washingtonnationals Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
After Game 2 Pounding, The Astros Are Up To Their Necks In Doo Doo
The Astros are in big trouble. They lost Game 1 Tuesday night when the Nationals touched up the best pitcher in baseball for five runs, and came into Game 2 needing to scratch out some offense against a rolling Stephen Strasburg in order to salvage a split at home. They got off to a good start on th...
Patrick Corbin Was The Only Choice
Dave Martinez knew it. He knew it by the fourth, when the Astros worked Max Scherzer for 27 pitches, pushing his pitch count on the night to an unsustainable 96 through four, but also he knew it on Monday, when the Nationals manager declined to name a starting pitcher for Game 3 despite having a cle...
Nationals Make Gerrit Cole Look Maybe Not Quite Human, But At Least Humanoid
The combustible Nationals bullpen tried very hard to give this away, but in the end the five runs their hitters put up on terrifying buzzsaw Gerrit Cole held up, and the Nationals escaped Game 1 with a 5–4 victory to snatch away home-field advantage in the World Series.Cole looked very much like his...
Overeager Victor Robles Eats Shit On Badly Mistimed Diving Catch Attempt
The Astros are tough as hell. They jumped out to a 2–0 lead in the bottom of the first against Nationals Game 1 starter Max Scherzer, and have made Scherzer work out of trouble in every inning so far. In the bottom of the third, with the Astros up a run, Yuli Gurriel flared a blooper to shallow left...
A Modest Proposal For The World Series Baseballs
With the World Series upon us, and the magic of the Houston Colt .45s vs. the Montreal Expos preparing to unfold before our satanically red-rimmed eyes, we can sit back, forget the rest of the world its slowly advancing state of entropy and decay and ask ourselves the most existential of questions:...
The Washington Nationals Are The Team Of Destiny, Until They're Not
For the entirety of their brief existence in the nation’s capital, the Washington Nationals have been too insignificant or too lousy or too unlucky or too self-defeating to hate. This is not to say that I haven’t figured out various ways to do it over the years, but also I am not without some intere...
Nationals Complete Sweep Of Cardinals, Nanny Nanny Boo Boo
The Washington Nationals completed their four-game NLCS sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals Tuesday night, 7–4, and advanced to the franchise’s first World Series. They did it with a seven-run first inning, and then mostly held on for dear life, but they had a bunch of help from the Cardinals themselve...
Stephen Strasburg's Teammates Must Keep Hugging Him Until His Icy Heart Melts
Stephen Strasburg kicked ass last night, striking out 12 Cardinals hitters in seven innings of work and leading his team to an 8-1 Game 3 victory. As you can see in the image above, all that hard work was repaid when he entered the dugout after recording his final out of the night and received a gro...
Juan Soto's Goof In Left Was High Comedy, But Marcell Ozuna's Mattered
For my money, the two best highlights of the Nationals’ 8–1 Game 3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, a result that makes the rest of this series almost a formality, were bloopers. One looked stupid and hilarious and mattered not at all; the other almost looked like a very cool catch, until it didn’t...
Juan Soto And Miles Mikolas Swear The Crotch-Grabbing Antics Are All In Good Fun
It was only a matter of time before a pitcher decided to respond to Juan Soto for, well, being Juan Soto. In the top of the fifth, after forcing the 20-year-old Nationals stud to ground out, Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas looked over at Washington’s dugout as Soto trotted over and aggressively grab...
Even Aníbal Sánchez Started To Believe He Had His No-Hitter Secured
With the Nationals’ postseason demons exorcised, and the team now navigating uncharted playoff territory, it seemed only right that this anything-is-possible type of magic carried over into specific areas of the team to elevate certain players. Still, as Washington and St. Louis entered the bottom o...
If The Nats Are Going To Be Worth Rooting For, Let's Get Them Some Better Hats
This may seem like a Guide To The League Championship Series, but it isn’t really. If you need to be guided through four teams, you may be too dim to read....
Howie Kendrick Finally Has A Legacy
You’d be forgiven, Nats fans, if you wanted Howie Kendrick out of the game long before his instantly legendary grand slam in the top of the 10th that won the Nationals their first-ever playoff series. Kendrick, despite turning in a pleasant surprise of a 2019 season that saw him become one of Washin...
Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers Choke Away Game 5 In Stunning Fashion
Oh man. The Dodgers absolutely cruised through seven innings at home against the Nationals Wednesday night, in Game 5 of their divisional series. Walker Buehler was once again dominant. Postseason beast Max Muncy and Kiké Hernández pounced on opportunities presented by Stephen Strasburg’s early comm...
Kurt Suzuki Leaves NLDS Game 5 After Taking Deflected Fastball To The Face
Washington Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki was taken out of Wednesday night’s Game 5 against the Los Angeles Dodgers when a high-and-tight fastball from Walker Buehler deflected off his wrist and into his face in the top of the seventh inning. The impact was audible, and Suzuki crashed to the ground a...
Grunting Max Scherzer Gave The Nationals Everything He Had, And Just What They Needed
Davey Martinez and the Washington Nationals didn’t resort to another bullpen appearance from a starting pitcher Monday night, thank God. That’s a gimmick that was bound to fail the more it’s used, either spectacularly and all at once, or cumulatively, or both. It already blew up in their faces Sunda...
The Nationals Can't Possibly Keep This Up
It would be nice, albeit utterly ridiculous, if the Washington Nationals decided to have Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer pitch every inning in the team’s series against the Dodgers, but considering how the two performed in Game 2 of the NLDS, fans would be forgiving for wanting something akin to ...
Trent Grisham Isn't Going To Forget This One For A While
Trent Grisham, welcome to October. The 22-year-old midseason call-up, who was such a big part of the Brewers’ postseason push, especially after Christian Yelich went down, learned quickly and the hard way that the reason the crowds are bigger and louder is that every play’s import is magnified, and ...
Nationals Eliminate Brewers Thanks To Brutal, Brutal Outfield Error
The Milwaukee Brewers had it. They had it! For seven-plus innings, their pitchers successfully shut the Nationals down with a steady diet of high heat, and preserved a two-run lead that started to feel like 50 or 100 runs as the game progressed. The Brewers got to Josh Hader in the bottom of the eig...
Athlete Yearns For Return To Warm, Encouraging Embrace Of Philadelphia Sports Fans
In a sign that the universe still has a couple utterly unprecedented tricks hidden up its sleeves, an athlete announced Wednesday that he is eager to be back among Philadelphia sports fans because of how appreciative and encouraging they are, as a group, relative to another set of sports fans....