The Washington Nationals Won The World Series

The first time I wrote about the Washington Nationals was back in 2012. The team was generating some buzz in spring training, but was thought to be a year away from contending. The Nats were young, a little brash, and ended up overachieving, posting 98 wins and the best record in the National League. They  entered a five-game divisional series against the St. Louis Cardinals expecting to make a deep run, maybe even to the World Series. The series was hard fought, and not without controversy, as the team had shut down Stephen Strasburg, still recovering from Tommy John surgery and on an innings limit. 

I still remember watching Game 5, or at least enough of it to hit "record" on the DVR and go to bed while the game was still going on, safe in the 6-1 lead we held and thinking I would just watch the inevitable victory the following morning. That ... did not happen. In fact, the Cardinals' comeback was the first of a succession of playoff failures that turned a deep and talented group into a jittery mess that would find new and inventive ways to throw up on themselves when the lights were brightest. In 2014, it was Jordan Zimmermann being pulled in the 9th inning of Game 1 against the Giants. In 2016, it was Clayton Kershew shutting down the Nats in relief in the deciding game. In 2017, it was Max Scherzer blowing up against the Cubs. Four division titles resulted in precisely zero trips to the NLCS, much less the World Series. 

Interspersed with those failures were the more pedestrian ones that happened in the off years. The Nats were always a World Series favorite, but in 2013 and 2015 they did not even make the playoffs, barely scratching out a .500 record while watching embarrassing episodes like reliever Jonathan Papelbon choking star right fielder Bryce Harper and a revolving door at manager, the skipper being replaced every couple of years in hopes of cracking the code to playoff success while lesser teams like the Kansas City Royals somehow figured out a way to win it all.

Speaking of Harper, his final season in D.C. was another example of the team’s well-earned reputation for underachieving. Handed a two-time defending division winner that had won 97 and 95 regular season games in the prior years, new manager Dave Martinez guided the team to a .500 record and they missed the playoffs. Harper alit for division foe Philadelphia and most baseball experts wrote off the Nats in favor of the deep and young Atlanta Braves or the Philly team that had just swiped DC's brightest star. The team's awful start (19-31) reinforced the belief that the team’s time had passed, that the proverbial window had closed on a team that had never reached its potential.

But then a funny thing happened. The team started to click. In fact that if you ignore that wobbly 50 game start, the Nats were the best team in baseball. Most observers cite the signing of Gerardo Parra (who had been cut by the San Francisco Giants) as the turning point for the season and there is no question the clubhouse dancing, the joy for the game, the Stras-sandwich (Parra and Anibal Sanchez swallowing the big right-hander in a group embrace), all of it was much different than prior years, when the team had a more stoic, business-like approach to the game. But there was more. The star turn of 20-year-old Juan Soto, the MVP-caliber play of third baseman Anthony Rendon, the solid core of veterans like Kurt Suzuki, Brian Dozier, and Matt Adams all played a part in the team’s resurgence. 

But here is the thing. Even as the team’s odds to make the playoffs skyrocketed to “mortal lock” level, I expected the other shoe to drop because it always did. I carried two incompatible thoughts in my head - that the Nats were a great regular season team that would break my heart in the playoffs. I lowered my expectations. I resisted the Trea Turner "I Love My Team" tweets, the Baby Shark fad, all of it. Which meant this playoff run was more torture than celebration. Even after the late game comeback against the Brewers. Even after the back-to-back home runs by Soto and Rendon in Game 5 against Kershaw and the Kendrick grand slam that  (finally) sent the team to an NLCS. Even after Sanchez's gem against the Cardinals and the sweep that happened a few days later. Up 2-0 against the Astros, I reevaluated my skepticism just in time to watch the Astros win all three games in D.C. "A HA. THERE IT IS." I thought. Finally, *there* was the team that would break my heart. Again, I turned to rationalization. Making the World Series was good enough. Winning two games against a 107-win team was nothing to be ashamed of, but my heart ignored what my eyes had seen all of October - a team that refused to quit.  

There was a glimmer of hope. I suspected Strasburg would deal in Game 6 because I remember an even more iconic game that is unfortunately forgotten to Nats history - his elimination game performance against the Cubs in 2017. There, on a rainy and windy 50 degree day in Chicago, Strasburg threw 7 innings of three-hit, shut out ball to force a deciding Game 5. And while he got off to a bumpy start against the Astros in Game 6, the Cardiac Nats came through again. 

Writers better than me have already waxed philosophical about the stunning Game 7, the unlikeliest of outcomes had actually happened. A team that never advanced out of a divisional series had come back, time and again, late and behind against the best teams in all of baseball, and conquered them all. When I think back on the Nats’ title run, that is what amazes me. The gut punches the Nats always seemed to take, they turned around and inflicted on their foes. Whereas in prior years, a wonky call, like the one against Trea Turner in Game 6, would cascade into defeat, this year, the team brushed it off. 

The World Series title was also validation for Mike Rizzo’s work. The team he assembled, the high priced free agents (Scherzer, Corbin), the home grown talent (Zimmerman, Strasburg, Soto, Robles, Rendon), the players we practically stole from other teams (Turner), and the spare parts that no one else wanted (Kendrick, Parra) all came together. Due credit to Dave Martinez, whose head I and many others wanted on a spike outside Nats Park, and proved us all wrong; whatever mojo he had cooking worked. 

The Nats have always been an easy team to root for. When they were a team of misfit toys like Elijah Dukes and Lastings Miledge, of John Patterson and Nick Johnson, it was enough that baseball had returned to our hometown. As the team grew more competitive, bulldogs like Jordan Zimmermann and Wilson Ramos were character guys you could not help but like. Free agents breezed through (a fwaaaa shout out to Daniel Murphy) and unlike a certain owner of another Washington sports team, the Lerners usually fell on the right line of signing the checks as opposed to meddling in personnel decisions (we will just pretend the Rafael Soriano signing that crushed Drew Storen’s spirit never happened). 

I think a lot about the Nats. From the hot stove, through spring training, and the six months of the season, the team is never far from my mind. I still have a clipping from the team’s first game at RFK, Livan Hernandez in mid wind-up, those gaudy, gold-trimmed uniforms not yet making way to the cleaner red-white-and-blue and Curly W combination. The cursed words I have muttered and the joy I have experienced watching something as trivial as a well-turned double play or a slider that drops off the table. I can still tell you where I was when Strasburg debuted on June 8, 2010 against the Pirates and when he tore his UCL a few months later. I’ve read more rose-tinted Boswell columns than I can remember and spent most of this year listening to Kornheiser’s kvelling at the never-quite-right bullpen. 

I think about Ryan Zimmerman a lot too. He was the team’s first pick in 2005, an accomplished third baseman 75 miles away at the University of Virginia - practically a home town boy. Zim came of age with the Nats. As a slick fielding third baseman with a flair for the dramatic walk off home run he played the game the right way, a professional on and off the field. I watched his fortunes fall as injuries and a bad case of the throwing yips relegated him to a part-time role as first baseman. He was with the team when it was a 100-loss basement dweller and a near-100 win regular season juggernaut. Zimmerman was the first Nat to hold the NL trophy after they clinched the pennant and he was on the field when the final swing and miss of the World Series delivered D.C. it’s first baseball championship in 95 years. I was thrilled for him more than anyone else. 

I cried a lot watching the Nats this post season. I know that also sounds stupid, but there is a bond between a team and its fans that can cause that type of reaction. Mostly, they were tears of joy. Watching clubhouse celebrations, trophies being lofted above heads, hugs all around. I yelled and screamed and did all the stuff you do when there is something irrationally important to you that is impossible to explain to someone not similarly invested. My team won. Finally.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy 

Previewing the 2016 Washington Nationals

As a born-and-bred Washingtonian, I have often remarked that the Redskins are like a first marriage that ends in divorce and the Nationals are a happy, second marriage. The former is wrapped up in a lot of conflicting emotions while the latter offers a purer, but mellower affection.

This has been true whether Livo was tossing out the first pitch at RFK in 2005 or the franchise was circling the drain in 2009 and 2010. Who cared? If you grew up without a baseball team, just being able to wear the “Curly W” cap with live human beings hitting and fielding at RFK was enough. By 2012, a new stadium had been broken in and a swarm of young talent resulted in a 98-win season and a National League East pennant. But is it possible that the franchise’s high water mark was reached over two nights in October of that year when Jayson Werth hit a walk-off home run to win Game 4 of the National League Divisional Series with the St. Louis Cardinals and the team ran out to a quick 6-0 lead at the end of the 3^rd inning of Game 5 before melting down spectacularly in the top of the 9^th inning?

At the time, losing to the Cardinals was brutal but did not seem history-changing. After all, the Nats went into 2013 with the same stacked line-up and their deep reserve of young talent appeared to have a several-year “window” of opportunity ahead of it. But even as the team has accumulated the fourth-most regular season wins in all of baseball over the past four seasons, success has been elusive. The 2013 team had major injuries and failed to make the playoffs. The 2014 team bounced back with 96 wins but lost a heartbreaking 18-inning playoff game to the San Francisco Giants (a questionable decision by then-skipper Matt Williams to pull Jordan Zimmermann in the top of the 9^th will be endlessly debated) before being ousted in four games, and the 2015 squad was overtaken by the upstart Mets and their arsenal of flamethrowing young arms.

Entering the 2016 season, the Nats are at best a second-tier contender and a number of personnel decisions have eroded my once blissful feeling about the team. It was easy to root for the Nats when they sucked and it was exciting to watch the team blossom as young, homegrown talent like Ian Desmond, Jordan Zimmermann, Ryan Zimmerman, Drew Storen, and Danny Espinosa blended with strategic pick-ups like Wilson Ramos and Gio Gonzalez and hotshot draft picks like Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper to become a contender.

But the Nats got too cute by half and began toying with clubhouse chemistry and fan loyalty, making splashy signings (Rafael Soriano, 2 years, $28 million, Max Scherzer, 7 years, $210 million) and questionable trades (hi, Jonathan Papelbon!) while seeming not to value the importance of taking care of their own or investing in less costly, but important middle relievers and bench players. The huge contract handed to Scherzer could have been used to resign Zimmermann AND Desmond (and have some money to spare) and Papelbon literally strangled Bryce Harper in the clubhouse. Oddly, while Papelbon was not released, the shrapnel hit poor Drew Storen, who got dealt in the offseason after twice being demoted from his closer’s spot even though he had notched more than 40 saves in 2011 and was on pace for at least 40 in 2015 before the inexplicable acquisition of Papelbon at the trade deadline. That move only happened because the team had a lights out (and beloved fan favorite) setup man in Tyler Clippard, but dealt him before the 2015 season because they did not want to pay him $8 million (we’re on the hook for $11 million with Papelbon this season.)

This offseason, instead of resigning Zimmermann (who took a relatively modest $110 million from the Tigers), the Nats tried to throw money around wildly, at Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward, Yeonis Cespedes and anyone else (hi, Daniel Murphy!) who would take it. It is all of a piece with the seeming schizophrenic nature of team management. On the one hand, they will hand out a nine-figure contract to a free agent like Scherzer but refuse to eat the modest cost of releasing a clubhouse cancer like Papelbon or reward a team-drafted and cultivated pitcher like Zimmermann. While we may not miss shorter term pick-ups like Denard Span or Doug Fister, they too had ingratiated themselves with the fan base and those losses, coupled with the departures of Zimmermann and Desmond, will result in a much different team taking the field in April.

And the changes are not over. Looming at the end of this season are the potential departures of Stephen Strasburg and Wilson Ramos and two seasons later, reigning MVP Bryce Harper. Missing is the definition of the “Nationals Way.” Is it to cultivate a strong farm system that consistently stocks the team with young talent and is enhanced by strategic free agent signings and trades or is it a team that will dump that home grown talent when it gets too expensive while at the same time handing out enormous contracts to players with no ties to the organization whose contracts will weigh down the team’s future flexibility? 

Lastly, what message is the team sending when it fires a skipper a year removed from winning Manager of the Year but will keep a player who physically assaulted the team’s best player in the dugout?  The Nationals are now on their third manager in four seasons, reduced a lights-out starting pitching rotation into a mediocrity, and has been left scrambling to fill middle relief and infield positions that were either neglected or the team opted against resolving for years. Meanwhile, the Cubs are the new Nats, stockpiled top to bottom with young talent, the Mets have a starting rotation for the ages, and the Giants and Cardinals loom as perennial contenders because of enormously effective general and field management.

Perhaps this would matter less if the team had not tasted success or if the players we have bonded with were not so unceremoniously dumped. But the truth is the Nats are not nearly as likable as they once were and have become both underachieving and unwise in their decision making. I am not quite ready for another DC-sports team divorce, but then again, second marriages dissolve at even greater rates than first ones do. Stay tuned.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy