To start, the Nationals were the overall favorite to make it to the World Series. As the series against the Giants began, confidence in the Nats was at an all time high. That confidence slowly dissipated after a game 1 loss in front of a sold out crowd. Game two is where the beginning of the end showed up; after tossing 8 scoreless innings, Jordan Zimmermann was pulled. Drew Storen promptly came in, got two outs, then blew the save. After losing an 18 inning affair, things were not looking good for the Nationals but they bounced back and won game 3 thanks to the play of Bryce Harper and Doug Fister.
Game 4 was a typical DC playoff game; opposing team gets the early lead, Nats make a comeback to tie the game. In a way only a DC team could play, soon after Harper's 7th inning moonshot, Matt Thornton allows two guys on base. Williams comes out and makes a pitching change, opting to go with Aaron Barrett instead of All Stars Clippard, Storen, or Strasburg. Barrett goes on to walk Hunter Pence to load the bases with one out. The following at-bat, Barrett bounces one in the dirt that finds its way to the backstop, allowing the eventual winning run to score. With a 3-1 count to Pablo Sandoval, and first base open, the Nats decide to (attempt to) intentionally walk the batter. A simple throw and catch turned into a little league fiasco as Barrett overthrew Ramos and had to make a miraculous play to keep Buster Posey from scoring. The game ended with the same score as the last six Nationals batters went 0-5 and a fantastic walk drawn by Harper was not capitalized on.
Many questions have been asked and fingers pointed since the series' conclusion, here is my take on it all.
The reason for this absolute collapse in the playoffs comes down to a few things. The first, lack of production from the lineup. Two position players came to play in October, and they were two of the youngest guys on the team. Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon went a combined 12-36 with 3 HR and 5 RBI, meanwhile veterans Jayson Werth and Adam Laroche went 2-35 with 9 Ks. The pitching staff did a phenomenal job, allowing only nine runs the whole series, but if only two players are making contact, its all for nothing. Other than lack of production, the other reason for the awful series was the two managerial gaffes by Matt Williams. He is being unjustly blamed for the offense not producing but he cost the Nationals two games in his use of the bullpen. Pulling the best pitcher in the 9th inning with the game in the balance and not trusting Jordan Zimmerman to finish the game off was a terrible call. In this day and age, skippers try to over-manage the game, JZimm is an elite pitcher coming off of his best season and Williams can't trust him to get ONE OUT. As if that wasn't bad enough, it got worse in game 4. With the season on the line, Williams turns to Thornton, Barrett, and Soriano instead of Clippard, Storen, or Strasburg. Why a rookie pitcher would come into a huge playoff spot like that, instead of three All-Star pitchers is inexcusable. Barrett looked as if he was 50 Cent throwing out the first pitch.
At this point we have come to expect this much from DC teams and this shouldn't have surprised anyone in the area. This one hurts more knowing that this team looked like World Series champs for 162 games, and in 4 games it felt like we were in 2005 sitting in RFK Stadium.
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