“We’ve been playing pretty much playoff-style baseball since the end of May,” said Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo, whose team seems to thrive on it. So far in the World Series, they are beating the Astros at their own game.
The Astros win with dominant starting pitchers and contact-hitting sluggers. But Washington’s Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg (four runs, 11 innings) have been a bit better than Gerrit Cole and Verlander (nine runs, 13 innings), and the Nationals’ hitters have worn down Houston’s arms with sophisticated at-bats.
Remember: While the Astros’ hitters had the fewest strikeouts in the majors, the Nationals’ hitters had the fourth fewest, with a .454 slugging percentage that ranked third in the N.L.
“They’re dynamic, top to bottom,” Verlander said. “I guess I haven’t really paid that much attention because they’re in the National League, but you start preparing for that lineup, I think they’re way better than they get credit for. They can hit, and they work you. They have a good approach, and they adjust from at-bat to at-bat. It’s a grind.”
For all of the justified excitement about the rotations in this World Series, so far the starters have been ordinary, combining for a 4.88 earned run average and allowing 37 base runners via hits or walks in 24 innings.
In Game 3, the Astros will count on Zack Greinke, who has a 6.43 E.R.A. this month and has lasted five innings just once in three starts. Maybe his crafty style will work better than the power stuff of Cole and Verlander, but his margin for error is slim.
“His style of pitching begs for pitch execution to be at a premium when you’re going to play cat-and-mouse — velocity, change rhythm, change tempo, the high fastball, the multiple breaking balls, that’s his style of pitching,” Manager A.J. Hinch said.