The Nationals lost Max Scherzer for Game Five due to his neck locking up enough to keep him from moving his right arm.
The Astros send Gerrit Cole to the mound to battle . . . Joe Ross.
Ross isn't exactly a Joey-come-lately, not with a 3.02 ERA in nine starts down the stretch and two spotless innings in Game Three.
But he's not Max Scherzer. He's not Gerrit Cole. And the Nats hope Ross channels his inner Howard Ehmke, Johnny Podres, Don Larsen (well, a perfect game would be two things: difficult and impossible), or Moe Drabowsky: the least likely men to pitch the biggest baseball of their lives to keep a World Series team from the brink of death. Maybe a combination of the four.
If the Series went to Defcon Three for the Nats after Game Four, and Scherzer's locked neck pushed it to Defcon Two-Five going into Game Five, the Astros would love nothing more than pushing it to Defcon One before the set goes back to Houston and they can finish the job.
Game Five is about to get underway in Washington . . .