The Nats picked wrong time to show the worst of themselves in Game 1 of NLDS - The Washington Post

LOS ANGELES — So much for the popular conceit of a “pressure-tested” Washington Nationals team that had to battle all season to become a wild card. So much for the question of whether the back-to-back pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers can flip the switch. One lopsided 6-0 victory in the National League Division Series opener took care of that.

The most common fear expressed here by fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers before their showdown with the Washington Nationals in the National League Division Series was that their 106-win team had faced very little in the way of pressure while the Nats, pretty much from their late-May slump on, built pressure into the bulk of their season.

Could the Dodgers suddenly flip some mystical postseason switch and display their sharpest form despite playing foes with little to play for over the past month. Of course, the presumption went, the Nats, even if they are not as gifted as the Dodgers, would be fundamentally sound and crisp after all their trials.

Not so fast. “We didn’t play very well,” Manager Dave Martinez said in an understatement on the scale of “it’s pretty long swim from here to Hawaii, right?”

Pressure got to the Nats — from the first Dodger batter of the night, who walked and scored, to the last three, who went homer-homer-drive to the warning track.

“Relax. Come back tomorrow. Hit the pitches in the strike zone. Don’t try to do too much. And take our walks,” said Martinez, who watched his lineup manage just two hits, and only one against winner Walker Buehler in six innings.

Translation from manager speak: Man, we were tight as a drum.

[Svrluga: The Nats paid for a poor offensive approach in Game 1]

Of starter Patrick Corbin, who walked four Dodgers in the first inning — yes, four, despite a career-long reputation for his outstanding control — Martinez said he seemed to “tense up a little.” That led to “spiked sliders and high fastballs.” Ugh, sounds ugly. Because it was.

The Nats, who’ve claimed all season that they might flourish with the novelty of being an underdog, better relax and play like they have nothing to lose — starting immediately.

Through Dodger eyes, the night looked different.

“There are some guys who just want the ball in big situations. Walker has shown over the last couple of years that he’s one of them,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said. “He can control his emotions. He works his fastball in all four quadrants. I loved his breaking ball tonight. They are a really good lineup. We needed this one.”

This game felt like a Hollywood B movie where a team’s identity is inverted for a day into its exact opposite. The Nats, so fundamentally sound for months, so efficient at the top of their rotation all season and with the second-best offense in the NL, came close to embarrassing themselves. After Corbin’s four-walk first inning, first baseman Howie Kendrick made two gasp-inducing errors on balls that were hard hit but routine MLB plays, one under his glove to his backhand side and the other directly through him for a Dodger run, even though he dropped to one knee. Two knees, and a bit of prayer might have worked better.

[This postseason has a different feel for Nats fans]

After those two gift-wrapped runs in the first six innings, the balmy evening ended with late-inning “Hello, We Are The Nationals Bullpen” pratfalls that can go straight to Broadway as light comedy, with bemused tragic undertones.

The Nats’ goal in this series was to introduce the Dodgers to a great deal of Corbin, who only allowed one earned run in six innings of three-hit ball, Stephen Strasburg, who will start Game 2 on short rest and Max Scherzer, plus only two denizens of the Nats bullpen, Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson. Add a bit of Aníbal Sánchez if there is a Game 4. All other pitchers, remain hidden, if possible.

In Game 1, not possible. Rookie Tanner Rainey, perhaps too young for the job, and Fernando Rodney, 42, perhaps too old for the job, entered and the outcome of the game exited. Two runs scored quickly. In the eighth, Hunter Strickland was saved from allowing an extra-base hit by a diving, warning-track-gobbling grab by Adam Eaton. But the next hitter, Dodgers rookie Gavin Lux, simply smashed the ball over Eaton’s head into the bleachers. Then, for back-to-back indignity, Joc Pederson smashed the right field foul pole so hard that the pole’s mother is preparing a bowl of warm soup just to calm the poor thing down. The next Dodger, Justin Turner, came up two steps shy of a third straight homer.

Worse than the runs allowed was that the Dodgers got to see, with their own delighted eyes, whom the Nats regard as their third-, fourth- and fifth-best relievers. Oh, goody, what can we do to see them again? Can we make a date?

“We got to see some guys in their bullpen,” said Roberts, not quite licking his chops, “and that bodes well going forward.”

As all these troubling developments were accumulating, the Nats’ offense — the second-best run-scoring bunch in the NL this season and the second best in all of baseball since May 23 — was battering the Dodger pitching staff for one single through the first eight innings.

The best news is that Strasburg and Scherzer start the next two games. It’s hard to get fewer than one hit in the first eight innings. And if the Dodgers haven’t been lulled into terminal overconfidence, then they weren’t watching the same game as everybody else.

This night started badly. Talk about tone-setting. The Nats’ $140 million free agent lefty Corbin, who was signed in part because of his long history of success against the Dodgers, walked the first man he faced. Then he also walked the fourth, fifth and sixth men he faced. Since there are still only three bases, there was “no vacancy” for the beneficiary of the fourth walk. So somebody had to come home.

And A.J. Pollock did, for a 1-0 lead which, as it proved, was all the runs that L.A. needed since, even in a world with the gall to doubt even the most basic science and math, one is still larger than zero. Thus was a pattern, and not a pretty one, established for the evening. Mistakes that the Nats have not made for months suddenly appeared.

Hidden in the rubble of this game is a troubling playoff truth. Game 1 of a five-game division series in baseball is the sneakiest, nastiest game in any pro sport. With all the pageantry, pregame analysis, celebrities around the pregame batting practice and general air of celebration, an atmosphere is created that “We’re just getting started. Wonder who’ll sing the anthem or if there’ll be a jet flyover?”

In fact, such a Game 1 puts the losing team in a fairly dismal situation after just one day. Suddenly, after already using its best available pitcher, the Nats must win three of four against an elite foe just to save its season.

Meanwhile, the team that wins Game 1 lives in an entirely different world. They only need to play .500 — 2-2 — to advance. Why, anybody can do that, can’t they? And, as much as they would like to win Game 2, even if they lose, they will still be even in the series. In short, everything in a five-game series conspires to jump up and grab a team by the throat more quickly than seems possible.

Visitors talk about “only” needing to split the first two games on the road. The team with home-field advantage has the comfort of a Game 5 at home. Pro ballplayers talk themselves into such thoughts, year after year. Then the vicious little five-game division series jumps up in their faces and pressure goes through the roof before our eyes.

The Nationals task now is the same one that they have negotiated so successfully all season — put the ugly past and their limits (like the bullpen) behind them and focus on going 1-0 on Friday. Right now, to the average observer this may seem like a large task. To a team that, until this night, had gone 75-38 over many months, it is a dreary exhibition like this which seems like the anomaly.

And, it says here, unlikely to be duplicated when next we meet.

Read more about the Nationals: Anthony Rendon is relaxed and candid in perhaps his final days as a National Max Scherzer’s approach to his last 15 pitches explains everything about him The15 most intriguing characters of the 2019 MLB playoffs Stephen Strasburg is the best pitcher in the Nationals-Dodgers series. Get him the ball. Baseball according to Gerardo Parra Ryan Zimmerman is at the end of his deal, and it’s hard to imagine the Nats without him

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/the-nats-picked-wrong-time-to-show-the-worst-of-themselves-in-game-1-of-nlds/2019/10/04/fdb6582e-e616-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html

2019-10-04 08:00:00Z
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