He made an incredibly stupid decision. He deserved it.
They came back this afternoon after trailing 3-1 to win 4-3.
On September 1 the Cards were 86-46, six games ahead of the Pirates and 10.5 up on the Cubs.
After going 2-5 they’re now five games ahead of the Pirates (who play tonight) and 7.5 ahead of the Cubs.
The Pirates will curse their missed opportunity.
It’s late. That call should have been made no later than August 16.
Yeah, the Nats are dead and Williams will be looking for work soon (maybe Rizzo, too).
I completely missed the Cards-Cubs game today. Cards won 4-3, as pointed out above. The interesting thing about today’s game is that the Cards are desperate enough for some offense that they started a center fielder who can’t throw until his elbow heals a bit more. Grichuk went 0-4, of course.
Pretty good autopsy of the the Nats’ season here:
http://natsinsider.com/2015/09/10/a-series-that-defined-the-nationals-season/
So their bullpen sucks. That has killed many a team, and it isn’t necessarily the manager’s fault. Blame the front office.
So they went and got Papelbon but they still have no bridge for the 7th and 8th. Other than Scherzer, their starters barely go 6 innings. This is true for most starters these days, but when your bullpen sucks it takes a toll.
There’s plenty of blame to go around: Rizzo dismantled one of the best bullpens in basebal; he traded Clippard and then got pissed when Blevins went to arbitration and won, so he traded him too; then he spent mega $$$ on Scherzer instead of getting some bats in the line up.
Williams sucks in a different way, he has no idea how to manage pitching and his decisions are all old school, by the book baseball management; it never occurs to him to try something different than what he tried and didn’t work the night before.
Rizzo has to go, Williams has to go, McCatty has to go, and the entire training and conditioning team has to go. Drew Storen should have been traded instead of Clippard, now we’ll get pennies on the dollar for him. Ian Desmond, Span and Jordan Zimmermann are all free agents next year. I’d love to see JZ stay, but I don’t think he wants to, the front office never has shown him the love he deserved.
I still have never understood shutting down Strasburg a couple of years ago. Same guys making that call?
To be honest, I’ve never understood people who don’t understand the Stras shutdown; the Nats didn’t lose any of the games pitched by his replacement, Ross Detwiler and Stras was playing terribly by the end of the season. He was visibly struggling and each game was almost an automatic write off. Here’s a good article explaining things: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/nationals-should-take-no-chances-with-stephen-strasburgs-innings-limit/2012/07/05/gJQAbS6TQW_story.html
The problem is why they didn’t plan ahead and limit his pitch count all year, and/or give him a vacation on the DL, so he’d be ready to pitch the games that matter most. I didn’t realize that was hard to understand.
They did discuss that at the time, they found that cooling him off and then getting him back in starting form would have been more stressful than just shutting him down. And believe me, by September he was done. IIRC, Stras had like a 5.00 ERA for the last month of starts.
Well… Storen was the best reliever Washington had last year. He was absolutely incredible. He had an ERA+ of 333! (For comparison Clippard was at a, very very good, 171). And Storen hasn’t necessarily been horrible this year (as a whole). He’s just been merely an above average reliever rather than the world beater he was a season ago.
Clippard certainly didn’t do anything for Oakland.
He’s been doing well on the Mets.
Storen did well last year in the regular season, but he has not pitched well in the post season. I think some of the blame falls on Rizzo and Williams who have undermined Storen’s confidence in himself.
The Post had an article today looking at Storen in clutch situations
Yeah, Clippard has been a fantastic pickup for the Mets. He’s really helped anchor the bullpen, especially with Mejia’s suspension.
Yeah, I’ve always like Clippard, with his big goofy goggles and the body language of Big Bird on the mound. I always felt bad for Storen and think that he might be able to have a good career somewhere, but that there’s just too much baggage for him in DC.
If Alex Wood isn’t sent back to Single A ball by midnight, I’m giving up on Dodgers management forever. Or shoot the sonofabitch, I don’t care.
The Blue Jays crushed the Yankees in the first of a 4 game series.
I’m loving it!
I haven’t been this excited about baseball in 20 years.