Going Deep with The Nats

The game winning bloop single by Anthony Rizzo

In this game 3 loss to the Cubs, the Nats got beat technically by a bloop single in the 8th inning, but some simple moves were never made which included a strategic defensive change at the top of the 7th inning when the Nationals had a 1-to-0 lead to bring in Victor Robles for Jayson Werth. It seemed so basic when you have a narrow lead and need “best defense”. We saw the impact of poor defense when the Cubs leftfielder Kyle Schwarber booted a ball to cost the Cubs a run, but Joe Maddon has always made late inning defensive moves and luckily for the Nationals that Schwarber was still in the game in the 6th inning.

There was also a deja vu feeling of this game back to Game #5 of last year’s NLDS when Max Scherzer had a shutout through 6.0 innings and came out for the 7th inning giving up what would turn out to be a tying run in a 1-to-0 game which was the same score Scherzer had last year in Game #5 and today. The big difference was that Scherzer had a no-hitter to go with his shut-out for 6 1/3 innings today, and he was totally dominant today with no signs of the hamstring issue that had sidelined him for a few days.

Look how close Jayson Werth was to snagging the first hit of the game (video below) in the 7th inning which turned out to be the baserunner who would turn into the  first Cubs run scored. Why wasn’t Victor Robles in this game for defense at this point in the game?

In the highest leverage spot with Ben Zobrist on 2nd base representing the tying run after that double with the Nats still leading 1-to-0, Dusty Baker went to his 5th or 6th arm in the bullpen having Sammy Solis face Kyle Schwarber and Joe Maddon countered with Albert Almora to pinch-hit for Schwarber. At first it seemed like Dusty Baker was thinking ahead and Solis was simply in the game to force a move by Maddon to remove Schwarber but Dusty pitched to Almora shifting the advantage to the Cubs. My suggestion was walk Almora with first base open to set-up the doubleplay and bring in sinkerballer Brandon Kintzler. The other suggestion was to bring in one your best relievers at that point instead of Solis and close-down the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings and get the last 8 outs of the ball game.

It didn’t take long for Almora to drive the run in and tie the game. Brandon Kintzler was brought in and quickly got a doubleplay on a line drive to centerfield in which Michael Taylor made a nice running catch and the runner was caught off the base to complete the 7th inning.

In the 8th inning, Kintzler stayed in to face the lead-off man which was pinch-hitter Tommy LaStella and he worked a lead-off walk. Jon Jay then sacrificed the runner to 2nd base and Kintzler struck-out Kris Bryant. With 2 outs and the runner on 2nd base, Dusty Baker went to Oliver Perez to face Anthony Rizzo instead of walking him and go direct to Ryan Madson to face Willson Contreras. Oliver Perez made his pitch and Anthony Rizzo popped it up to centerfield but Michael Taylor didn’t go aggressively after the ball. We don’t know why it wasn’t a “can of corn” but it appears that Taylor was possibly playing deep but he stopped running when approaching the ball as you will see in this video (below).

“I thought Taylor was going to make a sliding play there,” Anthony Rizzo said about his bloop game-winning single. “I was lucky there.”

Taylor took responsibility for bloop. Said that can't fall with three guys standing on their feet. Felt as CF, he should've done something.

— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) October 10, 2017

Screenshot view as Michael Taylor stops as the ball is still in the air.

In other moves that were not made, we discussed when Ryan Zimmerman hit his run scoring double in the 6th inning against reliever Pedro Strop that Dusty Baker could counter and pinch-hit for Jayson Werth with Adam Lind. It would have been a move you should consider as you needed to make the defensive change but no changes were made in the game except for relievers. None of the Nationals 6 bench players were used in the game in any situation. By the way, Jayson Werth got into an 0-2 count against Pedro Strop and popped-up to rightfield for the 3rd out in the inning.

The Nationals had other chances to score. They had Michael Taylor on 2nd base and no outs in the 3rd inning thanks to a “gift” error on Jose Quintana, but Max Scherzer struck-out trying to bunt Michael Taylor to 3rd base. Taylor was stranded at 2nd base.

Much of the credit for the Nationals scoring only 1 run was excellent defense from Jason Heyward and Jon Jay on two deep flies (here) and (here) that would have each scored runs. Ben Zobrist also robbed a single off of Trea Turner to lead-off the 8th inning.

When it came down to it, the Cubs made the plays.

Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats

Were you one of the believers or were you giving up on this team in the late innings? The Nationals looked lethargic on offense for 16 innings of this NLDS, and in the 17th inning of this NLDS with a lead-off pinch-hit single by Adam Lind — it was the bloop the Nats needed and hoped for a blast — and they got a 421 foot mega-blast from Bryce Harper into the second deck of Section 239 for a game tying and potentially season saving home run. The 8th inning would continue with an Anthony Rendon walk and then Cubs manager Joe Maddon finally pulled Carl Edwards for lefty Mike Montgomery to face Daniel Murphy who shot a single over the infield. Maddon stuck with Montgomery giving the advantage to Ryan Zimmerman against the lefty.  Zim hit the change-up inches over the fence into the flower pots in front of section 103 for a wall scraper home run that went 374 feet to win the game at the final score of 6-to-3.

The lethargic Nats turned into the mighty Nats and tied up this series 1-to-1 and now hand the ball to the reigning Cy Young ace, Max Scherzer, on Monday in Chicago. Continue reading →

Brilliance on the mound by Stephen Strasburg tonight went statistically wasted. Stras had a no-hitter going into the 6th inning with 2-outs in a 0-to-0 game, but a simple error to start the inning raised the intensity level to High Leverage in this tie game. As it turned out, unfortunately, the ball game was decided by that error combined with no Nationals scoring.

“But I guess it’s just frustrating either way if you don’t score runs,” Anthony Rendon said. “If you don’t score runs, you can’t win.”

Good teams take advantage of other team’s mistakes, and that is exactly what the Cubs did. The 6th inning began with an Anthony Rendon error followed by a sacrifice bunt by Cubs’ starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks that put Javier Baez in scoring position. Any further mistake would be costly. Strasburg got lead-off man Ben Zobrist out for the key 2nd out of the inning. The NL-reigning-MVP Kris Bryant stepped up to the plate. Strasburg had handled Bryant brilliantly striking him out twice in his only other at-bats in the game. Stras had Bryant this time in another 2 strike count then threw a pitch Bryant could handle for a run scoring single. To compound the problems, Bryce Harper had no chance to get the runner at the plate and airmailed the throw towards home (see video below) allowing Bryant to take 2nd base and that would prove costly. Anthony Rizzo‘s simple single then scored Bryant for the second run of the game.

“I was just trying to come up and throw it to the cut-off man and threw it a little bit too high,” Bryce Harper said. You can call “bull” if you want when you watch the video replay and see where the throw was in relation to cut-off man Daniel Murphy.

That 2-to-0 deficit certainly hurt as Strasburg had been pitching great and now had 2 unearned runs on his ledger. The Nationals offense was almost non-existent except for hits by Harper and Michael Taylor and some walks. The Cubs defense made some great plays when needed on balls in play plus a lead-off walk to Daniel Murphy looked promising and was quickly erased when Ryan Zimmerman bounced into a doubleplay. Kyle Hendricks bent a few times but never broke and he went toe-to-toe with Strasburg through 7 innings and in his case a run never scored and he exited the game with a 2-to-0 lead.

The Nationals seemed not have a strategy to get to Hendricks who was throwing strikes but not over-powering. Hendricks took advantage of a lot of aggressive swings and sped up the Nats bats. There was no sign of any “small ball” early on to push across a single run. Continue reading →