Washington Nationals Fall One Strike
Short Against St. Louis Cardinals In NLDS Game 5
(By Adam Kilgore, Washington Post, 13 October 2012)
The question
of how baseball could be so cruel to this city may be answered some day. It
existed in horrible form in the nation’s capital for decades, and then it
vanished for 33 years. It came back gnarled and wretched for seven more
seasons, only to yield to this blissful summer, to the moment Friday past
midnight when Drew Storen stood on the mound at chilled Nationals Park and,
with two outs in the ninth inning, threw 13 pitches that could have moved the
Washington Nationals four wins from the World Series. The St. Louis Cardinals would not allow it.
Baseball, this town’s cold mistress, the sport that dares you to love it, would
not let it happen. The Nationals led the Cardinals by six runs after three
innings. They led by two runs after eight innings. Washington’s miserable
relationship with baseball had been exorcised, until it materialized in a more
wrenching, twisted fashion than ever seen before.
The
defending world champions would not die until they scored four runs off Storen
in the top of the ninth inning, snatched a 9-7 victory in Game 5 of the
National League Division Series and left 45,966 stunned souls to ponder what
they had just witnessed: consecutive, two-run singles from Daniel Descalso and
Peter Kozma, two pesky middle infielders at the bottom of the Cardinals’
fearsome lineup. “There’s a bad taste in
my mouth,” Storen said. “It’s going to stay there for a couple months, and it’s
probably never going to leave.”
The
Nationals won 100 games this season, more than any team in the majors. They
captured the National League East crown. They delivered a baseball team
Washington embraced like none in a generation, or maybe two, or maybe more.
When it ended suddenly Friday night, like the arrival of an October cold snap,
the players walked into a silent clubhouse with plastic sheets rolled up above
their lockers, never to be used for the intended purpose. “You can see the see finish line and taste
it,” General Manager Mike Rizzo said. “You’re an out or two or a pitch or two
away. And you don’t win it. You got to get all 27 outs before you can pack up
the bats. We don’t know what to do tomorrow. It’s Saturday, and we don’t have a
game.”
They would
have played Game 1 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday at
Nationals Park. Manager Davey Johnson made the easy decision in the ninth
inning, leading 7-5, and gave the ball to Storen, the 24-year-old who saved 43
games last year and regained his top form late this season after rehabbing from
April elbow surgery. “We had the right
people there,” Johnson said.
Carlos
Beltran cracked a leadoff double. Storen retired the next two batters he faced,
sending the record crowd into a frenzy when he struck out cleanup hitter Allen
Craig with a slider. He moved to two strikes on the next two batters, Yadier Molina
and David Freese, before he walked them both to load the bases. “I made good pitches,” Storen said. “I
wouldn’t change a thing. I have no regrets.” He still needed just one pitch — one line
drive at someone, one routine grounder, one lazy flyball. Descalso smoldered a
one-hopper up the middle. Shortstop Ian Desmond dove, but the ball deflected
off his glove and rolled into shallow center field. “He hit it good,” Desmond said. “I did the
best I could to get my glove on it.” As
the ball trickled into the outfield, pinch-runner Adron Chambers scored the
tying run. Kozma, that pest, followed with a two-run single into right field.
Freese crossed with the winning run.
“It’s hard
to believe, man,” first baseman Adam LaRoche said. “You have games like these
throughout the course of the year where stuff happens. And you shake it off.
You get beat in the ninth inning and you shake it off, because you know you
have to come back tomorrow and play. You get accustomed to forgetting about it.
Unfortunately here, there’s no tomorrow.”
The Nationals’ top of the order produced only three outs against
Cardinals closer Jason Motte in the bottom of the ninth. Ryan Zimmerman, the
franchise third baseman who slogged through all six of the Nationals’ losing
seasons, lofted the final out to shallow right field.
As the
Cardinals rushed the field, the record crowd started with polite applause. The
clapping turned into a “Let’s Go Nats!” chant. They wanted to show their
appreciation, but they could not hide their sorrow. Fans filed out, and
groundskeepers in navy sweatshirts raked dirt. The park had been a party after
three innings. Now it was a morgue, a burial ground for the team made Washington
embrace baseball again. “It’s the
transition from being a team that was capable of losing a game to a team that
was capable of winning a game,” right fielder Jayson Werth said before the
game. “It’s the transformation of a team into a winner. This team is a winning
team. It’s a good club. We’re tough. We’re tough.”
Inside an
otherwise silent clubhouse, reporters murmured questions and hands clapped from
goodbye hugs and handshakes. Storen sat in a chair facing his locker, elbows on
his knees, his chin in his hand. Teammates rubbed his shoulder or patted him on
the back. Most of them said nothing. “I
don’t know what to tell that guy,” catcher Kurt Suzuki said. “We’re both
feeling the same thing. We’re both disappointed, upset. You can’t really sugarcoat
anything right now.” The Nationals were
tough enough to force Game 5. They could not win it, not even after taking a
6-0 lead after the third inning, with their ace, Gio Gonzalez, standing on the
mound. The Cardinals had won five consecutive elimination playoff games going
back to last year. None came quite like this one.
The
Nationals had scored nine runs all series, and Friday night, against Cardinals
starter Adam Wainwright, they scored six in the first three innings. Four days
shy of his 20th birthday, Bryce Harper went 2 for 4 with a triple and a home
run, making him only the second teenager to homer in the postseason. Zimmerman
clobbered a two-run homer in the first. Michael Morse deposited Wainwright’s
53rd and final pitch in the visitors’ bullpen.
The
Cardinals scored three runs while drawing four walks in the fourth and fifth
innings off Gonzalez, who retired Molina to end the fifth with the bases loaded
on his 99th and final pitch. Once Gonzalez exited early, he left Johnson with a
vexing math equation: How to get 12 outs from his bullpen without allowing the
Cardinals’ fearsome lineup three runs? In
the seventh, Johnson chose Game 3 starter Edwin Jackson over, among other
choices, usual setup man Ryan Mattheus. Prior to the game, Johnson said he
planned to use Jackson only if the game lurched into extra innings. But now he
turned the right-hander who won the 2011 World Series with St. Louis, who
entered with a career 5.70 ERA as a reliever. “I just felt like Jackson was the best choice,”
Johnson said. “I had to get through that part of the lineup.”
His first
inning is usually Jackson’s worst, and he put Nationals fans through an
emotional vice. He walked leadoff man Jon Jay and yielded a double to Carlos
Beltran. The tying run came to the plate in the hulking person of Matt
Holliday. Jackson survived with an RBI groundout. With two outs he walked Molina on four pitches
to bring Freese, last October’s hero, to the plate as the go-ahead run. Jackson
abandoned his fastball and struck out Freese swinging at a vicious, 88-mph
slider to leave two men on base. Six
outs to go. Johnson had his reliable one-two combo, Tyler Clippard and Storen,
set for the eighth and ninth. The comfort of that disappeared when Descalso
cranked a fastball from Clippard into the home bullpen beyond the right field
fence, shrinking the Nationals’ lead to 6-5. After all the fireworks in the early innings,
what appeared to be the Nationals’ most crucial run came late, in a
grind-it-out rally against Cardinals closer Jason Motte. Suzuki, added in an
August trade, ripped a single up the middle with two outs and runners on the
corners, bringing in LaRoche with an enormous insurance run.
Three outs
to go. In came Storen, the 10th overall pick in the 2010 draft. The park came
unglued after the second out, roaring for the pitch that would clinch the
Nationals’ trip to the National League Championship Series. It never came. They
are all still waiting, waiting for the long winter ahead, and for the hope the
Florida sun will help erase Washington’s newest, worst baseball memory. “This game has taught us all a lot,” Zimmerman
said. “And one of the things it’s taught us is to never take anything for
granted.”
Nationals’ Brutal Game 5 Loss Still
Stings — And Invites Second-Guessing
(By Adam Kilgore, Washington Post, 13 October 2012)
On the night
of April 4, they gathered at Joe’s Stone Crab on East Grand Avenue in Chicago.
The Washington Nationals had come north from Viera, Fla., and the next day they
would begin their six-month odyssey together at Wrigley Field. For the first
time, they huddled as one. The faces would change, the players would come and
go. That was how it began. The end came
Friday, on a cold and unfathomably cruel night. The Nationals’ 9-7 loss to the
St. Louis Cardinals in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, in which
a six-run lead dissolved over two excruciating hours, cut short their magical
season. Saturday, the Nationals began to look ahead to the offseason with the
specter of Game 5 still hovering over them.
In the
postgame clubhouse Friday night, players hugged and clasped hands. Some of them
wondered whether they would come back next season. Others had ensuing
appointments for offseason surgery. Stephen Strasburg could move beyond the
unprecedented decision that shaped his season. None of them could shake the
immediate sting, but neither could they ignore the 100 games they won or the NL
East title they captured. “We’ve come a
long ways,” third baseman Ryan Zimmerman said. “I think that’s why it hurts
even more, because of what we’ve all been through. We should be proud of what
we did this year. We were the first team in this organization to be to this
level.”
The brutal
finish to a magical season will invite second-guesses, starting with decisions
Manager Davey Johnson made in Game 5. Johnson’s actions all season stemmed from
showing confidence in using players in their established roles. In Game 5, as
he tried to cobble together the final 12 outs, Johnson veered away from his
usual tack. All year, Johnson had used
Ryan Mattheus in the seventh inning against right-handed lineups. He had Game 3
starter Edwin Jackson available, in the same role Jordan Zimmermann filled
brilliantly in their Game 4 victory. But Johnson made clear before Friday’s
game that Zimmermann had pitched the day before because the Nationals’ bullpen
was worn from a Game 3 beatdown. He said Jackson would pitch only if the game
lurched into extra innings. “My bullpen
was kind of overused on the day before,” Johnson said before Game 5, explaining
his decision to use Zimmermann. “I really needed somebody for that seventh
inning.” But in the seventh inning
Friday, Johnson chose Jackson over Mattheus, and Jackson allowed one of the
runs that enabled the Cardinals to chip away at the lead. “I just felt like Jackson was the best choice
I had to get through that part of that lineup,” Johnson said late Friday night.
“He did the job for me. He gave up a run, but he did what we needed to to get
to the people we needed to get to.”
In the ninth
inning, Johnson used closer Drew Storen on a third consecutive day, which could
have been avoided earlier in the series. In a Game 3 blowout, Storen pitched
the ninth and threw 11 pitches in an 8-0 loss.
Storen had pitched on three straight days once all season, on Sept. 10,
11 and 12. But on Sept. 11 and 12 he threw five total pitches, recording just
one out in both games. By using him in Game 3, Johnson enhanced the odds that
he would trust Storen, who underwent elbow surgery in April, with a larger
workload in three consecutive games than he carried all year.
Johnson made
another difficult choice at a decisive moment. After Daniel Descalso ripped his
game-tying, two-run single in the ninth, runners stood on the corners with two
outs. Pete Kozma, a menace all series, stood at the plate. Descalso stole
second to vacate first base. On deck was
the closer, Jason Motte, whom the Cardinals wanted to leave in the game for the
ninth. If the Nationals had simply intentionally walked Kozma, the Cardinals
would have been forced to either pinch-hit for Motte or let a reliever hit with
the bases loaded and the score tied in the ninth. The Cardinals, of course, would have chosen a
pinch hitter. They had only one position player left on their bench: Tony Cruz,
the backup catcher, a 26-year-old with a .257 batting average and one home run
in 191 career at-bats.
Even if Cruz
had improbably burned Storen with a go-ahead, bases-loaded hit, the Cardinals
would have moved to the bottom of the ninth with a reliever other than their
closer. They had rookie Shelby Miller, left-hander Marc Rzepczynski and Lance
Lynn available in the bullpen. Rzepczynski and Lynn had given up game-winning
hits in the series, and Miller, 22, had replaced injured starter Jaime Garcia
on the roster. The downside in walking
Kozma would be putting Storen in position to push the go-ahead run across with
a walk. Storen had walked two batters in row — throwing five two-strike pitches
that could have ended the game — and Johnson may have worried about his control.
Johnson let Storen face Kozma, who
flared a two-run single into right field. After shock fell over the park,
Storen whiffed Motte on four pitches, and then Motte recorded a 1-2-3 inning to
seal the game. Johnson was not made
available for comment Saturday and declined to respond to a message.
The
wrenching finish could have been avoided with a better start, too. The
Nationals gave Gio Gonzalez a six-run lead after three innings, and over the
next two innings Gonzalez allowed four walks, leading to three runs. With
Strasburg sidelined, Gonzalez became the Nationals’ de facto ace. In Game 5,
given a huge lead, he could not put the hammer down. The result — as well as the 5.25 ERA by
Nationals starters in the NLDS — has led some to grumbling again about General
Manager Mike Rizzo’s decision to shut down Strasburg. Rizzo knew the criticism
would come and stood by the choice in the losing clubhouse Friday night. “I’m not going to think about it, no,” Rizzo
said. “We had a plan in mind. It was something we had from the beginning. I
stand by my decision. We’ll take the criticism as it comes. We have to do
what’s best for the Washington Nationals, and we think we did.”
Inside the
clubhouse, at least on the record in the aftermath of their brutal Game 5 loss,
players revealed no angst about the Nationals’ keeping Strasburg in the dugout
for the final three weeks of the regular season and the playoffs. “Stephen did great for us,” reliever Tyler
Clippard said. “And everyone knew what the situation was. And there’s not a guy
in this clubhouse that thought any differently of, ‘Oh, what if this? What if
that?’ That was not in our control. And we’re not worried about it. Not a guy
in this clubhouse was worried about it. I know I wasn’t.” Said first baseman Adam LaRoche: “We were
fine with it. In a sense, we appreciated that Rizzo stuck to his guns — he said
he was going to shut him down and did it.
“Of course we’d love to have him. Who wouldn’t? There’s not a team in
baseball that wouldn’t want him in the postseason rotation. But they’re looking
out for him. We had the horses to do it. We had the guys to do it without
Stras. It’s just one of those things.”
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