Why did they lose three out of four games to the Giants after having the most wins in the National League in 2014?
It wasn’t their pitching. (Nat’s ERA – 1.23, Giants – 1.60)
It wasn’t their fielding. (Each team made one costly miscue -Nats’ Fielding Pct. – .993, Giants – .994)
It wasn’t the managing (Despite what you read or think about Game 2 & 4).
Here’s why:
Name – Batting Average for the Division Series / Season Batting Average
D. Span – .105 / .302 – (19 at bats, two hits)
A. Rendon – .368 / .287 – (19 at bats, seven hits, one RBI))
J. Werth – .059 / .292 – (17 at bats, one hit)
A. LaRoche – .056 / .259 – (18 at bats, one hit)
I. Desmond – .167 / .255 – (18 at bats, three hits)
B. Harper – ..294 / .273 – (17 at bats, five hits, two HRs, four RBIs)
W. Ramos – .118 / .267 – (17 at bats, two hits)
A. Cabrera – .200 / .229 – (15 at bats, three hits, two RBIs)
N. Schierholtz – 1.000 / .225 – (two at bats, one hit, one walk)
R. Zimmerman – .250 / .280 – (four at bats, one hit)
D. Espinosa – .000 / .219 – (four at bats)
K. Frandsen – .000 / .259 – (one at bat)
S. Strasburg – .000 / .100 – (one at bat
J. Zimmerman – .000 / .182- (three at bats)
D. Fister – .000 / .077 – (three at bats)
G. Gonzolez – .000 / .087 – (one at bat)
T. Roark – .000 / .121 – (one at bat)
As a team – .164 / .253 – (Worst of the eight teams in the DS playoffs. The Giants did a bit better – .222)
Brian Steinbach said:
The simplest answer is usually correct. The season is over because the other team scored more runs. Even if just barely. And you can’t score if you don’t get people on base. And if you can’t advance the runners. “Good pitching beats good hitting” – SF shut down most of the lineup, except Rendon and Harper – and Harper mostly did not deliver with others on base, and Rendon rarely had the chance.
So will this be an I-70 series?
Tim Malieckal said:
The Nats have a solid assemblage of individual talent that has never felt like a team. Not sure why that is, but I think you need to coalesce into a unit to get anywhere in the MLB playoffs. Good teams develop a persona and milk it to withstand great pitching and pressure.
Teams that don’t choke on stage and lose. Like the Nationals.
unknown said:
Wilson Ramos was terrible Go O’s
David Price said:
As the 27 time World Champions are on hiatus from Post-Season baseball due their inability to simply hit the ball far enough last season, I for one, am paying little attention to the ‘minno’ teams that are left to fight out the World Series.
I am, however, not surprised that yet again the highly overrated ‘Nationals’ have fallen at the first hurdle. There seems to be a unexplainable hysteria in DC each infrequent time their teams reach any form of post-season action? As Mr. Miller so eloquently highlighted in his post today, the guys simply cannot/did not hit. How a la Yankees.
The boastfulness of winning the National League East by a street length against arguably mediocre opposition means nothing. No doubt there will be voices heard in our Nations Capital hollering ‘we were unlucky’, ‘we had them and should have won’, ‘we are still the best team in the league’ yadda-yadda-yadda are wasteful words but the fact is, post season baseball is different. There’s a different type of pressure associated with the big stage and people like the hot-weather sufferer Strasburg and the utterly ridiculous looking Werth et al, don’t have any gumption to deal with it. Maybe next season Nats? I think not.
Focusing a few miles north of DC, I also wish the Orioles no luck with their play-off progression either. Buck is a hypocrite as he verbally slaughtered the Yankees for being dirty a few years ago after his team were soundly beaten in a play-off game. Funny isn’t it that his claims now have a strange ring to them given that Chris Davis is currently banned for ‘juicing’ and Nelson Cruz (the key person who has got Baltimore to where they are) is a well-know previous offender. On a side note, it still baffles me why JJ Hardy and Adam Jones are still considered Golden Glove or MVP candidates? Not in a trillion+ years in my book.
My money and hope is that Kansas City make it to the pinnacle – they deserve it!
James Cooke said:
Unfortunately the Nats suffered a hitting slump at the worst possible moment of the season. Check that. It would have been even worse had it occurred during the World Series.
I’m not ready to absolve Matt Williams for the team’s failure. Yes, the offense fizzled, but we matched total runs scored in the series (9), and we lost three 1-run games. Yes, the Giants had 11 more hits than we did, but it wasn’t just hitting that let us down. We gave up two unearned runs to a team who couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield in an elimination game. So our pitching and defense are also to blame for the NLDS loss.
It’s the manager’s job to make the right moves, beginning with the lineup card. His inflexibility with the lineup is problematic, especially when bats are slumping. For instance, Cabrera as a switch-hitter who makes contact often is better suited hitting 2 than 8. The whole world saw the power of Harper, so why not insert him in the cleanup slot? That was a huge missed opportunity; it had the potential to jumpstart the lineup.
The most obvious managerial miscues were with the bullpen, starting with the huge mistake of removing Jordan in Game 2. Then in the decisive Game 4, when we had to hold the score tied at 2 in the 7th, Williams called on Thornton, Barrett and Soriano. The mistake here was in not having Detweiler, a lefty with playoff experience, for the series against a heavy left-handed hitting lineup.
You might argue that hitting was the main cause of their failure, but Matt Williams missed several opportunities to make an impact on the outcome of the series. His ejection in Game 2 symbolizes his failure to take advantage of opportunities for the team.