Weather: 72 degrees, Overcast.
Wind: 3 mph, R To L.
Umpires: HP--Barrett, 1B--Eddings, 2B--Marquez, 3B--Gibson, LF--Little,
RF--Baker.
Time: 3:58
Attendance: 43,423
Well, we tried to keep as much as we could the same from our routine
for Tuesday’s wild card game win. Same restaurant, same food/drink orders,
mostly the same attire. We again switched seats during the seventh-inning
stretch and brought out our “magic mints” in the eighth. It wasn’t nearly
enough.
The evening started off well. Juan Soto got the home team off to a
2-run lead in the bottom of the 1st, making a winner of the game’s
“Dinger Of The Day” contestant in the process. Anibal Sanchez mostly baffled
the Dodgers with his eclectic pitch assortment, fanning 9 and not allowing a
run until Max Muncy hit a solo shot in the 5th. Admittedly, the Nats
failed to take advantage of scoring chances in the 4th and 5th,
but they still held their one-run lead after 5.
Inasmuch as Washington possesses only two trustworthy relief pitchers,
no one was surprised to see Patrick Corbin (who started Game 1 on Thursday,
tossing 107 pitches) start to warm up in the 5th and come in for the
6th; after all, Stephen Strasburg had fired 3 scoreless frames in
the Wild Card Game, and Scherzer struck out the side in the 8th
inning of NLDS Game 2 in LA. Ideally Corbin could go for two innings, followed
in some order by Doolittle and Hudson, to finish off the victory and give the
Nats a 2-1 series lead.
Things looked promising when Corbin fanned the next two batters after a
leadoff single by Cody Bellinger, but they then collapsed with a thud, the key
blows being a two-run Russell Martin double to give the visitors a 3-2 lead,
and a pinch-double two batters later by Enrique Hernandez to extend the lead to
5-2. Following an intentional walk to Muncy, Wander Suero entered the game to
face Justin Turner, who promptly put one out of the park to double the lead.
The Nats were given a great chance to get back in it in the bottom of
the inning thanks to Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly, who gave up a single, three
walks and a wild pitch, finally exiting with no outs, the bases loaded and one
run in. Asdrubal Cabrera delivered a sac fly off Julio Urias to score another
run, but Kendrick managed to kill the rally by getting caught between second
and third for the second out. Washington could scrounge up only one more
baserunner during the final 3 innings, and Hunter Strickland put the
punctuation mark on the team’s bullpen woes by giving up a 2-run homer to
Martin in the ninth (his 9th HR allowed in 13 post-season innings).
We wound up parking at L’Enfant Plaza: quite a hike, but easy to get
into, and surprisingly easy to get out of.
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