Gerrit Cole Was Gerrit Cole In Game 5 AKA The Nationals Had No Fuckin' Chance
This isn’t a knock on the Nats. When Gerrit Cole is Gerrit Cole, nobody has a fuckin’ chance. He was Gerrit Cole in Game 5.
After suffering his first loss since late May in Game 1 of the World Series, Cole’s second crack at the Nats has remained in the back on my mind. Was he out of gas? Was it World Series nerves? Or, would he take his shot at redemption, turn it sideways and stick it straight up the Nats’ ass? It was the latter. Seven innings, three hits, one run on a homer by Juan Soto, and nine strikeouts, tying Cliff Lee in 2010 for the most strikeouts in a single postseason run with 47.
In an era when managers are quick to make a call to the bullpen in October, Cole has gone no fewer than seven innings in each of his five postseason starts this year. After going down two games to none in Houston, the Astros stormed back and took all three games in DC, the third becoming the Cole Revenge Game. I mean, he made a really good lineup look like a bunch of Little Leaguers. Some of these swings and misses looked like the hitters were blindfolded. Like, swinging and missing at pitches by several feet. The fastball was electric and the knuckle curve was unhittable.
Offensively, it was another blowout in favor of the Astros. Yordan Alvarez finally woke up, launching a two-run homer in the second as part of a 3-for-3 night. Carlos Correa smoked a two-run bomb of his own, his first of this World Series. And George Springer piled on with a two-run piss missile in the ninth. It was all Astros in this one. Again.
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The story of the night was obviously Cole’s dominance, but the story before first pitch was Max Scherzer not being able to take the ball. Some idiots on Twitter were questioning Scherzer’s toughness as a result of him not being able to make the start, given that it is the World Series after all, but fuck those people. Scherzer lives for this shit. We’re talking about a guy who broke his nose and still took the mound with two black eyes and dominated. If Scherzer’s pain level was too high to pitch in a tied World Series game, then that’s a pain level that would send most people to the hospital.
According to Scherzer, he’s still hoping to be able to pitch in a potential Game 7. And I never want to bet against that guy, but I just don’t see how he’ll be able to pull that off in such a short span of time. It’d be an awesome story, though. If he’s even to attempt to do that, the Nats must first win Game 6 in Houston on Tuesday night. In that game, they’ll be sending Stephen Strasburg to the mound against Justin Verlander, a matchup that we saw in Game 2 of this World Series, which was a blowout win for the Nats.
Game 5 of this World Series was the first game that actually stuck to the script. It was the first result that made sense. Nobody had the Nats jumping out to a 2-0 series lead in Houston. Not very many people had the Astros tying it up immediately in DC. Cole dominating in Game 5? Yeah, I could see that. Now, we have Game 6. Strasburg, one of the historically great postseason pitches versus Verlander who has historically struggled in the World Series. Logic says we see a seventh game. But logic doesn’t always apply in October. See you Tuesday night.