WASHINGTON — It is rare for a World Series to go three games without a win by the home team. That is how it stands now, after the Washington Nationals won twice in Houston, then squandered nearly all of their chances at home on Friday in a 4-1 loss to the Astros in Game 3.
One man on the field at Nationals Park during batting practice could relate. Joe Torre, the league’s chief baseball officer, managed the Yankees in 1996, a pivot point in World Series history. The Yankees lost the first two games at home to the Atlanta Braves, the reigning champions. But Torre had the pitcher he wanted for Game 3.
“A 2-1 Series is a whole lot different than 3-0,” Torre said. “What I did in ’96 was have David Cone pitch Game 3. I had called him in and explained why. I said, ‘You’re the only one that ever pitched down there in Atlanta, and I didn’t want people getting spooked by the launching pad.’ I think that was a big, big difference for us.”
Cone was not his sharpest (he walked four and struck out three) but he lasted six innings, allowed just one run, and the Yankees won by three. They became the third and last team to win the World Series after starting 0-2 at home.
According to baseball-reference.com, Zack Greinke is the third-most similar player to Cone in baseball history. Both are right-handers, short and slender as pitchers go, and both won a Cy Young Award with the Kansas City Royals. Both have thrived with a baffling assortment of pitches to summon in a jam.
And as Cone did for Torre in 1996, Greinke gave his manager comfort in dire circumstances.
“This guy doesn’t scare off,” Hinch said after Game 3, when Greinke — like Cone — allowed one run in a game his team won by three. “This is not somebody that I have any fear whatsoever is not going to be able to handle the stage or the magnitude. This guy has been really good for a really long time.”
But even with 205 career victories — 11 more than Cone — Greinke, 36, can falter under pressure. His October track record is uneven, to be kind, and his first start this month was the worst of his six postseasons. The Tampa Bay Rays rocked him for six runs, including three homers, in three and two-thirds innings.
“Mentally I did a really bad job in Tampa,” Greinke said late Friday night. “I was just thinking more clearly the last three outings. The first outing against Tampa I was not thinking very clearly.”
Greinke grew up in Central Florida and typically struggles at Tampa Bay, but he usually thrives in Washington. In four career starts before Game 3, he had a 1.11 earned run average at Nationals Park; he carried a no-hitter into the seventh here in June.
Hinch removed Greinke with two outs and two on in the fifth on Friday, sensing that Ryan Zimmerman — a career National — might rise to the moment in the city’s first World Series game since 1933. Greinke relies on guile, and Hinch wanted a power pitcher, Josh James, who knocked down Zimmerman with a fastball and struck him out with a changeup.
“I wasn’t trying to make him uncomfortable,” James said. “I was just trying to go up, trying to get him to swing and miss or foul it off or something. But I guess it worked, maybe.”
Greinke called that out the biggest of the game, but he got several significant ones himself, holding the Nationals hitless in seven at-bats with runners in scoring position.
To end the third, Greinke floated a 68-mile-an-hour curveball to strike out a nemesis, Asdrubal Cabrera, with the bases loaded. To end the fourth, he calmly handled a squibber by the speedy Trea Turner with a man on third.
Greinke does not say much, though he took questions for about 10 minutes after Game 3 and clinically assessed his performance. He had told Hinch he was tiring and was not surprised to be lifted after 95 pitches. He did not care about falling one out short of qualifying for a victory in his World Series debut, but blamed himself for leaving almost half the game to five relievers.
“I made it harder for the bullpen,” Greinke said. “The No. 1 thing I care about is we might have used a guy a little more to make it a little harder for tomorrow.”
Indeed, a hidden reason the Astros beat the Yankees in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when they used a string of relievers rather than a true starter, was that Justin Verlander had saved the bullpen in his loss in the Bronx the night before. Verlander allowed four runs in the first inning but stayed in until the eighth, keeping almost all the relievers fresh for the bullpen duel that decided the series.
In Game 4 on Saturday the Astros will start Jose Urquidy, who has pitched twice this postseason for a total of four and one-third innings. Hinch will need a lot from his bullpen again, and James, Brad Peacock, Will Harris, Joe Smith and Roberto Osuna will have no rest.
Then again, Torre needed six relievers to win Game 4 of the 1996 World Series after the Braves had flattened his weakest starter, Kenny Rogers. By then, of course, the Yankees’ joy ride was underway, and they would make Torre’s joking prediction to George Steinbrenner before Game 3 — that the team would sweep in Atlanta, then win it all at home — look modest.
“I was just messing with George,” Torre said. “But Game 3 started something that who would have ever guessed? We won 14 straight World Series games. How about sitting there and saying we’re going to go on a 14-game winning streak?”
The Astros would settle for one more win in Washington. They need it to get back to Houston for a chance to match the comeback Cone started — and Torre orchestrated — in 1996.