Houston manager A.J. Hinch didn’t call for an intentional walk to an opposing hitter all season, and consider: the Astros count Mike Trout as a division rival.
Down 3-2 with runners on second and third and two outs in the top of the seventh, Hinch finally broke the seal with Juan Soto, 4-for-7 in the World Series to that point, a homer and two doubles among the damage.
You knew he was going to do it even before Anthony Rendon came to the plate.
It just made sense: get Rendon, walk Soto, try your luck with Howie Kendrick, right on right against reliever Ryan Pressly.
Pressly got Rendon to fly out to short-center. Soto got the free pass.
Then Kendrick put the ball in play, hitting a soft grounder in the hole between third and shortstop.
It could have been an inning-ending groundout, but it was a tough play for Astros third baseman Alex Bregman, who took a stab at the ball, wasn’t able to glove it, then couldn’t get a grip on the ball on the rebound.
Run scored, Asdrubal Cabrera followed with a soft liner to center to score two more, then Ryan Zimmerman plated two more runs with an infield single, and the rout was on.
3-2 became 8-2 in a flash.
Back to the decision to walk Soto: why did Hinch do something there that he hadn’t done all year?
“I’ve watched Soto just like you have. We see the downside of it. Clearly I think there’s a lot of downside given that I haven’t done it all year,” Hinch told reporters after the game.
“Ironically I thought it was our best chance to limit their scoring, and instead it poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning.”
The key was Kendrick putting the ball in play, something that Nats manager Davey Martinez has stressed with his team over his two-year tenure in the Washington dugout.
The Nationals were the fourth-toughest team in MLB to strike out in 2019 (8.07 Ks per game), and they’ve been the second-toughest team to K in the 2019 postseason (9.25 Ks per game).
The new conventional wisdom in baseball is that an out is an out, that a strikeout is no different than a grounder or a fly ball.
Counterpoint: Nine of Washington’s 17 runs in the Game 1 and 2 wins came with two strikes.
“I’ve always said this: Strikeouts (are) not OK, regardless of what people say,” Martinez said. “I don’t believe in it. There’s nothing comes from it when you strike out, you’re just going to walk back to the dugout. I believe in just putting the ball in play. Things happen when you put the ball in play, regardless. Regardless of whether you get a hit or not. But good things happen when you constantly put the ball in play. And we’ve got better at that. And tonight was a perfect example.”
Story by Chris Graham
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