WASHINGTON _ That long, winding and grinding road back to the postseason for a team defined by its ability to establish residency there took the Cardinals through three long seasons, two trades for middle-order hitters, and even one manager change to get them, finally, into a National League Championship Series.
They blinked.
And it was over.
The Washington Nationals completed a sweep of the Cardinals with a 7-4 victory Tuesday night at Nationals Park to claim the National League pennant for the first time in their city's history. The Nationals bounded to a 7-0 lead before Cardinals' starter Dakota Hudson had thrown his 16th pitch of the game and then fended off two flickering rallies from the Cardinals to end the best-of-seven series, four games to none. The Cardinals never had a lead in any of the games, never had much of a pulse from their offense, never had an answer for any of the Nationals pitchers, and ultimately never had a chance. They struck out 14 times in Game 4 and fanned 48 times in the series.
"Felt like it kind of sped up on us," shortstop Paul DeJong said. "I felt like the Braves series lasted forever, and that was only five games. This one was four games, but it felt like a blur. Feel like offensively we kind of staggered. What is there to say? Overall, we didn't quite stick to our plan enough, and they just executed better than us."
The Nationals, led by their rotation, will be the first Washington ballclub to reach the World Series since the Senators in 1933, during the Great Depression. For the Cardinals, now begins a winter of great introspection.
Veteran starter Adam Wainwright, thrust into the first inning to relieve Hudson, has not decided what to do for 2020, suggesting late Tuesday that he'll spend the next few weeks talking with his family about a return or retirement. Marcell Ozuna headlines the group of free agents that can leave, and his wishes to return to the Cardinals _ which he repeated Tuesday night _ have not been reciprocated by the team.
The Cardinals also must address a rotation missing a lefty and an offense missing throughout the NLCS. A commitment already has been made to hitting coach Jeff Albert and the philosophy he's installing for the entire organization, but the Nationals were able to build on what other teams did and delete any threat the Cardinals' lineup posed.
But the Cardinals won a division title and returned to relevance in October. And still the four-game sweep by Washington will linger.
"Probably a little bit of both," first baseman Paul Goldschmidt said. "You can't argue that the Nats came out and beat us. We also won the division and got to the NLCS. It's not the ultimate goal, but we got part of the way there. Next year is going to be a new year ... . We needed the big hit. We didn't get anything going offensively. It starts with me. I had one hit in four games. That's tough when you're hitting third. Got to look at myself to start it out. If we were going to win, we were going to have to play better than we did."
Down 7-0 before the Cardinals got a second at-bat, Wainwright described how he could sense "2012 in the air." That year they rallied from a six-run deficit to claim the division series at the same ballpark. There were moments Tuesday. In the fifth, the Cardinals scored three runs and had a chance at another jagged number before starter Patrick Corbin struck out the middle of the Cardinals' order. In the eighth, the Cardinals loaded the bases, got the go-ahead run on base and had Matt Carpenter up as a pinch- hitter against Washington closer Daniel Hudson. Magic blew by at 98 mph and Carpenter fell behind in the count.
The chance ended not with a strikeout, but with a groundout.
Rookie Hudson began his first NLCS start with two balls to leadoff hitter Trea Turner, and in the next 13 pitches he allowed seven runs. It happened fast. Turner singled. Adam Eaton jumped the first pitch he faced for a double. Anthony Rendon skied the first pitch he saw for a sacrifice fly. Juan Soto took a ball and then drilled the second pitch he saw for an RBI double. Before Hudson had thrown his eighth pitch of the game, two runs had scored, two runners were on, and he had managed to get only one out.
He would not get another one.
An error and two more singles followed, including Yan Gomes' two-run shot to left-center field that came, yes, on the first pitch he saw. Hudson allowed seven runs (four earned) on 10 strikes. The Nationals hit like they had somewhere to go, like they had hot pockets in the microwave _ or like they knew what was coming. They didn't wait for something other than Hudson's sinker, not as it floated up in the zone.
"They were on my fastball," Hudson said. "There are some things that you can do as a pitcher to get them off of that, but I didn't adjust quickly enough."
Figures.
All series, whether it was pitching or offensive bursts like Tuesday's first inning, the Nationals seemed to know how to stop the Cardinals better than the Cardinals knew how to start themselves.
Able to identify their likely opponents in early September, the Nats dispatched advanced scouts to study and dissect opponents. Bob Schaefer, a longtime bench coach in the majors and once interim manager for the Royals, was one of the scouts assigned to the Cardinals. He was there for the 19-inning slog against Arizona, there for the series and clincher against the Cubs, and there again for the Cardinals' cloudburst of runs to bounce Atlanta from the final game of the National League Division Series.
The dossier prepped by the advance scouts was merged with the analytics and "we then give the information to the players," Nationals manager Dave Martinez said. "We put together a pretty good game plan."
It all started where the Nationals banked it would _ with pitching.
When they could not reach an agreement with Bryce Harper, the district's first superstar player, and he became a free agent, the Nationals doubled-down on pitching. They signed lefty Corbin to go with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg as an October Hydra. The Nats committed more than $500 million to their rotation, and then outfitted it with all the data necessary to bedevil the Cardinals.
Anibal Sanchez did it with his mix of speeds and "butterfly" changeup. Scherzer did it with four-pitch brilliance and breaking stuff the Cardinals couldn't help but chase. Strasburg came back over the plate with one of the game's best changeups, and Corbin, the lefty of the group, unleashed his slider, the most effective in the league.
"What happened in this series right now so far (is) we didn't give any kind of chance to their team to start a rally," Sanchez said before Game 4. "All three _ it started with me in the first game, Scherzer and Strasburg _ we hit the corners pretty good. That was the key so far for the success."
Against a new-look lineup from the Cardinals _ one that pushed Tommy Edman to the top, brought Harrison Bader's speed to center, and leaned hard right _ lefty Corbin didn't wait to get progressively better.
He struck out the first three batters on 13 pitches.
He struck out seven of the first nine he faced.
By the end of the fifth, Corbin had a dozen strikeouts, and six of them came from Goldschmidt and Ozuna. Two of those were pivotal to extinguishing the Cardinals' biggest threat against Corbin. In the fifth inning, Shildt and Martinez stirred the dugout with encouragement about winning the game by winning inning by inning. They'd build a rally in pieces. Bader started it with a walk. Kolten Wong continued it with his second hit of the game off Corbin. Off the bench, Dexter Fowler drew a key walk to load the bases, and after an RBI groundout Martinez capitalized on his chance with a two-run double off the right-field wall. The Cardinals had hacked the Nats' lead down to three runs _ with the middle of the order up.
The middle of the order stayed down.
Goldschmidt struck out for the third time in the game, his seventh consecutive time stretching back to Game 3. Ozuna came up with the same chance Goldschmidt had, and he swung at three pitches from Corbin that were out of the zone to end the inning. At that point in the game, Goldschmidt and Ozuna were 2 for 14 in the games at Nationals Park. They had Ozuna's two hits in Game 3 _ and 12 strikeouts.
