Game 4 equalizer shows what makes Astros so dangerous

Insofar as they can be, the Houston Astros were vulnerable following their life-saving victory Friday in Game 3 of the World Series, momentum be damned.

Having chosen not to include a fourth starter on their roster for the best-of-seven, the Astros - still trailing the Washington Nationals two games to one - were seemingly forced to decide between two less-than-ideal options to start Game 4. They could either go with Gerrit Cole, who earned his first loss since May in the series opener on short rest, or ask a weary bullpen to cobble together 27 outs after recording 13 the evening prior in relief of Zack Greinke.

Manager AJ Hinch opted for neither.

Instead, he entrusted the Game 4 start to Jose Urquidy, a role-agnostic rookie who acquitted himself well over his 41 regular-season innings and had allowed one run in his two postseason appearances - one in the league division series against the Tampa Bay Rays and another in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees. As Hinch shared this news with reporters early Saturday morning, he made it clear this was Urquidy's game, not a bullpen game.

"(Urquidy) can go as long as he's good," said Hinch. "I don't have necessarily a predetermined plan on how many innings, how many pitches."

Under normal circumstances, a manager eschewing a plan and simply handing the ball to a dude with minimal big-league experience and a modest pedigree - nearly four weeks removed from his last start, moreover - for Game 4 of the World Series would beggar belief.

The Astros aren't normal, though. Their offense isn't normal and their pitching staff isn't normal. And while that's very much a byproduct of the ridiculous collection of superstars they've assembled, the Astros' outsized success in 2019 evinces that even the most unrecognizable members of their roster, like Urquidy, are still damn good. Because Hinch is cognizant of that, the Astros are now two wins away from their second World Series championship in the last three years.

In his first career postseason start, Urquidy didn't allow a run over five innings, propelling Houston to a series-evening 8-1 win over the Nationals and highlighting precisely what makes this Astros team so indomitable: they don't need to have Gerrit Cole or Justin Verlander on the mound to win; they can beat you - wallop you, even - when they start the guy nobody has ever heard of.

To be fair, though, you shouldn't know who Jose Urquidy is. Signed by the Astros as an international free agent in 2015, Urquidy, now 24, never cracked any of the canonical top-100 prospect rankings as he made his way up the minor-league ladder, rendering him an afterthought behind the Astros' more compelling prospects. Still, he quietly dominated the minor leagues, riding his plus command and changeup to a 3.37 ERA and 5.48 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 323 1/3 innings before being promoted to Houston in July.

As it happens, those strengths were on display against the Nationals in Game 4. Urquidy allowed just two hits and didn't walk a batter over his five shutout innings, throwing 45 of his 67 pitches for strikes while fanning four and inducing a higher percentage of whiffs (20%) with his changeup than either his fastball or slider. By Game Score, in fact, Urquidy authored the finest start of any pitcher in this World Series, outclassing not only his more-decorated teammates - Cole, Verlander, and Greinke - with his sublime five innings, but also the Nationals' triumvirate of elite starters.

However, it wasn't just Urquidy's performance in Game 4 that illustrated why the Astros present such a challenge. Robinson Chirinos also helped reinforce that point. Chirinos, after all, is the guy the Nationals want to face. They don't want to face Jose Altuve or Michael Brantley or Alex Bregman or Carlos Correa in high-leverage spots. So when Chirinos came up with a runner on first and nobody out in the top of the fourth, with the Astros already staked to a 2-0 lead, it was a relatively manageable crisis for Nationals starter Patrick Corbin. Here's the thing, though: Chirinos may well be the second-worst regular in Houston's lineup, but he still had a better year at the plate, on a per at-bat basis, than Manny Machado and Jose Ramirez in 2019. And, of course, he promptly ripped a two-run homer, going deep for a second straight game to give the Astros a 4-0 lead.

Only then did they truly break out. In the top of the seventh, Bregman, who had been scuffling since the league championship series, sealed the victory with a grand slam off Fernando Rodney, whose appearance was as good a sign as any that the Nationals had all but conceded. The point, though, is that it was the Astros' relative unknowns - not their many, many superstars - who pushed the Nationals to the brink.

In doing so, they gave Houston's biggest names a chance to end the Nationals' season. Having erased their 2-0 deficit in the series, the Astros will start Cole, Verlander, and, if necessary, Greinke, in what's effectively a best-of-three now, with the final two games to be played at Minute Maid Park. Ultimately, with successive losses at home against a shaky Greinke and Urquidy, the Nationals have now turned themselves back into underdogs, even though they'll counter with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg.

And if they end up losing the World Series, Game 4, in particular, will haunt the Nationals for a long time. The Astros were vulnerable, after all.

Well, insofar as they can be.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.