UPDATE: Max Scherzer has been scratched from his Game 5 start with back spasms. Joe Ross will start in his place. The Nats hope to have Scherzer available for a potential Game 7.
You can expect to hear an almost endless number of people repeat the following Earl Weaver quote Sunday, so apologies in advance, but here it goes:
“Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher.”
It’s usually used for teams in a situation like one the Washington Nationals currently find themselves in. The Nats tied two games apiece in the World Series, along with the Houston Astros after two straight home losses, wiping out the enormous advantage they’d built with road wins in Games 1 and 2.
Of course, they were also hoping for it to have been true Saturday night, sending Patrick Corbin to the mound against a rookie who made nine big league appearances before the playoffs.
They’ll hope for it again Sunday, with Game 1 winner Max Scherzer. The Astros, though, will counter with Gerrit Cole, the potential AL Cy Young. The adage can be comforting and true, but it cuts both ways.
The other thing you’ll hear plenty people say is that the Nats would have been happy to be tied 2-2 through four games in the beginning of the series. And, if the results happened in the opposite order — with both teams winning their home games and the Nats coming off two wins, or even alternating wins — you could believe them.
Technically, what the last two nights’ results mean is that the Nats cannot win the World Series at Nationals Park. The Astros have ensured the series will return to Houston, lopping the “if necessary” asterisks off Games 5 and 6 this weekend.
There’s really no other way to put it. The season rests on Scherzer’s right arm Sunday.
Tomorrow isn’t an elimination game, but it might as well be for the Nats. Washington has not faced an actual home elimination game since their frantic Wild Card Game comeback win. They haven’t faced any elimination game since Game 5 of the NLDS in Los Angeles.
The Nats trailed those games late, on the heels of some dominant, opposing starting pitching. But they broke through against the bullpens.
After not pushing the Astros to use either Will Smith or Roberto Osuna Saturday, they’ll likely face a rested back end of the Houston bullpen seen once all series.
Suddenly, the Nats are in danger by not following in the 1995 Atlanta Braves’ footsteps, but the 1996 team instead. The 1996 Braves team won the first two games at Yankee Stadium before dropping the next two back in front of the home fans at Fulton-County Stadium.
Graeme Lloyd played the part of unlikely hero in that series that José Urquidy reprised Saturday night: the “Who?” in a series dominated by aces. It was a sloppy game in which the Braves’ bullpen fell apart, not unlike what happened at Nats Park Saturday.
There was always going to come a time in this series when Nationals manager Davey Martinez’s mettle would be tested, facing an unrelenting lineup like Houston’s. When questioned about his use of reliever Fernando Rodney in a high leverage spot Saturday night — his team having just trimmed the deficit to 4-1 with nine outs left — Martinez responded that he wasn’t about to “go chasing wins.”
While that’s a sound strategy in the regular season, there simply aren’t any games left to give away.
Daniel Hudson and Sean Doolittle hadn’t pitched since Wednesday. Even if they pitched Saturday and again on Sunday, they’d have the travel day off Monday.
Martinez has been employing his best pitchers in the biggest spots all postseason. To quit doing that when there was still a chance to win Saturday made no sense.
If you’re going to shrug and accept whatever happens in games where you still have a puncher’s chance, you’d better win all of them. Because with Cole and Justin Verlander staring you down the next two nights, you may not have too many more shots … no matter how talented your starters are.
The two, straight home losses — including the decision to punt any chance Saturday — adds up to even more of a burden on Scherzer. As good as he’s been his entire Nats career, he’s recently struggled late in games and in the postseason in general.
He lasted just five innings against Houston in Game 1, while throwing 112 pitches. His 7th-inning ERA this year was 5.54, more than a run higher than in any other inning.
There will be no Strasburg piggyback, as there was in the Wild Card Game. There will be no Corbin available in relief, as there was in Game 1.
It’s all on Scherzer. How far can you ride him Sunday? And, if he falters, can you afford to take him out? If and when that decision comes, Martinez had better get it right.
Everything depends on it.
