By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/11/strasburg-breaks-the-mold-and-saves-the-nats/Stephen Strasburg long-tossed in the Wrigley Field outfield before Game Four Wednesday afternoon. A couple
of wisenheimers in the Cub bullpen wore medical masks over their noses and mouths.
Unavailable Tuesday even before the weather-induced postponement because changing weather caused him
to breathe in mold—and feel feverish enough to be pumped full of antibiotics and IV fluids—Strasburg got
the last laugh.
And the Nationals may yet get the last laugh with the division series moving back to Washington for Game
Five.
Strasburg did plenty enough by himself, including striking out the side in the bottom of the seventh to finish
his day’s twelve-punchout, shutout work with a flourish. But he sure wasn’t going to complain about the four-
finger shot of the next best medicine a pitcher could ask from Michael A. Taylor in the top of the eighth.
That giant sucking sound you heard even through the ill winds blowing in from the Wrigley Field bleachers
was the crowd going silent as a mausoleum, after Taylor measured Cubs reliever Carl Edwards, Jr.—the same
Edwards who was hit for Bryce Harper’s mammoth two-run shot in Game Two—and sent it the other way
into the basket atop the right field wall.
Edward relieved Jon Lester, who’d reliever starter Jake Arrieta after Arrieta—whose own barking hamstring
kept him off the mound since 26 September—struggled through four innings with five walks.
“I said a little prayer when I got in there,” Taylor said, meaning when he checked into the batter’s box. His
prayer was answered when his bat found Edwards’s fastball, hitting the first grand slam in franchise history,
including their decades as the Montreal Expos.
Who needs the nose masks now?
It must have been nothing compared to the prayer Nats manager Dusty Baker said after Strasburg greeted
him early Wednesday morning, pumped full of pharmacologia, the first Nat out to the team bus for Wrigley,
and he marched himself right into Baker’s office in the visiting clubhouse to tell the skipper he wanted the
ball with the Nats’ season squarely on the line.
“You could see the look in his eyes,” said Nats closer Sean Doolittle of Strasburg during his pre-game warm-
ups.
You wonder what the Cubs saw in his eyes when Strasburg blew them aside one-two-three in the bottom
of the first, including striking out Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo. If he looked like a psycho killer to them,
maybe you couldn’t blame them.
Call it the Mold Game if you must. Call it, too, the day Strasburg saved his team’s season for one more day
at minimum by pitching his way into the record books. Only two other pitchers have thrown two 10K+ games
in a single postseason series—Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson.
It must have been, pardon the expression, sickening for Strasburg to spend Tuesday feeling anything but
human with whatever virus the damp weather sent into him. He’d actually begun feeling flu-like symptoms
during the bullpen session he threw Monday, and Baker subsequently told reporters Strasburg wasn’t the
only Nat feeling weird from the damp weather’s mold kick-ups. Just the most important one.
“He was feeling really bad. He had no endurance. He was really weak,” said Nats general manager Mike
Rizzo. “We switched Stras’ antibiotics, gave him a higher dose, IV fluids throughout [Tuesday night], and
this morning he felt much more like Stephen Strasburg. So he came into the clubhouse and went to the
manager’s office and said, ‘I want to start this game’.”
Thus were the Nats spared the prospect of going to survival mode behind Tanner Roark, their number
four starter, who actually pitched well against the Cubs the one time he faced them on the season but
who isn’t Strasburg on Strasburg’s worst day.
For years Strasburg, the former number one draft pick, fought the “soft” label, thanks to the Tommy
John surgery to which he was forced in his first major league season, and the so-called Strasburg Plan
that shortened his 2012 despite it not being his call, not to mention missing last postseason thanks
to a torn pronator tendon he suffered early in September.
The Nats imposed the Strasburg Plan in 2012 to save him for just moments like this. They didn’t bargain
on the periodic elbow issues he’s fought off since, or the tendon tear last year, but they chose to spare
him in 2012 just for sets like this one. They all laughed when they weren’t ready to hang the Nats’
administration. Who’s got the last laugh now?
And, for the record, the 2012 Nats
could have gone further than that division series, had they not squan-
dered an early Game Five 6-0 lead and play the rest of that game as if trying to hit six-run homers every
at-bat or throw three strikes per each pitch. Strasburg had nothing to do with that.
He had just about everything to do with sending the division series back to Washington. For one game in
which, for both the Cubs and the Nats, it’s win or wait till next year. Strasburg found enough to win twice
this time around.
If the Nats make yet another round one exit, it won’t be anywhere near Strasburg’s fault. But there isn’t
a Nat blunder, a Nat errant pitch, a Nat error that can wreck what he fought his way back to earn decisively
—respect, and irrevocable big game cred.
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