Going Deep with The Nats

“Anything you can do I can do better,” seemed to be the song Max Scherzer was humming as he tried to one-up Anibal Sanchez who was four outs from a no-hitter yesterday, and Scherzer got close taking a no-hitter into the 7th inning and it ended on a misplay by Juan Soto in leftfield. In the end, all that mattered was the Nationals won this key game to take a 2-0 lead in the NLCS as the team will fly back to Washington, D.C. tomorrow for game three. Continue reading →

The Nationals shocked the Cardinals to take game one of this NLCS behind a near-no-hitter from Anibal Sanchez that ended with two outs in the 8th inning. Sanchez cruised in this game, and made big pitches when he had to. Manager Dave Martinez pulled him after the hit was surrendered at 103 pitches. In the entire game per Statcast, Sanchez only gave up one hard-hit ball which is measured at contact in play at over 95 mph. In his career, Sanchez has thrown a no-hitter before so he thought he had another when he got a clutch Web Gem from Ryan Zimmerman in that 8th inning on a diving catch that few first basemen could make. Being close still put Sanchie in the history books for the furthest any pitcher has gone in a postseason LS/LCS except for Roy Halladay who finished the only non-World Series no-no. Continue reading →

The Washington Nationals needed to stay in the fight and wait for their moments — and they did and finally got over the proverbial hump to advance past the NLDS. This NLDS squad capitalized on future Hall-of-Famer Clayton Kershaw who entered as a reliever, and the Nats came from behind and attacked him with Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto crushed back-to-back home runs off of him to tie the game and send Kershaw to the showers. The Nats kept it tied until the 10th inning when they loaded the bases off of reliever Joe Kelly and Howie Kendrick crushed a grand slam to dead-center through the marine layer air in Dodgers Stadium for the 7-3 winner. Baseball is a game of redemption,  and Howie erased all of his three errors in the series, a crushing doubleplay and 3 strikeouts with the greatest home run in Nats history. The Nationals slayed the 106 win Dodgers to advance to their first NLCS after most of the national media gave the Nats no chance. Continue reading →

The Nats needed the best version of Max Scherzer, and he showed up as Cy Max at the right time going 7.0 innings of one run baseball for a huge 6-1 win to stave off elimination and send this back to Los Angeles for a “winner take all” game. Continue reading →