Nationals Take Game 1 of World Series 5 - 4

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Home field advantage and Gerrit Cole were not enough to stymie the bats of the Washington Nationals in game 1 of the World Series Tuesday night. Despite entering the game with 19 straight wins and an ERA below 2.0 Cole gave away five runs over the course of seven innings that his Astros just couldn't match.

Being more familiar with the pitching antics of the Detroit Tigers, Cole's performance doesn't seem that bad to me. six strikeouts and only one base on balls is pretty darn good. In the end it is the hits that got him giving away eight and ending the contest with a 6.43 ERA. No doubt if the series goes long enough to give him another chance he will be looking for retribution.

On the flip side, Max Scherzer (who I have watched many times with the Tigers) had similar but slightly better game. Having gone only five innings, it will be interesting to see if going to the bull pen so early will impact the Nationals moving forward.

As I said, Max completed five innings with seven strike outs, three bases on balls, and an ERA of 3.60.

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The Houston Astros took an early lead with two runs off the bat of Gurriel in the first inning but Washington chipped away at them over the first five innings to scratch out the win. Houston's bull pen did a good job of shutting down the Nationals after the fifth inning, but by then the damage had already been done.

The game saw three home runs, two from the Nationals and one from the Astro's. All of the home runs were solo shots and that made the game a good mix of small ball and power hitting. If Cole could have held things together in the 5th inning, I think the game would have ended very differently.

These two teams meet up again tonight in Houston for game two of the series. I should be another great pitching match-up between Stephen Strasburg and Justin Verlander. I might be a little biased being a Tigers fan, but my money is on Verlander.