What made the Washington Nationals' World Series win in 2019 really important

• The Nationals had never appeared in or won the World Series beforehand while the Astros had won it two years earlier. 
• Both teams were better at home than on the road in both the regular season and the postseason before the series started.
• It was the first best-of-seven playoff series in any of the major sports leagues where the road team won all seven games. The previous record before that was five. It wasn't however, the first time it happened in any sport as it previously happened in the 1992 Calder Cup Finals in the AHL.
• It was the second World Series to feature two expansion teams. The first was 2015 between the Mets and the Royals. In case you don't know, expansion teams in MLB are teams that were founded after 1960.
• Stephen Strasburg became the first No. 1 overall draft pick to win the World Series MVP. 
• The Nationals became the first team since the Angels in 2002 to win the World Series in their first appearance. 
• Howie Kendrick became only the second player after Hal Smith in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series to hit a go-ahead home run when trailing in the seventh inning or later in a winner-take-all postseason game.
• Game 7 of the series was the first World Series Game 7 in which both starting pitchers were former Cy Young Award winners. In this case, Max Scherzer and Zack Greinke.
• The Nationals won the World Series with the worst 50-game start which was 19-31. 
• The Nationals were the second team to win both the Wild Card Game and the World Series in the same year after the Giants in 2014. 
• Yan Gomes got his first World Series title after missing out with the Indians in 2016. He was also the first Brazilian to win the World Series. 
• For the Nationals' manager, Dave Martinez and coach, Henry Blanco, it was their second World Series win after serving as coaches for the Cubs in 2016. 
• Kevin Long got his second World Series title as a coach after winning one with the Yankees in 2009. 
• The Nationals had both Anibal Sanchez & Max Scherzer on their roster which meant that all five starting pitchers for the Detroit Tigers at the end of the 2014 have won at least one World Series as Rick Porcello & David Price both won it with the Red Sox in 2018, and Justin Verlander won it with the Astros in 2017.
• Not many teams have won the World Series without home-field advantage since the Detroit Tigers in 1984.
• The Nationals' win in Game 7 made road teams 21-19 in World Series Game 7s that were a best-of-seven series.
• The Nationals became the fourth team and the first since the Yankees in 1952 to lose Game 5 of the World Series at home, but rebound to win the last two on the road to clinch the Series. They were also the first NL team since the Cardinals in 1934 and the first NL team other than the Cardinals to do so. It was also the first time that an expansion team did so.
• In all five games where the Nationals faced elimination, they came back to win after the opposing team was leading at one point.
• It was only the second time since the LCS was increased to a best-of-seven in 1985 where a team who swept the LCS went on to win the World Series. The only other case was the Atlanta Braves in 1995.
• Aside from Hunter Strickland who was left off the Nationals' World Series roster, none of the players the Nationals had in the 2019 World Series had ever won the World Series before. A few of them had previously played in the World Series in a losing effort.
• Baseball fans have called the 2019 Washington Nationals as the team who saved baseball when they won the World Series because of the repercussions around the Astros' sign-stealing scandal that broke out just weeks later.