Hoist a tall one, Joe McCarthy, wherever you are. Here's to you, Grady Little. Matt Williams just might have taken you both off the historical hook Saturday night.
Now, gather around and watch Saturday's National League division series game once again. Be prepared to reel your jaws back up from the floor. You've seen rookie mistakes. But you've never seen a rookie manager mistake like this.
Watch Jordan Zimmermann take a 1-0 lead to the ninth. Watch him throw no-hit ball from the advent of that lead until two outs and an arduous walk in that ninth, bringing the San Francisco Giants down to their final out. And this is only a week after Zimmermann ended the regular season with a proper no-hitter.
Then, watch Zimmermann get hooked in an apparent case of temporary insanity. The case that's defined, "This is the way we've done it all year," when you're well into the portion of the year that isn't "all year." And watch his Washington Nationals continue a tango with the Giants for the equivalent of an old-fashioned doubleheader. Minus the between-games entertainment.
Because, even better, you get to watch re-established Nats closer Drew Storen and his 1.18 regular season ERA surrender the tying run and dodge losing the go-ahead (or should that be go-behind) run only because the runner was nailed at the plate by a hair's breadth.
Hang in and watch the man who once succeeded the re-established closer, Rafael Soriano, zip through the 16th without flinching. Watch the Nats and the Giants turn Nationals Park into marathon madness as the game went 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 innings.
Watch Giants reliever Yusmeiro Petit pitch the equivalent of a quality start from the twelfth through the seventeenth while the Nats just about empty their bullpen. Then, watch Tanner Roark — normally a starter, who'd had a solid regular season but was going to work out of the pen in the division series — in for a 1-2-3 17th and...
Uh, oh. Watch Brandon Belt lead off the top of the eighteenth by wringing his way back from 0-2 to a full count and then hitting one into the second deck above the right field bullpen. Watch Roark dispatch the next three hitters on two strikeouts and a fly to left.
Now, watch Hunter Strickland pitch an arduous bottom of the eighteenth before shaking off a two-out walk to Anthony Rendon by getting Jayson Werth — who'd come back from an 0-2 hole to a full count himself — line out to right. And while you're at it, watch the Nats, the National League's best club on the regular season, slip to one game from going home for the winter.
And the question that's going to haunt them whether they get shoved out in a sweep or survive to a fifth game and even a series win will be: What the hell was manager Matt Williams thinking in the ninth?
He had the same Jordan Zimmermann whom enough said should have gotten the Game One assignment against the Giants in this division series, which was probably hindsight only after Stephen Strasburg surrendered a pair of runs but otherwise kept things at a tie until late. Zimmermann had thrown exactly one hundred pitches on the evening. He's not exactly entering the danger zone just yet, and it isn't as though he's thrown 100+ pitches a start all season long.
Unless Zimmermann copped to faltering strength or compromised health in the ninth, Williams got some splainin' to do. Probably for the rest of his natural life. Because "If he got in trouble in the ninth or got a baserunner, we were going to bring our closer in; that's what we've done all year" doesn't fly when you're trying to tie a postseason series and continue playing for a championship.
If it was Zimmerman copping to an empty tank or an injury, then Storen's going to have some splainin' to do, and probably for the same life span. God only knew how hard he fought to re-establish himself as the closer, after blowing a 2012 NLDS Game Five save into which he shouldn't have had to appear in the first place, considering he'd been gassed going in and the Nats had had an early 6-0 lead out of which they'd play their own selves.
Zimmermann went up against Tim Hudson, the Giants retread who was once a formidable force for Oakland and Atlanta. Hudson as a Brave started the game Saturday's soiree matched, the longest in division series history. Hudson is also the Giant who previewed this series by suggesting these Nats didn't have the stones for this set.
OK, what Hudson actually said was the Nats have great pitching, "[b]ut come playoff time, talent can take you a long ways, but what do you have between your legs?" The Nats laughed that one off before the set began. But it wasn't what was between the Nats' legs that ended up mattering most Saturday, it was, perhaps, what was between their manager's ears.
Hudson, by the way, gave Zimmermann his due when it all ended. "Zimmermann's tough," the veteran told reporters when the 2-1 marathon ended in the Giants' favour. "He's one of the best pitchers in baseball. So, obviously, when you don't face him, you're not exactly pissed."
Giants manager Bruce Bochy had hooked Hudson with one out and a man on in the eighth, which made a little more sense. Not a bad idea to get the old pro out of there, give him his pat on the rump and thank him for keeping the game that close in the first place.
Let the younger guys keep the Nats quiet. Let Jean Machi get rid of Jayson Werth swiftly enough on a fly to right, go to Javier Lopez after Anthony Rendon steals second while Adam LaRoche swings for a strike. Let Lopez finish the strikeout for the side.
Zimmermann dispatched Matt Duffy (swinging strikeout) and Gregor Blanco (fly out to center) on six pitches without falling behind in the count to either man to start the ninth. Then he walked Joe Panik on five pitches that included a long, long foul, and Williams went by his book, bringing in Storen. That's the way he's done it all year.
But these Giants know the difference between all year and this postseason now. Buster Posey sure does. The Giants catcher hit Storen's first pitch up the pipe to set up first and second for Sandoval. No sweat. Time and the odds were still on the Nationals' side at this point. All Storen had to do was dump Sandoval and it would have been series tied. He looked like he'd do just that when Sandoval fouled off the first pitch.
Kung Fu Panda has his problems in the regular season but he, too, can step it up almost at will in the postseason. (You can ask the 2012 Tigers about that.) And he drilled one to left that sent home Panik with the tying run, but got Posey arrested at the plate trying to score the go-ahead run behind. The play was reviewed but enough replays showed indisputably, if extremely close, that Posey's front foot was just above the plate when Nats catcher Wilson Ramos tagged him on the hip.
Storen probably wanted to bury himself beneath the Lincoln Memorial regardless. As it was, things were probably edgy enough in the Nats' dugout without Williams getting himself buried in another fashion.
Because Asdrubal Cabrera was fool enough to throw down his bat and batting helmet while disputing strike three with plate umpire Vic Carapazza in the bottom of the ninth. There were two problems with that argument. One: Cabrera didn't have anything resembling a case. Two: Williams high tailed it out of the dugout and moved Cabrera to one side to pick up the argument only to get himself tossed. Which left the Nats' field administration in the hands of coach Randy Knorr.
Giants reliever Sergio Romo, who'd also lost his own closing job along the way this season, turned the Nats aside in order in the ninth to send it to extra innings. Once upon a time Williams served well for many a season as the Giants' power hitting third baseman. Thanks for the memories, chump, but we're not going to let you off the hook for the brain fart of the year.
Win or lose, the longer the game went the deeper the hook burrowed into Williams's neck. Bochy looked like a genius when he sent swingman Yusmeiro Petit out for the twelfth and Petit gave him the equivalent of a quality start in a game that turned into its own doubleheader, while the Nats drained every proper reliever they had before handing it to Roark.
Hell, Petit became the first since Pedro Martinez (1999) to enter a postseason game in relief and deliver six shutout innings to collect a win. "I just cant get over Petit. His performance was one of the best in postseason history, in my opinion," Posey crowed after the game.
Was it the best postseason relief? Well, there was Martinez. And in the 1966 World Series, there was Moe Drabowsky and his six and two thirds, eleven strikeout (with six consecutive in there), shutout finish (he surrendered a run charged to starter Dave McNally but that was all) to launch the Baltimore Orioles' sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Belt's regular season was compromised by 96 games lost to a broken thumb and concussion. Now, he rewarded Petit handsomely enough for a job so well done before Strickland managed to end the Nats' misery on the night at last.
Zimmermann told Williams before he went out to work the ninth that he felt just fine. Yes, pitchers are known to tell little white lies to stay in games when they might be hurt or gassed. But Williams blew that knowledge to one side when he proclaimed he was only doing what he'd "done all year." He may also have blown something bigger.
We'll know soon enough whether Brandon's Belt plus the Williams hook really polished off the Nats season when he was just an out away from a 3-hit shutout and a tie series.
It might prove enough to get Little off the hook for staying with Martinez's fortitude without checking his empty fuel tank in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series.
Or, to get Joe McCarthy off the hook when he lifted starter Ellis Kinder for a pinch hitter in the eighth at Yankee Stadium — when the Yankees themselves thought Kinder was getting stronger as the game got older — and lost a pennant on the final day in 1949.
These Nats have the stones, all right. But everyone, seemingly, is questioning their manager's brains.
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