National League, it’s your turn! Also, please let me be the first to thank you for switching it up a little bit. The baseball public was sick of seeing leadoff homers and offensive outbursts! If you like a good pitcher’s duel and watching Brian Dozier leadoff the AL wild card with a homer made you cringe, or seeing Jose Altuve sock three bombs in the opening game of the ALDS made you want to change the channel, then you came to the right place.
All sarcasm aside, we had another wonderful start to a playoff series, this time with the Washington Nationals and the defending world champion Chicago Cubs. This series seemed to have a different feel to it, especially as far as pitching was concerned.
Both teams had four days off entering play on Friday and while most playoff clubs were using five pitchers a night and plugging their rotation guys into unusual relief situations, both the Cubs and Nationals got seven solid innings out of their starters.
The game stayed scoreless until the Cubs managed two runs off of Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg in the sixth inning. The visitors from Chicago got those runs on a pair of RBI singles from the Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo combination. Rizzo would add another Cubs score in the eighth with an RBI double.
The real story in this game was clutch postseason pitching performer Kyle Hendricks. Hendricks won a game in all three playoff series for the Cubs last October and he is continuing that trend here in 2017. He logged the W in game one after a final line of 7 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 6 SO, 3 BB
The Cubs bullpen would wrap things up in convincing fashion as Carl Edwards Jr. and Wade Davis both tossed an inning of hitless, shutout ball to earn the hold and save, respectively.
The Nationals hope to find their offense in game two and even the series today while John Lester squares off with Gio Gonzalez at 2:30.
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