Nationals Take 2-0 Series Lead as a Little Bit of History Repeats

I had a recap half-written in my head after six innings of last night’s pivotal Game 2. It focused, as expected, on the pitching matchup of Stephen Strasburg and Justin Verlander; on how, perhaps more unexpectedly, both struggled in the first inning, each giving up two runs; and how they both settled, despite a tight strike zone and a steady stream of baserunners, into the familiar, soothing rhythms of solid-but-not-dominant pitching performances. (There was a little meditation, too, on the already-iconic Verlander leg throw.) Strasburg struck out seven, and Verlander, with his six, cleared the record for the most postseason punch outs of all time.

In the sixth, Verlander pitched his first clean inning of the game, and Strasburg escaped unscathed from a Yuli Gurriel double and an intentional walk of Yordan Alvarez. Through six, and the two teams were knotted at 2-2; Strasburg, with 114 pitches, was surely done for the night, and Verlander would just as surely be coming in for the top of the seventh.

As the broadcast faded to commercial, I settled into my nest of blankets. I know what this game is, I thought, like someone who doesn’t know what’s about to hit them.

***

The seventh inning, for whatever reason, always carries with it a sort of mystique. It’s the time when you rush to grab your last beers, when everyone stretches and you hear the creaking of your sad, aging joints, when the strange little ritual of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is performed. It doesn’t have quite the tension of the eighth and ninth, but the mood is clearly distinct from, say, the fifth; if you’re at the game, you’re probably a little tired, a little out of it, getting a little chilly. On midsummer nights, it’s around the time the sun fades away. And ever since I witnessed the life-changing devil magic of the Jose Bautista Bat Flip Inning, I’ve been unable to stop myself from paying a little more attention when the seventh rolls around. It’s usually normal, just another inning in another baseball game. But you never know. You never know when the fabric of the game will begin to rip — or when it might be rent asunder.

On Verlander’s second pitch of the top of the seventh — a not-high-enough fastball — Kurt Suzuki tore the edge off.

A walk to Victor Robles, and Verlander was out of the game. In came Ryan Pressly. Pressly, who missed much of the latter half of the season due to recovery from arthroscopic knee surgery, has generally not looked sharp in his postseason appearances this year, and ripped some scar tissue in said knee in the series against the Yankees. He quickly fell behind 3-0 on Trea Turner, the first batter he faced; a battle back to a full count couldn’t prevent the walk. Here came another mound visit.

And then — Adam Eaton bunted. Looking back, this was perhaps the first sign that something strange was about to happen. Eaton, you will recall, attempted a bunt in the first inning of Game 1 with a runner on second and nobody out. He instead popped it up, failing to achieve anything of value for the Nationals, and the run ended up not scoring. Since that misadventure, Eaton had had three hits, none of which came on bunt attempts.

This time, though, he bunted successfully (depending on how you interpret the word), giving the Astros an out. Anthony Rendon, the man Eaton bunted to bring up with runners on base, promptly flied out to center for the second out. The Astros now had only to retire Juan Soto — which, to be fair, has often seemed a Herculean task lately — to leave the inning with their deficit still at just the one run.

And then — and then! — the Astros put Soto on base. Not by accident, no. The Astros issued an intentional walk in the bottom of the seventh of Game 2 of the World Series, loading the bases with two out, in a game they trailed 3-2. After not issuing a single intentional walk in any regular- or postseason game this season, now was the time A.J. Hinch chose to exercise that little flourish of the hand.

Our own diligent and prolific Ben Clemens has been on the intentional walk beat this postseason, and we can only hope that he’ll have some commentary on this particular free pass. But for now, we’ll have to make do with the simple consequences of that intentional walk. Which were, to wit:

Oh, yes, and this:

Thanks to an intentional walk, a bounce off a glove, and a single, the Nationals had turned a tenuous 3-2 lead into a commanding 7-2 lead — all with two out. Apparently, this is just what they do now.

But it wasn’t over — far from it, in fact. A pitch in the dirt to Ryan Zimmerman bounced away from Martin Maldonado, moving the two remaining baserunners into scoring position. With a full count, Zimmerman bounced a weak groundball up the third-base line — an infield hit, most likely, so long as Bregman didn’t make a spectacular play.

Bregman didn’t make a spectacular play.

Game 2, as it had been until the top of the seventh, was now in tatters. It was 9-2 Nationals. The aisles streamed with exiting fans; the air hung heavy with the doleful sounds of open-mouthed dismay, that very specifically baseball feeling of doom. Late — too late! — Pressly was removed from the game. And finally, in his second at-bat of the inning, Kurt Suzuki made the elusive third out.

Strange as it always seems after innings like this, the game continued. Facing the immortal Fernando Rodney, his presence itself a reminder of how incredibly unpredictable baseball can be, the Astros went quietly in the seventh. Robles, leading off the top of the eighth, reached on a strikeout, which at this point seemed a little insulting on the part of the baseball gods; he would score on a home run from Eaton, who, now afforded the luxury of a seven-run lead, did not bunt. An unintentional walk of Juan Soto and another pair of back-to-back two-out singles from Kendrick and Cabrera brought the Nationals’ run total to 11. And in the top of the ninth, Taylor added a home run of his own, bringing the final count to 12.

The Astros finally answered with a Maldonado home run off Javy Guerra in the bottom of the ninth, but a solo homer couldn’t begin to repair the damage. With the final out of the game, they left two runners stranded.

Down on the field, as the fans who had stuck it out drifted away, as the Astros disappeared in stunned silence down the steps to their clubhouse, the Nationals celebrated.

***

On an evening in August a bit more than seven years ago, the Nationals were playing the Astros at a sparsely-populated Minute Maid Park. Edwin Jackson was on the hill for the Nats, Dallas Keuchel for the Astros; both pitched well, with Jackson allowing two runs in 5 1/3 innings and Keuchel giving up three runs in six. Each team added a run off the other’s bullpen, but the Nats held the lead until the ninth, when Tyler Clippard blew the save on an RBI double from José Altuve. This contest was headed to extras.

The Astros, at this point, were 36-75. For an Astros fan interested in postseason implications, this game represented about the lowest possible rung on the excitement ladder — as had pretty much the entirety of the season. But for the Nationals, every win was critical. They entered play that night with a narrow three-game lead over the Braves in the NL East, their 65-43 record just one game behind the Reds’ for the NL’s top spot. They were a team firmly in contention for their first postseason appearance since the franchise moved to Washington. To drop a game they’d led in the ninth to one of baseball’s very worst teams would be a profoundly unpalatable outcome.

Roger Bernadina led off the top of the 11th for the Nats with a single. Up to the plate stepped Kurt Suzuki. The indescribable scene that followed has gone down in baseball history:

And closer:

A lot has changed since 2012 — for the Nationals, for the Astros, for baseball. We have the benefit, now, of knowing how 2012 wrinkled the fabric of these two teams’ histories — the first of the NLDS heartbreaks for the Nationals; for the Astros, the beginning of a long, winding road through the valley of death that led them to the bright daylight of the Commissioner’s Trophy. On a surface level, there’s precious little resemblance between that game on August 6 and the game played last night.

And yet, baseball does this thing sometimes: It circles the bases, comes back home. Minute Maid Park might be full and roaring now, the Astros baseball’s most finely-tuned and fearsome machine, and the seventh inning full of the unexpected, the unbelievable — but still, there’s Jose Altuve at second; and still, there’s Justin Verlander, striking out batters in the postseason; and still, Kurt Suzuki gives the Nationals the lead; and still, Fernando Rodney comes in for the hold. Everything old is new again, and the Nationals are somewhere they’ve never been: coming back home with a 2-0 lead in the World Series.