Anthony Rendon isn’t a look at me superstar. Think about it: do you know what his voice even sounds like?
That can kind of tend to amplify whatever Rendon does have to offer in terms of observations.
The third baseman unleashed a bit after the Nats’ Game 2 win in Houston put Washington up 2-0 in the 2019 World Series.
It started innocently, when a reporter asked Rendon about the team’s mindset in the postseason.
“I’d go back further than just the postseason,” Rendon said, “for sure, when everyone started doubting us probably the middle of the year when everyone goes back to 19-31. But even when they were saying that, We need to fire Davey, or, We need to trade so and so, or, We need to clean house, clean the front office out, whatever it might be. I think then it was kind of where we got our attitude and said, Screw everybody else, we’re not worrying about what’s going outside of our clubhouse. We have to worry about the 25 guys that are in here and that are actually grinding.
“No offense, but nobody outside of that clubhouse knows the work that we put in each and every day and the amount of time that we’re away from our families and the sacrifices that we have to make. So that’s been our attitude for a while now.”
With all the talk about 19-31, you can forget that people were calling for Martinez’s head, for GM Mike Rizzo’s head.
(My hand is up on the latter one there.)
Then there was the silly talk: trading Rendon, trading Max Scherzer, trading Stephen Strasburg, starting the rebuild after the run of four playoff appearances since 2012 had seemed to run its course.
The part to 19-31 that people forget is that it was much about injuries as anything. Rendon missed 14 games between April 21 and May 6, a stretch that saw Washington go 5-9.
Juan Soto was out for an eight-game stretch between May 3-10 (Nats record: 2-6).
And then there was the lengthy absence of shortstop and leadoff hitter Trea Turner, who was out with a broken finger from April 4 all the way to May 16.
Washington went 16-19 over Turner’s lengthy absence.
It shouldn’t be that much a surprise that a team that entered the season with playoff expectations would begin playing playoff-caliber baseball when it got its guys back.
But, yeah, looking out from 19-31, you assume you’d need 90 wins to get into the playoffs, and that would mean going 71-41 the rest of the way.
The Nats actually did that one three better, finishing out 74-38.
Do keep in mind here: the Detroit Tigers also started 19-31 this year. The Tigers ended up at 47-114.
“I think we’ve kind of defied the odds at this point, and we don’t pay too much attention to them,” Rendon said. “Obviously we read about it or hear about it because it becomes exploited, and obviously we’re in the city and we have all the news outlets saying all these things. But we just try to stay together as a team, and that’s all we really could do. We had nothing to lose at that point. We had .01 chance to lose, I guess, we had that much left. But we were just, hey, screw it, let’s go out and have some fun and play ball, and whatever it was, something clicked and it turned around and we’ve been trying to ride that wave ever since and keep on just going.”
Story by Chris Graham
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