The Post Mortem in DC

The Washington Nationals looked like amateurs playing the San Francisco Giants. It is sad, but it is true. The front office of the Nationals will spend the next few months trying to understand what happened and just why the team that had done so well in the regular season sputtered and faltered in the playoffs. One can hope that the early voting will be discounted for lack of proper perspective, because judging from some of what has been written in past few days, many would like to give manager Matt Williams’ scent to the wolves and wait for the fun to unfold.

Davey Johnson first took the Nationals to the playoffs in 2012. Davey was a class act; a great baseball mind and a fine human being. But as a manager he was every player’s best friend. When the players performed well they got that big toothy grin and a pat on the back. The front office in DC decided, for better or worse, that the youthful Nationals needed a more serious minded tutor to take the team to the next level.

Mike Rizzo interviewed many and settled on Matt Williams who was known in his playing days as a clubhouse leader who brooked no half-assed measures. In several important ways, Williams was the opposite of Davey Johnson, which is exactly why he was hired. Looking at the reaction of many fans, writers and probably a few players, there are many who still pine for Davey, for the fun and good times.

The second-guessing reached crisis proportion when Tom Boswell laid the blame for Drew Storen’s meltdown at the foot of the manager. The top of the column read: “Could Jordan Zimmermann Have Made History in Game Two, We’ll Never Know.” True, we cannot know whether J-Zim had enough in the tank to finish the game, but adults are called upon to make decisions and the perfectly reasonable one in the circumstance was to bring in the closer to record the final out. Matt Williams was leaving nothing to chance. Zimmermann deserved the win and so Williams handed the ball to Drew Storen who had converted every save opportunity he had seen after taking over for Raphael Soriano several weeks earlier. The more irresponsible thing would have been to leave Zimmermann in the game to fail.

Storen immediately reverted to the pitcher who could not put away the St. Louis Cardinals in the Fifth Game of the 2012 NLDS. Should Matt Williams have seen that coming? Tom Boswell thinks so, but the problem lies more in the lingering effects of the original illness that Williams was hired to cure than in his very reasonable decision making.

The Nationals are still a work in progress. That fact can be seen in Bryce Harper’s moody reaction to being benched by Williams after failing to run out a grounder early in the season. It can be seen in Gio Gonzalez’s happy warrior mentality that cannot be put aside to adequately focus his considerable talents on the big games. Jayson Werth’s Garden Gnome is a fitting emblem for a team that is more about having fun than winning games. Davey Johnson was not the problem, but the condition that he could not cure is still there for anyone to see. Boswell admits as much in his most recent column when he asserts that Washington is not yet a “poised, professional” team.

Interestingly enough, the one player who has grown more than anyone is Bryce Harper. Harper was the best player to take the field for Washington during the playoffs. He had three home runs and made several fine running catches in left field. He laid out for the win and while Anthony Rendon and Jordan Zimmermann similarly raised their level of play to fit the situation, they had little help from their mates.

The ultimate prankster aboard the bus is Jayson Werth whose wolfman personna is very popular among fans. But it was the moody side of Werth that he shared during the celebration of the team’s second NL East title. With champagne flying a microphone was placed in his face and Werth decided it was a perfect opportunity to grouse about his manager, notable only for its incongruity. Werth is the senior member of the team who has seen more playoff action than any other player in DC. He was supposed to be the one leading the way and instead he wanted to take the opportunity days before the playoffs began to provide very lukewarm support for his manager’s leadership in guiding the team to the playoffs. Perhaps it would have been better to anticipate his 1-for-17 performance in four NLDS games and do something about it.

When Bryce Harper began to question where he should play when coming off the DL in late June, the Washington Post beat writers Adam Kilgore and James Wagner became the outlets for his rants. Matt Williams made it clear that Denard Span was going to play center field and that Ryan Zimmerman would play third base when finally both players were healthy. Zimmerman made the whole thing work to his enduring credit and he said not a word about his manager’s decision making.

It was just the beginning of the snowball as the questions about Matt Williams decisions began to grow. In the run-up to announcing the final playoff rosters, the Washington Post beat writers opined that the decision came down to Raphael Soriano or Jerry Blevins. Matt Williams and Mike Rizzo confounded them by instead leaving Ross Detwiler off the 25-man roster. It was a sound decision. Detwiler was the most inconsistent pitcher on the team and his attitude on the field mimicked that of Gio’s in the dugout. Jerry Blevins proved to be the best bullpen pitcher the Nationals had during their four games against the Giants and Soriano might well have done better than Storen at that crucial point in Game Two that probably doomed Washington.

But the Post writers were there in the morning after the debacle suggesting that once again Williams made the wrong move, that a lefty should have been brought in to face Sandoval. Since Blevins and Thornton had already pitched, who could they have had in mind? I believe the implication is that Ross Detwiler was needed, not Raphael Soriano who ultimately recorded the last outs.

Bryce Harper more than any other person affiliated with Washington baseball grew and matured over the course of the 2014 season. He will turn 22 in a few days and no doubt will continue to grow into a fine player. Hopefully some of the rest of us will do likewise. It is a perfect time for the rest of the city to take a deep breath and reflect. Matt Williams did what he was supposed to do. He was hired to impart a sense of decorum, discipline and no-nonsense focus on each day’s game and playing it as well as possible. He has accomplished that task and should be applauded for taking over a team that was struggling to find itself in 2013 and steering them to the playoffs once again.

Hopefully Washington’s front office will reflect over the next few months on what worked and what did not. Matt Williams was an excellent idea, but there is still work to be done. What the team needs is a closer who can handle the toughest situations. There are other needs as well. It will be a time for facing facts and making the hard decisions. But there is good news as well and lots of it. Anthony Rendon and Bryce Harper are going to have outstanding careers and Washington fans will get to see many years of them yet. Both were as hard-nosed and poised as anyone in a Giants uniform. I am confident Matt Williams was paying attention to that and noted it for a future that is undeniably bright. Go Nats!!