Game 5 - Blame the Umpire!

The Nats are down 4-1 in the 7th after a Juan Soto homer. Victor Robles just worked his way to a walk. Two on, two out. Yan Gomes smacks a single up the middle. It's 4-2, with Matt Adams coming up to pinch hit. Manager AJ Hinch lifts Gerrit Cole for Ryan Pressly. Pressly struggled in Game 2 and now is in a tough spot.

Big City crushes the ball over the wall in right field and the Nats take a 5-4 lead. Daniel Hudson comes in and pitches two scoreless innings, the Nats score another run in the 8th as the top of the lineup wakes up, and Washington wins 6-4 to take a 3-2 series lead heading back to Houston.

Except...

Home plate umpire Lance Barkdale made Gary Cedarstrom- Game 3's home plate umpire- look like he knew what he was doing. Robles was called out on a pitch that didn't sniff the strikezone. Joe Ross struck out Carlos Correa with his strike three pitch going squarely down the middle. Barksdale somehow missed it and called it a ball. Correa hit a two-run homer on the next pitch to take a 4-0 lead.

In the 6th, Tanner Rainey struck out Michael Brantley, except... Barksdale missed that one, too.

In today's world, everyone typically screams, "Conspiracy theory!" as if MLB prefers the Astros to win rather than the Nats. With these atrocious calls in Games 3 and 5, it's hard to resist the temptation to strap on my aluminium foil hat and start marching around the neighborhood in my underwear. But I chalk it up to incompetence. MLB's umpires, frankly, aren't very good if Barksdale and Cedarstrom are two of the six best.

The Nats had first and third in the second with no one out down 2-0 and failed to score. That was a key miss in the game, and only the offense is to blame for that one. But it's hard to mount a comeback when as a hitter you don't know where the zone is... and oh by the way you're facing one of the best pitchers in the game.

The game got out of hand in the late innings with Hudson on the mound. A familiar cliche is that closers have a hard time getting up for an outing when it's not a save situation. Yes, it's the World series, but you can't tell me a human being is going to give the same focus on the mound when his team is down 4-1 in the 8th as opposed to up a run.

The Nats were 19-31 through the first 50 games of the season. Yes, this was a disappointing 3 games, but 2-3 isn't an insurmountable hurdle when you started 19-31 and have won two games in the World Series.