HOUSTON — For five months, as they dug out of a grim beginning to arrive at what their manager described as beautiful places, the Washington Nationals stuck doggedly to the longview, that greatness was achieved in increments, a commitment to the grind that would eventually provide glorious rewards.
Wednesday night, their season down to nine outs, Game 7 of the World Series and their championship aspirations vanishing before them, the Nationals showed the world another side of their personality.
They can strike with the quickness and fury of a championship prizefighter. Lulled to sleep by Houston Astros ace Zack Greinke for six innings and facing a two-run deficit, the Nationals emerged from their malaise by jolting the Astros for three runs, and on the strength of a two-run home run from Howie Kendrick, stunned Houston and claimed the first championship in their franchise history with a 6-2 victory.
Stephen Strasburg, whose 8 ⅔ inning-win in Game 6 forced a decisive Game 7, became the first overall No. 1 pick to win a World Series MVP with the team that drafted him. Strasburg also won Game 2 and finished the postseason 5-0 with a 1.98 ERA.
“These guys they battled. It was the next guy up. Everybody gave it their all,” said Game 7 starter Max Scherzer, who just four days prior couldn’t lift his arm after suffering a neck injury.
Like everything in this season, Wednesday’s victory came despite remarkably unlikely circumstances.
These Nationals famously started 19-31, rallied for 93 wins and then, ultimately, navigated five postseason elimination games to claim the first title in the Montreal-Washington history. And our nation’s capital, which regained baseball when a ragtag bunch wandered down from Quebec into RFK Stadium in 2005, is now celebrating its first World Series title since 1924.
The manager behind the resounding comeback, Davey Martinez, who one night earlier was ejected after arguing an interference call, was on the other side of the emotional spectrum.
“I believe in these guys and they believe in each other,” Martinez said. “We were 19-31. We didn’t quit then. We weren’t going to quit now.”
These Nationals’ October achievements were staggering, most often of the heart-palpitating variety and ultimately will be remembered for a 30-day run of late-game heroics from three players who span baseball’s spectrum – Kendrick, their 36-year-old veteran masher, Anthony Rendon, their franchise cornerstone who is about to become a $200 million man this winter, and the redoubtable Juan Soto, so prodigiously good that he didn’t celebrate his 21st birthday until pounding the first of his three home runs in this World Series.
Wednesday, they collaborated for the most important inning in franchise history.
With Greinke at just 67 pitches through six innings, he started the seventh by inducing a groundout from Adam Eaton. Then Rendon, their ice-cool 29-year-old third baseman, broke Greinke’s shutout with a flick of the wrist – a home run into the left field boxes, marking the seventh consecutive time he’d reached base in the Nationals’ five elimination games this season.
Soto followed by drawing a walk, sending Greinke off to the cheers of a home crowd that, leading 2-1 with just eight outs to record, fully anticipated a second World Series championship in three years.
Instead, reliever Will Harris left a cutter out over the plate and Kendrick pounced, shooting it to right field. It curled toward the corner of this roofed, bandbox ballpark before clanging abruptly into the foul pole.
A 3-2 game. And October legends cemented – for Kendrick and these can’t-be-killed Nationals, who prevailed in the first World Series where every game was won by the road team.
They overcame a two-run, eighth-inning deficit to beat the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card game. Erased a 3-1, eighth-inning deficit in Game 5 of the NL Division Series with home runs from Rendon and Soto – before Kendrick finished off the 106-win Los Angeles Dodgers with a grand slam.
The St. Louis Cardinals were a mere appetizer for the Nationals in a four-game sweep, but the 107-win Astros provided the ultimate challenge.
And easy, this was not.
Washington overcame a 2-0 deficit to win Game 1 in Houston. Scored six seventh-inning runs to break open a tie Game 2.
And in a must-win Game 6, trailed 2-1 after four innings before scoring six times in the final five innings to force Wednesday’s Game 7.
Their ace, at least in designation, Scherzer, gutted through five serviceable innings just three days after he couldn’t make a Game 5 start due to nerve irritation in his neck. Patrick Corbin, the $140 million starter making his fifth relief appearance this postseason, covered the next three innings, enabling the Nationals to take and then extend the lead – on an eighth-inning RBI single from Soto, of course. Adam Eaton tacked on two more with a bases-loaded single in the ninth.
The Astros? Their long hoped-for dynasty isn’t happening, and they will live with some regrets from this Game 7. Greinke only lasted 4 ⅓ innings against this Nationals club in a Game 3 win, but had only thrown 80 pitches when he was hooked.
Harris had been perfect in nine postseason appearances before Rendon got him for a home run in Game 6. Was it wrong to go back to that well? Were they too late to go to Osuna, too soon to give up on Greinke?
Ultimately, they will look at the 10 stranded runners in Game 7 – eight while a wobbly Scherzer was in the game – as the root of their demise. In four games at their cozy home, they could never score a knockout blow against the Nationals.
And the Nationals, so adept at staying on the ropes through a 162-game grind, showed the world they had the response of a champion.
Now, they have a shiny, flag-adorned trophy to prove it.
