{"id":1315862,"date":"2019-10-19T20:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/waiting-game-nationals-get-6-days-off-before-world-series\/"},"modified":"2019-10-19T20:52:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T02:52:00","slug":"waiting-game-nationals-get-6-days-off-before-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/waiting-game-nationals-get-6-days-off-before-world-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting game: Nationals get 6 days off before World Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Members of the Washington Nationals participate in a baseball workout, Friday, Oct. 18, 2019, in Washington, in advance of the team’s appearance in the World Series. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Doing a little research ahead of the World Series, Washington Nationals second baseman Brian Dozier came across some numbers that made him feel OK about his team\u2019s long layoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a stat today where there\u2019s been 12 times where teams have had five or more days off going into the World Series. And you know what the record was? 6-6,\u201d Dozier said. \u201cSo it\u2019s not that big a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baseball is a sport that is more of a daily grind than any other, with game followed by game followed by game for six months, so this stretch is rather unusual for the Nationals: They haven\u2019t played since finishing off a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Championship Series at home last Tuesday \u2014 and they won\u2019t play until Game 1 of the Fall Classic on the road next Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s next opponent gets much less of a respite: The Houston Astros and New York Yankees were getting set to play Game 6 of the AL Championship Series on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The good news for the Nationals is that their pitchers get to recharge and they can set up their rotation exactly how they want. The flip side is that their hitters might not be sharp when play resumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball season\u2019s kind of uncomfortable. Your body\u2019s kind of under constant fire,\u201d right fielder Adam Eaton said. \u201cAnd when you get a breath of fresh air, sometimes it has a tendency to relax a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year ago, Dozier went to the World Series with the Dodgers, who faced a Boston Red Sox club that had two more days of rest than Los Angeles did. And Boston wound up winning.<\/p>\n

But the previous nine champs \u2014 nine! \u2014 were the teams that had less time off.<\/p>\n

In that span, there were only two examples of World Series teams that had four more days away than the other club: The 2012 Detroit Tigers (who featured current Nationals pitchers Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez) hit .159 and got swept by the San Francisco Giants; the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies batted .227 and lost to the Yankees in six games.<\/p>\n

Dozier doesn\u2019t find it daunting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all professionals in here. We know what it takes. We have live pitching every day. Some guys might hit, some not \u2014 whatever you think you need to do to get ready,\u201d he said, then broke into a smile. \u201cWe\u2019re not 16. We\u2019ve got some 42-year-olds around here that\u2019s been around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington held a 90-minute workout at Nationals Park on Friday afternoon, including batting practice, baserunning drills and fielding work for the position players, and throwing for the pitchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys have played unbelievably. I think they needed a break. Some guys really needed a break,\u201d manager Dave Martinez said. \u201cHeal their bodies a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez said he planned to hold \u201canother very, very, very light workout\u201d on Saturday, then ramp up to more intense sessions Sunday and Monday, including an intrasquad game under the lights to prepare for playing at night.<\/p>\n

His biggest worry?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s their legs. I want to make sure they keep their legs underneath them,\u201d Martinez said Friday. \u201cWe ran them today. They had a full workout in the gym. They did a bunch of agility stuff. For the everyday guys, it\u2019s their legs. And for the pitchers, it\u2019s getting everybody to throw. And we\u2019ll continue to do that the next couple of days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez took advantage of the break by sleeping most of the day Wednesday, waking up just to eat dinner, then going back to bed.<\/p>\n

One of his relievers, Sean Doolittle, used the down time to catch up on laundry, finish reading a book he\u2019d set aside for a while (\u201cParable of the Talents\u201d by Octavia E. Butler) and head to a bookstore to find a new one.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I didn\u2019t know about getting this far in the postseason is it\u2019s emotionally exhausting. \u2026 It just felt good to have nothing on our plate and just recover a little bit,\u201d Doolittle said. \u201cI haven\u2019t been reading much just because of the energies of everything. I can\u2019t focus on the book. I\u2019ll come back and I\u2019ll read a little bit, and I\u2019m like, \u2018I can\u2019t turn my brain off yet to focus on what I\u2019m reading.\u2019 So I ended up watching a bunch of shows instead, which I don\u2019t like to do before I fall asleep, but it was the only way that I could decompress.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the Washington Nationals participate in a baseball workout, Friday, Oct. 18, 2019, in Washington, in advance of the team’s appearance in the World Series. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky)AP | AP WASHINGTON \u2014 Doing a little research ahead of the World Series, Washington Nationals second baseman Brian Dozier came across some numbers that made him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 17:23:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}