How did it happen? Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and Howie Kendrick were clutch at the plate. Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Aníbal Sánchez and Patrick Corbin provided quality starts. And Sean Doolittle (the former closer) and Daniel Hudson (the current closer) turned the team’s weakness, the bullpen, into a strength.

But how, more specifically, have they won eight playoff games? We can quantify the importance of each swing via Championship Probability Added, a metric created by baseball analyst Sky Andrecheck that measures how much a particular play influences a team’s chances to win the World Series. For example, Strasburg’s strikeout of Dodgers first baseman Matt Beaty in the sixth inning of Game 5 of the NL Division Series improved Washington’s World Series chances by about 0.5 percent. On the other hand, his pitch to shortstop Corey Seager in the first inning of the same game, causing Seager to hit into a double play, improved the Nationals’ World Series chances by 1.4 percent.

That’s not bad, but still not valuable enough to crack this list of the 10 postseason plays that pushed the Nats to the World Series. The plays are listed here, starting with the at-bat that most improved Washington’s World Series hopes.

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1) Juan Soto’s three-run single off Josh Hader in the NL wild-card game

Situation: Bottom of the eighth, two outs, bases loaded

Championship Probability Added: 7.3 percent, per the Baseball Gauge

Soto batted .282 with 34 home runs during the regular season, so it’s no surprise he came up big for Washington in the winner-take-all playoff game against the Milwaukee Brewers. Soto’s only hit of the game was a line-drive single to right off Hader’s high four-seam fastball, allowing Michael A. Taylor, Andrew Stevenson and then Rendon to score after Trent Grisham’s error. Soto would be thrown out while celebrating on the base paths, but no one seemed to care. It remains the most important at-bat of this Nats postseason run.

2) Anthony Rendon’s double off Joe Kelly in Game 5 of the NLDS

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Situation: Top of the 10th, no outs, man on first

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Championship Probability Added: 6.3 percent

Heading into the playoffs, Rendon was 1 for 3 against Kelly for his career, but his ground-rule double against Kelly’s knuckle curve sent Adam Eaton from first to third, setting the stage for a monstrous at-bat from Howie Kendrick a few pitches later. (This play ranks higher because Rendon’s hit put the Nationals in prime position to take the lead in this deciding game, regardless of whether Kendrick reached safely.)

3) Juan Soto’s home run off Clayton Kershaw in Game 5 of the NLDS

Situation: Top of the eighth, no outs, bases empty

Championship Probability Added: 5.7 percent

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Kershaw, a three-time Cy Young winner and the 2014 NL MVP, was brought in as a reliever to finish the seventh inning and then was set to face the Nationals’ 3-4-5 hitters in the eighth, with the Dodgers up by two. Soto, the second batter of the inning, crushed a 449-foot bomb, putting Kershaw’s slider into the seats and tying the score at 3.

4) Howie Kendrick’s grand slam off Joe Kelly in Game 5 of the NLDS

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Situation: Top of the 10th, no outs, bases loaded

Championship Probability Added: 4.0 percent

Kendrick has 125 home runs over his 14-year career, but before this month, just one — a walk-off home run against San Francisco’s Albert Suárez in 2017 — was a grand slam. Kendrick’s second career grand slam came on a Kelly fastball that drifted too far into Kendrick’s power zone. Ironically, it was the weakest home run as measured by exit velocity (105 mph) by Kendrick this year, in the regular season or the playoffs. Again, Nats fans didn’t seem to mind.

5) Anthony Rendon’s home run off Clayton Kershaw in Game 5 of the NLDS

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Situation: Top of the eighth, no outs, bases empty

Championship Probability Added: 2.8 percent

Kershaw, of course, didn’t just get burned by Soto. He gave up back-to-back home runs in relief, and the first came off the bat of Rendon, a 381-foot shot to center that drew the Nats within a run. Normally Kershaw goes with his slider when behind in the count to a right-handed batter (57 percent of the time in 2019), but he instead stuck with his fastball on this 1-0 pitch and paid the price.

6) Adam Eaton’s two-run double off Adam Wainwright in Game 2 of the NLCS

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Situation: Top of the eighth, one out, men on first and second

Championship Probability Added: 2.6 percent

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Wainwright allowed an above-average rate of extra-base hits this season (35 percent, compared with 31 percent for major league pitchers as a whole), and Eaton took advantage of his curveball on a full count, hitting a scorching double to right. The hit scored Matt Adams and Trea Turner, putting the Nats up 3-0. It also improved Washington’s chances to win this game from 76 percent to 93 percent, making it the biggest hit of the day and possibly of the championship series.

The best part of the hit might have been the thought process Eaton went through at the plate. According to The Post’s Sam Fortier, Eaton channeled George Costanza, the sitcom character from “Seinfeld,” and disregarded his instincts. Instead of sitting on a fastball — Eaton’s first guess — he positioned himself to take advantage of a curveball.

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“That’s what happened,” Eaton said. “George was right.”

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7) Ryan Zimmerman’s three-run homer off Pedro Báez in Game 4 of the NLDS

Situation: Bottom of the fifth, two outs, men on first and third

Championship Probability Added: 2.3 percent

Zimmerman took Báez deep to right field, giving Washington a 5-1 lead over the Dodgers and sending Nationals Park into histrionics. It was only the fourth career playoff home run by Zimmerman, but it was his longest and hardest ever in the postseason, a 414-foot rocket hit at 107.2 mph. And it helped ensure the series would go back to Los Angeles for Game 5.

8) Howie Kendrick’s single off John Brebbia in Game 1 of the NLCS

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Situation: Top of the seventh, two outs, men on first and third

Championship Probability Added: 2.0 percent

Kendrick had two hits in the opening game of the NLCS: a double off Miles Mikolas in the second inning and a single off Brebbia in the seventh. The latter scored Eaton and moved Rendon from first to second, upping Washington’s lead to 2-0, a margin that would hold for the remainder of the game.

9) Juan Soto’s two-run home run off Hyun-Jin Ryu in Game 3 of the NLDS

Situation: Bottom of the first, two outs, man on first

Championship Probability Added: 2.0 percent

Ryu led the majors with a 2.32 ERA during the regular season and allowed only two earned runs over five innings in Game 3 of the NLDS. Both came on this play, when Soto got a 91-mph fastball, a pitch Ryu threw 772 times this season, including the playoffs. Before that meeting with Soto, Ryu had yielded just five home runs off his fastball in 2019. This is the only play on this list that came in a loss.

10) Max Scherzer gets Yadier Molina to hit into a double play in Game 2 of the NLCS

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Situation: Bottom of the seventh, one out, man on first

Championship Probability Added: 1.9 percent

Scherzer dominated the Cardinals in Game 2, pitching seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball with 11 strikeouts, joining Mike Mussina (1997 American League Championship Series), Orlando Hernandez (1999 World Series), Roger Clemens (2000 ALCS) and Homer Bailey (2012 NLDS) as the only postseason pitchers to throw seven or more innings with just one hit against and at least 10 strikeouts.

The biggest pitch of the night was a 0-1 fastball low and outside to Molina, inducing a grounder to Turner, who started the double play. Groundouts off Scherzer’s four-seam fastball had been rare — only 2.1 percent of his four-seamers resulted in routine grounders this year. It was also the fourth time Scherzer induced a playoff double play since he joined the Nationals in 2015.

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