Despite going up against the best starting pitchers in all of baseball, the Washington Nationals offense has thrived in the World Series.
It’s only been two games, so we certainly don’t want to overreact, but the gameplan for the Washington Nationals hitters has been superb.
I talked about it a little bit in our takeaways article from Game 1, but this offense has been overly aggressive in the World Series.
It’s really been interesting to see the different approaches by the two offenses in this World Series, and what has been effective.
To this point, the Houston Astros hitters have been patient and tried to work deep counts to get the Washington Nationals starters out of the game.
And while that strategy has certainly worked — neither Nationals starter in the first two games has gone more than 6 innings and both threw well over 100 pitches — their offense hasn’t been able to breakthrough.
On the flip side, the Nationals hitters have been very aggressive at the plate and haven’t really worried about driving up the pitch counts of Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander.
Instead, when they get a ball in the zone they’re taking their hacks.
Again, it’s only been two games, but so far that strategy has paid off big time for Washington.
But this approach has led to the Nats outperforming the Astros in areas that Houston was thought to be superior in coming into this World Series.
And those areas are the reason the Washington Nationals are out to a 2-0 lead going back home.