 have had two in a year for the Astros, and combined with Verlander's 15-K effort against the Brewers on June 12, the Astros are the first team with three such games out of their pitching staff, including the postseason, since the famous "Curt & Randy" duo of the 2002 Diamondbacks. When Roberto Osuna gets the final out of the 8th to strand Kiermaier and Adames, Cole has become the fourth pitcher in major-league history to strike out 15+ and allow 0 runs in a postseason game. Roger Clemens did it for the Yankees in the 2000 ALCS, while Kevin Brown of the Padres had 16 K's in the first game of the 1998 playoffs, and Bob Gibson opened the 1968 World Series with a 17-K game against the Tigers. And while the Rays did get 1 run back off Osuna in the 9th to avoid the shutout, Game 2 was the sixth contest in their history where they scored 1 run (or 0) and struck out 17+ times; the previous being against Danny Duffy of the Royals on August 1, 2016.

For Game 3 it is back to St Petersburg and its warm-and-inviting dome, now with less tarp covering the upper deck! Zack Greinke, pitching for the first time in 12 days, definitely looked like it, and not in a good way. Facing the wrong end of a series sweep, and already staring down that broom handle after Jose Altuve homered in the 1st, the Rays unloaded on Greinke for 6 runs, starting with Kiermaier's lead-flipping 3-run bomb in the 2nd. The only other 3- or 4-run homer the Rays had ever hit in a postseason game at Tropicana was by Evan Longoria off Clay Buchholz in the 2013 ALDS, and they'd only had one previous lead-flipping homer at all (home or road, any number of runs) in their postseason history. That came off the bat of Akinori Iwamura in the Rays' first postseason appearance, the 2008 ALDS (Game 2 off Mark Buehrle). By the time Ji-Man Choi added a solo shot in the 2nd, Greinke had made postseason history as the first pitcher ever to give up multiple homers with four different teams-- doing it with the Brewers in 2011, the Dodgers in 2015, and the Diamondbacks in 2017. And when Brandon Lowe finally knocked him out of the game with another homer in the 4th, Greinke left as the first pitcher in Astros postseason history to give up three taters.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to Verlander and Cole the previous games, it would be Rays "starter" Charlie Morton who racked up the strikeouts, tallying nine of them but still needing 93 pitches to get through 5 innings. Only Matt Garza, in the pennant-clinching game of the 2008 ALCS, had struck out 9+ for the Rays in the postseason; and when the Rays rolled on to an easy 10-3 victory, barely finishing those 5 innings got Morton his fourth career pitching win when his team was facing postseason elimination. One was in last week's Wild Card game, but the others were two seasons ago-- in the opposite dugout while pitching for the Astros. He's the sixth pitcher in postseason history to have 4 wins in those situations (no one's had 5), joining Reds reliever Clay Carroll in the 1970s, plus Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, John Smoltz, and Justin Verlander.

Ah yes, Justin Verlander again. With a 2-1 series lead, A.J. Hinch opted against the "bullpen day" strategy, opting to throw JV out there for Game 4 on 3 days' rest. The only other time he started on short rest was in the 2011 ALDS when Game 1 got suspended by rain in the 2nd inning, Verlander threw only 25 pitches, and was easily able to come back and win Game 3. This time, mmm, not so much. The Rays unloaded for 4 hits and 3 runs in the 1st inning, with Tommy Pham's solo homer being just the third one Verlander had ever allowed in the 1st inning of a postseason game. Pablo Sandoval and Coco Crisp hit the others in 2012 when JV was with Detroit. It was also his first postseason start allowing 3 runs in the 1st, something Verlander did just once in the regular season this year (June 18 vs Reds).

Those 3 runs would actually be all the Rays needed; they stuck to their season-long approach of running Diego Castillo out there as an "opener" for 5 outs and following with a parade of relievers for anywhere from 2 to 7 outs each. The Astros managed just 6 hits and only broke the shutout on a solo homer by Robinson Chirinos in the 8th, just the second such homer in Houston postseason history. Their other shutout-breaking homer in the 8th or later was (we warned you!) Jeff Kent in the 2004 NLCS again.

Ji-Man Choi would finish Game 4 with 3 walks, a first in Rays postseason history, and although all of them were singles, Avisail Garcia joined Carl Crawford and Willie Aybar as the only Tampa Bay players with 4 hits in a postseason game. Those two did it in the same game, a 13-4 win at Fenway in 2008 ALCS 4.

The Rays are by now no stranger to elimination games; having gone down 0-2 in the series, they played four of them in this postseason out of just six games total. Alas that's all they will play, and the fourth time wasn't a charm, with Gerrit Cole back on the mound for Game 5 and, unlike Verlander, on normal rest because of the travel day back to Houston. While he didn't blow away 15 Rays via strikeout, he was his fairly normal self, with the only blemish being a solo homer by Eric Sogard in the 2nd. It was the fifth homer in Rays postseason history when they trailed by 4 or more, and Tampa Bay still ended up losing all of those games.

Meanwhile, the Astros wasted no time at giving Cole some breathing room that allowed him to be even more effective with all his pitches. George Springer, who also led off Game 7 of both the ALCS and WS in 2017 with hits, became the first player in postseason history to do so in three winner-take-all games. And leading to plenty of theories about the Astros stealing signs or Tyler Glasnow tipping pitches (edit: he later confirmed this), Michael Brantley and Jose Altuve also singled immediately afterwards, and before we could even look that up, Alex Bregman doubled to make it 3-0. The last team to begin a postseason game with four straight hits was the 2002 Angels, who did it in Game 2 of that year's World Series against the Giants. Cole would finish with 10 strikeouts and only 2 hits allowed, his sixth such game this season to tie Verlander for the team record. He joined Nolan Ryan (1981 NLDS 1) as the only Astros pitchers to throw 8 innings, allow no more than 2 hits, and get a win in a postseason game; two others posted that line but had the bullpen blow the win for them.

And of course, no Astros series is really ever complete until Jose Altuve hits back-to-back homers with someone. This time it was Michael Brantley, off Emilio Pagán in the 8th; of the five sets of B2B homers in Astros postseason history, Altuve's been part of four of them. The Game 5 shot, providing the final margin of 6-1, was also his 11th postseason homer, tying Springer for the most in team history. When Roberto Osuna had a 1-2-3 9th, the Rays became just the second team to be held to 2 hits in a winner-take-all game... but in mid-celebration, the Astros might be saying "been there done that". Because they were the other team to do it-- in Game 5 of their own ALDS in 2015 against the Royals.


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Washington Gridlock

Back in the other league, the Nationals were coming off that thrilling 3-run play in the 8th against Milwaukee and had only one day to regroup before meeting the Dodgers in their Division Series. Unfortunately for them, they appeared to take an extra day off against Walker Buehler (see what we did there?) in Game 1 of the series on Thursday. At least Juan Soto got us out of no-hitter watch with a single in the 2nd inning, but he was retired on a double play, and aside from a bizarre sequence of walking the bases loaded in the 4th, Washington didn't have another baserunner in Buehler's 6 innings. Or in the 7th and 8th against Kenta Maeda. Just as we're readying the 1-hitter notes, Trea Turner blows those up with a leadoff double in the 9th off Joe Kelly, which would turn out to not be the most interesting hit he surrendered in the series. And it turns out 2 hits is much less noteworthy than 1, even in the postseason, but it still wound up being just the fifth game in Nats/Expos history where they were shut out on 2 hits and struck out 13 times, the previous being a meaningless 2015 season finale at Citi Field.

And the weird thing is, Buehler wasn't the pitcher who had us on no-hitter watch. That was Patrick Corbin, who had his own bizarre sequence of walks-- four of them around two strikeouts in the 1st inning to literally walk in a run. A.J. Pollock became the fourth Dodger to get a free pass as the team's first batter of a postseason series, joining Davey Lopes (1977), Maury Wills (1966), and Dixie Walker (1941). Only twice before (1981 WS 6 and 1966 WS 1) had the Dodgers received four walks in any postseason inning. Max Muncy finally led off the 4th with a base knock, and would end up being weirdly involved in 4 of the 6 Dodgers runs. He was the recipient of that fourth walk in the 1st; in the 5th he rolled a ground ball to Howie Kendrick which was booted, Bill Buckner-style, to score another run; and he then hit a bases-loaded single in the 7th. James Loney, in Game 3 of the 2006 NLDS against the Mets, is the only other Dodgers batter with a bases-loaded hit and a bases-loaded walk in the same postseason game. Corbin's strange pitching day ended up with 5 walks, but also 9 strikeouts and only 1 earned run allowed. He also did that in Atlanta on September 6, joining Mark Langston (1989) and Bill Stoneman (1971) as the franchise's only pitchers to do it twice in a season. Gavin Lux and Joc Pederson would add two more solo homers in the 8th, the third set of Dodgers teammates to go yard in the same inning that late in a postseason contest. Pedro Guerrero and Mike Scioscia did it in the opener of the 1981 NLCS against the same Nats/Expos franchise, while Luis Olmo and Roy Campanella hit them against the Yankees in Game 3 of the 1949 World Series.

It was Game 2 between the Nats and Dodgers that featured the marquee pitching matchup, or at least what would have been that 3 or 4 years ago. Stephen Strasburg and Clayton Kershaw have both still got it, but aren't quite as dominating as they once were. Kershaw's postseason escapades are especially well-documented. (WAIT FOR IT.) So it wasn't a huge shock when he allowed a double to Trea Turner on the first pitch of the game (he later scored), then started the 2nd by hitting Victor Robles, letting him score on a 2-out single by Adam Eaton, and then giving up another RBI double to Anthony Rendon. And those 3 runs would prove to be plenty, with the Strasburg of old retiring the first 14 Dodgers in order, eight of them via strikeout. That gave him sole possession of third place on the Nationals' longest postseason no-hitter list; it turns out he also owns second place after throwing 5⅔ against the Cubs 2 years ago. (The top spot belongs to Max Scherzer, who got to 6⅓ against those same Cubs later in the series.) And combined with Corbin's start in Game 1, it was the second time in Dodgers postseason history that they'd been no-hit through 3 innings in consecutive games; the other time was in the 1956 World Series against the Yankees. Duke Snider got their first hit off Tom Sturdivant in the 4th inning of Game 4, and then in Game 5 against Don Larsen, well,....

Strasburg did allow 2 more hits and lose the shutout in the 6th, and Max Muncy homered off Sean Doolittle in the 7th to bring the Dodgers within striking distance, but Daniel Hudson escaped a bases-loaded jam in the 9th for the 4-2 win. Corey Seager, who made the final out, was the second player in Dodgers postseason history to end a game with a bases-loaded strikeout; the other-- Brian Dozier, who did it last year against Milwaukee-- got to watch this one from the Nationals' dugout. Seager's game-ender was the Dodgers' 17th strikeout of the game against just 5 hits; they'd only done that once before in the live-ball era in any 9-inning game, and that was also against the Nationals (and Scherzer, June 6, 2017).

Game 3 brought the Dodgers to the nation's capital, and this one also looked promising for the Nats when Juan Soto hit a 2-run homer in the 1st. Anibal Sanchez, who used to give us no-hitter scares in Detroit, would strike out 9 and allow only 1 run on a solo homer by good old Max Muncy in the 5th. After Corbin and Strasburg, that made the Nats the third team in postseason history whose starting pitcher fanned 9+ in three straight games, and Sanchez was part of one of the other trios-- as was now- and then-teammate Max Scherzer. They, plus Justin Verlander, did it for the Tigers in the 2013 ALCS; the other group was Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack, and Jerry Koosman for the 1973 Mets.

Unfortunately that 2-1 lead would go way out the window, metaphorically clearing the Anacostia River, when Davey Martinez went back to his strategy of having his starters throw their bullpen sessions as relievers in the actual game. Game 3 was Patrick Corbin's turn, and maybe he should have stopped after 18 pitches and 2 strikeouts. David Freese singled, and then Russell Martin hit the third lead-flipping double in Dodgers postseason history, joining Billy Cox in 1953, and the famous walkoff by Cookie Lavagetto in 1947 that also broke up Bill Bevens' no-hitter. After a walk to Chris Taylor, Enrique Hernandez made it 5-2 with another two-run double, the second time the Dodgers have hit two of them in the same postseason inning. In the game before Lavagetto's walkoff in 1947, Eddie Stanky and Carl Furillo did it in a 9-8 win against the Yankees. Now Corbin gets removed, but Wander Suero found his first few pitches wandering around the plate, and then a fan in left-center found one wandering off the bat of Justin Turner for a 3-run homer. That closed Corbin's line with 6 runs on only 2 outs, the first Nats/Expos reliever to do that either in the postseason, or against the Dodgers in any game.

Martin would add a 2-run homer in the 9th for the final margin of 10-4; he joined Steve Yeager in 1977 as the only Dodgers to have 4 RBIs in a postseason game while batting 8th or 9th. He and Turner were the first Dodgers teammates to homer and double in the same postseason game, and the second ever to do it at Nationals Park, after Andre Ethier and James Loney on August 27, 2008. And the team's 10 runs were their second-most ever on South Capitol Street, joining a 14-2 win over Livan Hernandez on September 22, 2009.

But tomorrow is another day, and Scherzer is back for Game 4 against the still-recovering-from-injury Rich Hill who didn't get out of the 3rd inning before being rescued from a bases-loaded jam by Kenta Maeda. You could say the Dodgers could afford a "bullpen day" with the 2-1 series lead, but Julio Urias and Pedro Baez were the ones who ended up on the wrong end of that idea. Anthony Rendon gave Washington the lead with an RBI single in the 5th, and Urias gave up another single to Howie Kendrick before departing. Baez's second pitch then got poked for a 3-run homer by Ryan Zimmerman to basically put the game out of reach, especially when Scherzer would end up going 7 innings and allowing only 1 run. It was Zim's 16th homer of the 3- or 4-run variety at Nationals Park, exactly tying Rendon for the most in its 12-year history, and it was only the third such homer the franchise had ever hit in a potential elimination game. The others were both by Michael Taylor, 2 years ago when the Nats won Game 4 but lost Game 5 of the NLDS against the Cubs.

In addition to that single in the 5th, Rendon bookended the Nats' scoring with sac flies to drive in the first run against Hill in the 3rd and the last run against Ross Stripling in the 6th. He also had a 2-SF game on September 24 against the Phillies; the only other player in franchise history with two such games in a season was Darrin Fletcher in 1994. That also meant Rendon and Zim each had 3 of the Nats' 6 RBIs, the franchise's first teammates ever to do that in a postseason game.

So we have another series that goes back across the country for a winner-take-all showdown, and you might have noticed the first four games really didn't have any late-inning thrills such as in the Nats' Wild Card win. No worries, Game 5 has you covered. The incessant organ notes of "Let's-Go-Dodg-ers" (seriously, why must EVERY little riff or song snippet they play end with some weird transition into this?) were in full force right from the start when Joc Pederson sent a fly ball through the bullpen door in left-center. Although initially ruled a home run by LF umpire Ted Barrett, the Dodger faithful didn't have to wait long for an actual home run, because Max Muncy clobbered one of those just 5 pitches later. The only other Dodgers batter to hit a 2-run homer as the team's second batter of a postseason game was Matt Kemp in the 2009 NLCS opener against the Cardinals. And when Enrique Hernandez also homered in the 2nd, just the second time the Dodgers homered twice in any winner-take-all game (much less in the first 2 innings), you couldn't help but wonder (a) how long Stephen Strasburg's day would last, and (b) whether the Nationals were again doomed to lose in the first round. Especially when Walker Buehler was not taking this day off, allowing just 2 hits in the first 5 innings and getting a double play in the 6th to escape a two-on, nobody-out situation with only 1 run scoring.

Of course, this is Baseball In 2019, and "the metrics" say that once Buehler gives up a walk in the 7th, it's time to get him out of there. Taking a page from Davey Martinez's book, Dave Roberts opts to let Clayton Kershaw-- he of the 3 runs in 2 innings in Game 2-- have his bullpen session on the field. And it looked a bit more like batting practice. Kershaw struck out Adam Eaton to get out of the 7th, but then, on back-to-back pitches, gave up back-to-back homers by Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto to stun the crowd (and even that pesky organ) at Dodger Stadium. Kershaw had allowed just 1 homer in his limited number of career relief appearances, to Shane Victorino in the 2009 NLCS. Ryan Zimmerman and Adam LaRoche (2012 NLDS) had hit the only other back-to-back homers by the Nationals in the postseason, and they had just two other sets in franchise history at Dodger Stadium: Mike Morse & Justin Maxwell in 2010, and Ron Fairly & Rusty Staub in 1970.

But we're not done. Those homers only made it 3-3, and Joe Kelly and Daniel Hudson matched wits in the 9th, creating the 13th winner-take-all game in postseason history to go to extra innings. With closer Kenley Jansen-- who had plenty of his own issues last season-- watching from the bullpen, Kelly trots back out for the 10th, walks Eaton, and gives up a double to Rendon. That was Rendon's third extra-base hit of the game, a first in Nats/Expos postseason history, and joining Ron LeFlore (June 18, 1980) as the team's only players to do it at Dodger Stadium. Juan Soto gets a free pass to bring up former Dodger Howie Kendrick. And once again the Nats have their dramatic ending. The franchise had never hit any postseason home run in extra innings, much less a grand slam; in fact there'd been only one other extra-inning slam in postseason history. That was Nelson Cruz's walkoff to win Game 2 of the 2011 ALCS. Gerardo Parra (May 11), Jerry Hairston (2011), Chris Widger (1998), and Rondell White (1996) are the other Nats/Expos players to hit a grand slam at Dodger Stadium, and Kelly-- who faced 4 batters without retiring any of them in Game 3-- joined Roger Craig (1956) as the only Dodgers relievers to give up 4+ runs in a potential elimination game. Craig, however, was already trailing and just made the score worse.

And all this, of course, means that the Dodgers have been in the postseason for seven straight years and have yet to win it all. In the past four years their final loss was by 4 runs or more, the first team in MLB history to have that happen (the Pirates did it in three straight from 2013-15). And at least they can say that an opponent won't hoist the World Series trophy on their lawn again this year, as the Red Sox and Astros did previously. But the Dodgers are the fourth team to be eliminated at home in three straight years, joining the Indians (2016-18), Braves (2000-04), and Tigers (1907-09).


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13 Suited Cards

Although the Cardinals never quite lost the NL Central lead after August 23, they also knew a little something about winning late, watching the Cubs lose nine straight down the stretch and then barely holding off a charge on the final weekend of the season when the Brewers got swept by the Rockies. That earned them a trip to Atlanta to start the Division Series, where they also got off to a fairly late start in Game 1. After Miles Mikolas and Dallas Keuchel traded single runs through 5 innings, it was Dansby Swanson who came up with a bases-loaded single in the 6th to put the Braves up 3-1. That was Atlanta's first go-ahead hit with bases loaded in a postseason game since Adam LaRoche hit a grand slam in the 3rd inning of 2005 NLDS 4. Shane Greene and Max Fried shut down the Cardinals for two more innings before Matt Carpenter delivered a game-tying single on which Kolten Wong, carrying the go-ahead run, was out at home to end the inning. J.D. Drew (2000), Brian Harper (1985), and Ken O'Dea (walkoff in 1944) had the Cardinals' only other tying or go-ahead pinch hits in the 8th or later of a postseason game.

It was up to Mark Melancon-- who had already blown the save by allowing that Carpenter hit-- to keep things tied and give the Braves a chance, and, well, uh... no. Melancon gave up two singles, a walk, and then a double to Marcell Ozuna, the second-ever go-ahead bases-loaded hit in the 9th inning in Cardinals postseason history. Terry Pendleton doubled off Charlie Liebrandt of the Royals to win Game 2 of the 1985 World Series. After an intentional walk, Kolten Wong hit another bases-loaded double, the fourth time St Louis has scored 4 runs in the 9th inning of a postseason road game.

Just when it's 7-3, it turns out the Cardinals would need all four of those runs. Carlos Martinez, also entrusted with getting the final 4 outs, finally did, but not before giving up a 2-run homer to Ronald Acuña, who would be the second batter in Braves postseason history to go single-double-homer in a loss. Andruw Jones in the 2004 NLDS against Houston is the other. Acuña was also the first leadoff batter to do it in any Braves home loss since Rafael Furcal on July 10, 2005. And when Freddie Freeman added a solo shot for the final margin of 7-6, Martinez escaped as the first Cardinals reliever to give up 3 runs, 2 homers, and still get a win since Juan Acevedo did it in Montréal on May 2, 1999.

Game 2 would not feature a 9th-inning Cardinals rally; in fact, it would feature no Cardinals rallies at all against Mike Foltynewicz. Folty gave up just 3 singles in 7 innings, plus one extra runner when Paul DeJong reached on an error in the 2nd. The only other Braves pitchers to throw 7+ scoreless innings with no more than 4 baserunners in the postseason are Tom Glavine (twice) and Warren Spahn (1958). This one wasn't really decided, however, until Adam Duvall, hitting in Folty's spot in the 7th, launched a 2-run homer, the second pinch-hit dinger in Braves postseason history. Eric Hinske hit the other one against the Giants' Sergio Romo in 2010 NLDS 3. Melancon would work the 9th yet again, and while he gave up 2 hits in this game as well, they were both singles and he came away with the save. Only John Smoltz (twice) and Mark Wohlers had earned postseason saves for Atlanta despite allowing multiple hits. And the 3-0 final, with only 6 singles, marked the second time this year that the Cardinals had been shut out at SunTrust Park and failed to record an extra-base hit (May 15 against Mike Soroka). The Cardinals had never done that in Atlanta twice in a season since the Braves moved there in 1966.

Off to St Louis we go for Game 3, and this series seems to have something about the road team making a late rally. After Marcell Ozuna's leadoff double in the 2nd, we sat on a 1-0 score while Mike Soroka and Adam Wainwright mowed down batters until the 8th. They combined for just 6 hits and no walks until Waino sputtered and threw just 3 of his final 11 pitches for strikes before being pulled. Andrew Miller got out of that bases-loaded jam and it certainly seemed as though Soroka was on track to gave up 2 hits and lose.

Ah, but apparently 2 pitches was too many for Miller, who couldn't be sent back out there for the 9th. Instead we find Carlos Martinez, who gave up those two Braves homers in Game 1 but still escaped with a win, on the mound, and he wouldn't do that again, would he? Well, not quite. But he did give up a leadoff double to Josh Donaldson, and then with 2 outs, a tying double to Dansby Swanson. That was the fourth tying or go-ahead hit in Braves postseason history when down to their final out; the others were by Luis Polonia (1995 NLDS 3), Otis Nixon (1992 WS 6), and Francisco Cabrera (1992 NLCS 7, which you probably remember as The Sid Bream Slide). It was also Dansby's second double of the night; he joined the now-retired Brian McCann (September 12, 2009) as the only Braves hitters with 3 hits including 2 doubles in a game at the current Busch Stadium.

But once again it's Adam Duvall who comes through, four pitches later, with a 2-run single to give the Braves a 3-1 lead in the game and a 2-1 lead in the series. Although Martinez got the win in Game 1 because the Cardinals scored 4 while he gave up 3, he would get the blown save and the loss in Game 3. He's the second Cards pitcher to give up 3+ runs in back-to-back postseason appearances. Bob Forsch did it in 1987, and those were in different series (last game of NLCS and first game of WS).

Game 4 would feature the Cardinals both early and late, with a whole lot of nothing in between. With Keuchel back on the mound, Paul Goldschmidt and Marcell Ozuna raked him for back-to-back homers in the 1st inning, the first time the Cards have done that at home since Randal Grichuk and Matt Holliday in September 2014, and the first postseason game in team history where they hit a pair of 1st-inning homers at all. And staked to an early-- though small-- lead, Daniel Hudson got knocked out of the game by a Carpenter fielding error and then a 2-run homer by Ozzie Albies, the fourth lead-flipping longball in Braves history in a postseason road game. The others belong to Brian Jordan (1999), Michael Tucker (1998), and Orlando Cepeda (1969).

After one of the newest Cardinals, Paul Goldschmidt, doubles in the 8th, why not have the third-longest-serving Cardinal in team history, Yadier Molina, smoke a line drive off a leaping Freddie Freeman to tie the game in the 8th. Molina, who passed Ozzie Smith earlier this year with more games in a Cardinals uniform (and now trails only Lou Brock and Stan Musial), was also playing in his 93rd postseason game to tie Chipper Jones' National League record. The next time up, in the bottom of the 10th, it was Kolten Wong's turn to have hit a leadoff double, and two batters later, Molina gets to drive him in for the thrilling play that is a walkoff sacrifice fly. The only other Cardinals batter with a tying RBI in regulation and then a walkoff RBI in extras was The David Freese Game in the 2011 World Series. Those two games, plus Jim Edmonds' homer in 2004 NLCS 6 against Houston, are the only walkoffs in Cardinals postseason history when facing elimination. And the only other time the Cardinals walked off in a postseason game against the Braves was in Game 2 of the 1982 NLCS when a Ken Oberkfell single scored David Green.

That walkoff forced the series back to Atlanta for Game 5, and you might be aware there's no late drama in this one. There was only early drama, and that came in the form of seeing just how many runs the Cardinals would score. Foltynewicz, on 3 days' rest, will now have about 130 days off after the first eight batters of the game combined for 3 hits, 3 walks, a sac bunt, and Freddie Freeman booting a ground ball at first. Folty is the first starter in postseason history to give up 7 runs while getting no more than 1 out; the prior "record" had been a 6-run start by Oakland's Gil Heredia in the 2000 Division Series. And it had been a full century since a Braves pitcher allowed 7 runs on only 3 hits while also getting just 1 out; Larry Cheney did it in Brooklyn on July 5, 1919.

Enter Max Fried to finish off Folty's 7-run pitching line with a bases-loaded walk to Jack Flaherty, the second ever drawn by a Cardnials pitcher in a postseason game. Bob Gibson got one in Game 4 of the 1968 World Series (that's not the game where he struck out 17; that was Game 1). Back-to-back doubles by Dexter Fowler and Kolten Wong made it 9-0, and the final nail was driven home when Marcell Ozuna struck out but the ball got away from Brian McCann, allowing Wong to scamper home with the 10th run. All told the Cardinals sent 14 batters to the plate and recorded just the fourth 10-run frame in postseason history. The others were by the 2002 Angels, 1968 Tigers, and 1929 Athletics, though none of those was in a 1st inning. It turns out 1929 was also the last time the Cardinals posted a 10-run 1st inning in a road game; they did that on July 6 of that year in Philadelphia en route to (still) the only 28-6 victory in major-league history.

Tommy Edman would triple and score an 11th run in the top of the 2nd, becoming the first player in postseason history to have a double and a triple by the end of the 2nd inning. He was also the first Cardinals batter to have both hits IN Atlanta, at any point in the game, since Tino Martinez did it on August 3, 2002. And of course St Louis rolled to a 13-1 win, matching its largest victory and setting the Braves' largest defeat in any postseason game. That "1" at least belonged to Josh Donaldson, who connected for a solo homer in the 4th inning. He's only the third player in postseason history to homer when trailing by 13 or more, and the first who didn't do it against Tom Gordon. Flash gave up two homers, to Cleveland's Wil Cordero and Scott Brosius of the Yankees, in different rounds of the 1999 playoffs.


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Swept Under The Rug

There's another old sports saying that goes, "offense wins games, defense wins championships". So you know how everyone spent the entire season fawning over the Twins hitting 5 or 6 homers a game, followed not too long thereafter by the Yankees doing likewise? The race to see which team would set the record for homers in a season literally came down to the last day, ending with the Twins hitting 307 and the Yankees 306. And to boot, neither team is blessed with a true overpowering strikeout ace the likes of a Schezer or Verlander or Cole or Flaherty. So when these two hooked up in the final Division Series, you weren't wrong to expect a bunch of 13-12 games with 9 homers and 12 pitching changes and 4-hour game times.

At least you got the 4-hour game times. The series that should have had all the fireworks ended up being mostly a dud, especially on the Minnesota side of things. Oh sure, it looked promising-- and like it would live up to the homer hype-- for the first couple innings when Jorge Polanco and Nelson Cruz both took James Paxton deep. But ultimately it wouldn't be the Yankees' homer machine that steamrolled the Twins in Game 1, it would be their unheralded doubles machine. While the Yankees were busy becoming just the second team in the past 55 years to collect more four-baggers than two-baggers, their total of 290 was good enough for 14th place in their 117-season history, and it especially helps when they hit three of them with runners in scoring position. Which Edwin Encarnacion did to open the scoring in the 3rd, before yet another wacky run-scoring error, this one when C.J. Cron dropped an inning-ending double play (yes, you actually CAN assume it if the error is on the catch) and the ball got far enough away for two runs to score.

Oh sure, Polanco briefly tied it back up with am RBI single in the 5th, but then up steps the clear (unofficial) MVP of the series, Gleyber Torres, to unleash the game's first bases-loaded double, and the fourth in Yankees history to take the lead in the 5th or later of a postseason contest. Derek Jeter (2004), Don Mattingly (1995), and Johnny Lindell (1947) had the others. When DJ LeMahieu also hit a bases-loaded double in the 7th to provide the final 10-4 margin, it was the first postseason game in Yankees history where they'd done it twice. LeMahieu had also hit a solo homer in the 6th, joining Johnny Damon (2007) and Hank Bauer (1958) as the only Yankees leadoff batters with 3 hits and 4 RBIs in a postseason game. "DJLM" also had three such games during the regular season and is the first player in Yankees history to do it four times in a year.

Those two early homers paved the way for Paxton to have an early exit, getting yanked one out shy of that magical (and completely arbitrary, can-we-get-rid-of-this-rule-please) 5-inning requirement to qualify for the win. His 86 pitches did include 8 strikeouts, eerily similar to his start at Fenway on July 26 where he struck out 8, gave up 2 homers, and didn't finish the 5th. He's the first pitcher in Yankees history to have two such starts, in the same season or otherwise. And there was one bright note for the "Bomba Squad" when Miguel Sano went yard in the 6th. While not off Paxton, that was the Twins' third homer of the day. And would you believe that was the first time in Twins/Senators postseason history that they'd hit 3 homers in a game? You could look it up. Since the Blue Jays did it in the 2015 ALDS, the Twins had been the last remaining active franchise never to have such a game. The 15th of the "original 16" teams to get off the list had been the White Sox in 2005.

There are many managerial strategies at play in the postseason, sometimes throwing right out the window what has worked all year, and whether you stick with the starters or try one of these "bullpen days" has certainly produced mixed results in this post so far. Enter Randy Dobnak, the undrafted free agent who signed with the Twins in 2017 and only made his major-league debut on August 9. A double play helped him work around a leadoff double by LeMahieu, the first one the Yankees had hit in the postseason since Derek Jeter off Baltimore's Rocky Coppinger in 1996. But there would be no double plays in the 3rd. In fact there wouldn't even be one out as Dobnak started the frame with two singles and a walk before being replaced by Tyler Duffey. Who not only allowed all three of Dobnak's runs to score, he reloaded the bases himself before Didi Gregorius settled this game with a grand slam to make it 7-0. It was the 12th slam in Yankees postseason history (previous by Robinson Cano in 2011 ALDS), but it was also the third of "Sir Didi"'s career against the Twins. The only other Yankees ever to hit three slams against the Twins/Senators franchise are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (six).

That 7-run 3rd marked the 13th game this season where the Yankees had a 6-run inning (or more), topping Arizona for most in the majors. It also allowed them to cruise to an 8-2 win and a 2-0 series lead, with Dobnak and Duffey responsible for all eight of those runs. They are the first teammates in Twins/Sens postseason history to each give up 4 runs while getting no more than 6 outs in the same game, and Dobnak is the team's first starter to do that at Yankee Stadium since Glen Perkins on May 18, 2009.

At least Game 3 isn't at Yankee Stadium. It's back at Target Field, the first postseason game there since its inaugural season, and 9 years later to the day. Even the opponent is the same. Unfortunately so is the result, a 16th straight postseason loss to extend the Twins' own MLB record and match the 1970s Chicago Blackhawks for the longest postseason losing streak in any of the four major U.S. sports. Unlike the other series, this one ended without any drama, with the Yankees taking the "bullpen" approach and needing six pitchers to only give up 1 run. (Chad Green, the "winner", only got 4 outs.) The offensive side was led by Gleyber Torres, who started the scoring with a solo homer in the 2nd, then doubled and scored in both the 7th and 9th for the final score of 5-1. At not-quite-23, he's the youngest Yankees batter with 3 extra-base hits and a stolen base in a game since Joe DiMaggio on July 18, 1937, and the first of any age to do it in Minnesota (any stadium). Tack on the 3 runs scored, and only four players in postseason history have done that in a game: Carl Crawford (2008), Len Dykstra (1993), and Pirates Hall-Of-Famer Max Carey (1925).



And by the way, if it seems like you've been watching baseball every night, it's because you have. We didn't count the regular seasons that have extended into October, but given that the League Championship Series must both go at least 4 games, there will be at least one postseason game every night from October 1 through and including the 16th. And that's only happened three other times in MLB history: 2003 and 2011 had their first October off-day on the 17th, while the 2013 campaign extended that streak 3 more days before its first break on the 20th. Play on!