Cardinals starting pitcher Miles Mikolas went six innings, allowing one run on seven hits while striking out seven. Many historical player head shots courtesy of David Davis. All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. WASHINGTON — The top of the first was frightening in its efficiency. What had been billed as a pitchers’ duel quickly unraveled into anything but. We present them here for purely educational purposes. Nationals demolish Cardinals, 8-1, in NLCS Game 3, move within one win of World Series Stephen Strasburg had 12 strikeouts to give the Nationals … That covered three pitches to strike out Dexter Fowler, one to coax an easy grounder from Kolten Wong, six to strike out Paul Goldschmidt. Stephen Strasburg needed just four minutes. Or write about sports? And it’s taken the Nationals to a spot where they just have to execute the approach that they’ve had all season: “Go 1–0 tomorrow,” Martinez said. All rights reserved. I want to finish this inning. The Nationals’ path to an 8–1 victory from there was, if not uneventful, then at least anticlimactic. Subscribe to our Free Newsletter, This Month in Sports ReferenceFind out when we add a feature or make a change. The Nationals, in other words, have neutralized their biggest weakness by maximizing their biggest asset. That was all that he needed. Strasburg maneuvered around a bit of trouble to strike out the final two batters of the frame with two men on, with the last one not only getting him out of the jam, but punctuating and summarizing his entire exultant outing. The Nationals’ rotation makes up the power behind their current position. Every Sports Reference Social Media Account, Site Last Updated: Friday, September 25, 7:04AM. Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. Join our linker program. Win Expectancy, Run Expectancy, and Leverage Index calculations provided by Tom Tango of InsideTheBook.com, and co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. (The Cardinals’ lone run on Monday was unearned, the result of a throwing error by Juan Soto, long after the game’s outcome looked clear.) The Nationals’ starters have now gone 25.2 consecutive innings without an earned run. And it was, once more, driven by their rotation. The rest of the game followed from there. Find out more. That total was boosted by not only some lackluster defense, but also some bad fortune (the expected batting averages of the first three hits were, respectively, .220, .240, and .180), yet the result held all the same: Washington had jumped out ahead and would not retreat. Alex Trautwig/MLB Photos via Getty Images. Many thanks to him. Strasburg did not make this look easy so much as he made it feel inevitable. That was sufficient to end it almost just as soon as it had started—painless, in a sense, if certainly not harmless. Oct 14, 2019, Attendance: 43675, Time of Game: 3:26. Some high school data is courtesy David McWater. The ‘pen’s use has been rather limited in the NLCS, but—perhaps precisely because of that—it’s been far more stable and successful than it was at any other point in the year. No National League team has been able to say that in the postseason in more than a century. “Then the next guy comes up.”.