{"id":16223,"date":"2019-10-10T01:34:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T05:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16223"},"modified":"2019-10-10T01:34:06","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T05:34:06","slug":"unbelievable-they-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16223","title":{"rendered":"Unbelievable! They did it!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kendrick<\/a>

Kendrick for the win! Photo via USA Today<\/p><\/div>\n

Tonight was one of the few games I’ve watched end to end in years.\u00a0 I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers got to\u00a0Stephen Strasburg<\/strong> early, clubbing several deep balls in the first couple innings (two for homers) to jump to a 3-0 lead, but he persevered and threw 6 innings and kept his team in the game.\u00a0Walker Buehler<\/strong> looked unhittable … for a time.\u00a0 The nats touched him up 5 straight innings for baserunners … but couldn’t string them together.\u00a0 But the late-inning scoring heroics of this team came out again, with two homers in two pitches off of Dodger legend\u00a0Clayton Kershaw<\/strong> to nullify Buehler’s excellent outing (6 2\/3rds, 4hits 1 run) and tie the game in the 8th.\u00a0 Every move\u00a0Davey Martinez<\/strong> pulled came out Aces, with four shut-out innings from his “bullpen,” including four masterful batters from beleaguered starter\u00a0Patrick Corbin<\/strong> to bridge the gap to the 8th\/9th inning duo of\u00a0Hudson\/Doolittle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, its\u00a0Dave Roberts<\/strong> on the managerial hot-seat, opting for Kershaw and his oddly mediocre post-season record in lieu of a slew of solid bullpen options, then continuing with\u00a0Joe Kelly<\/strong> and allowing him to blow the game wide open at the hands of\u00a0Howie Kendrick<\/strong>‘s franchise defining grand slam in the top of the 10th to make up for his third error (and fourth misplayed ball) of the series.<\/p>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n

Credit where credit is due; Corbin looked like a different guy; he wasn’t slinging it up there nibbling at 91; he was firing it 94-95 to setup his slider to devastating effect.\u00a0 Night and day from his last outing.<\/p>\n

How about your two best\u00a0 hitters going a combined 5-for-9 with two homers, 3 RBI and 5 runs scored in a do-or-die game?\u00a0 Hats off to\u00a0Anthony Rendon<\/strong> and especially\u00a0Juan Soto<\/strong>, who tattooed a 110-mph exit velocity homer 450 feet into the LA night off of Kershaw and had Roberts out to retrieve his legendary hurler before the ball landed.\u00a0 \u00a0Kendrick got the big fly, but Rendon\/Soto combined for 5 of the team’s 9 hits on the night.\u00a0 That’s clutch.<\/p>\n

So the team moves on.\u00a0 They face the surprising St. Louis Cardinals, who ousted the favored Braves and beat the Nats 5 of 7 this season.\u00a0 We’ll do a preview as we get closer to figuring out what the Nats will do with their rotation.<\/p>\n

New #1 game; no argument this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight was one of the few games I’ve watched end to end in years.\u00a0 I was not disappointed. The Dodgers got to\u00a0Stephen Strasburg early, clubbing several deep balls in the first couple innings (two for homers) to jump to a 3-0 lead, but he persevered and threw 6 innings and kept his team in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2036],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","category-post-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16226,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223\/revisions\/16226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}