Nats ride Strasburg to force Game 7 vs. Astros
The Washington Nationals defeated the Houston Astros 7-2 on Tuesday night to force Game 7 of the World Series.
Right-hander Stephen Strasburg allowed two earned runs over 8 1/3 innings while striking out seven. He's the first pitcher to throw eight or more innings in a World Series game since Matt Harvey did it for the New York Mets in 2015.
"Big pitchers in big moments do what Strasburg did today," Nationals manager Dave Martinez said, according to ASAP Sports. "I told him after the game, I said, 'that was tremendous. You picked us all up, and we're going to Game 7 because of your performance.'"
Tuesday marked the first time in North American professional sports history (MLB, NHL, NBA) that the home team has lost the first six games in a best-of-seven series.
"It's weird, really. I mean, we can't explain it," Martinez said. "I know we were trying to win games at home and just couldn't do it. We came here today and, like I say, behind Stephen Strasburg we played really well."
The Nationals took an early lead in the first inning before the Astros answered with a pair of runs in the bottom half. Alex Bregman demolished a solo home run and proceeded to celebrate by carrying his bat to first base.
Washington answered back and recaptured the lead in the fifth when Adam Eaton and Juan Soto each hit solo shots, with the latter similarly carrying his bat as he jogged down the first-base line.
Soto, 21, became the youngest player ever to hit three homers in a single World Series.
The long ball continued to bite Astros starter Justin Verlander, who allowed his seventh and eighth homers of the playoffs to tie Clayton Kershaw for most in a single postseason, according to Sarah Langs of MLB.com.
"I thought he ran out of gas at the end. And he had a lot of hard innings, they got a couple of baserunners on virtually every inning except for the second," Astros manager AJ Hinch said. "He had to work through 18, 19-plus pitches, 20 pitches, high-stress pitches. So it was an easy decision for me. I thought he left it all out on the field."
Strasburg performed a Houdini act to escape a fifth-inning jam. With runners on second and third with one out, the right-hander struck out Jose Altuve on three pitches (changeup, curve, curve) and induced a sharp grounder from Michael Brantley to end the inning.
Max Scherzer will start the series finale for the Nationals after being scratched from his scheduled appearance in Game 5. Scherzer briefly warmed up in the bullpen Tuesday with the two teams separated by a single run. He sat down after Anthony Rendon hammered a two-run blast in the seventh.
"We got him up knowing that if the game is tied or we were up a run we might have to use him," Martinez said. "He wanted to go down there and just throw and get loose. We scored some more runs and I immediately shut him down."
Rendon, MLB's regular-season RBI leader, went 3-for-4 with a home run and five RBIs.
The winner-take-all Game 7 will be played Wednesday night at Houston's Minute Maid Park.
"We have a great opportunity tomorrow to play a home game, Game 7 of the World Series," Hinch said. "Maybe not how we drew it up in terms of how we got there, but it doesn't take away the opportunity we have to win the World Series."