Ouch
Well, what can I tell you baseball fans in the Beltway: you can take the Expos away from Montreal, but you can’t take the Expos from your franchise.
I would also like to note that Carlos Beltran is a tremendous player who may end up Hall of Fame worthy, and Mets fans who complain about the Wainwright K deserved 2007 and 2008. (Not least because he was the Mets’ best player in the 2006 NLCS.) Let us not forget that he started the winning rally.
…true: “it’s a severe bummer that the four most interesting teams (story-wise) all got eliminated.”
Very tough loss. Sorry Nats fans; welcome to the big leagues. Can’t help but think of Bill James’ opening paragraph to his summary of the Blue Jays’ ’87 season right now…..
… or, if you’re in the frame Scott looks out from, like me, nineteen ninety-four. And yes, my butt is still sore from that; that’s even the last year I participated in fantasy ball, the reality of the assault was so painful.
At least there’s the post-Bonds Giants of Buster, Timmeh, Panda, Cain, and the choice to stick with a broken-down Rob Hobbs-dreamers like Xavier Nady, over bringing back Cabrera.
¡Vamos, Gigantes – adelante, ir ir!
Also, what is it that makes otherwise ordinary Cardinals teams so unkillable? Still can’t figure out how they won either of their last two titles.
It’s simple: the Cardinals are, collectively, Randall Flagg.
Had to look up Randall Flagg. Now I know your comment does explain it all. I guess the 2004 Red Sox were able to counteract that because Stehen King was on their side.
grit, determination, intangibles, clutchiness and Albert Pujols
um … Pujols’ toiling in Anaheim.
Choke on it, Nats fans. Choke on it. I hope you lose 100 games next season.
Why on earth would someone be full of bitter hatred for Nationals fans?
I agree. I live in Georgia and have been a loyal fan of the Braves. And most Atlanta fans have an abiding respect of the Nationals’ 2012 season. Johnson is a good manager and the players go about their business quite professionally.
Most of this…but Johnson is NOT a good manager, as his handling of his pitching staff in tonight’s game suggests.
Davey Johnson is, of course, an excellent manager, as his record makes clear.
The game was lost in the fifth inning, when Gonzalez fell apart. One run on a wild pitch, another when he filled the bases on walks and then walked a run in. He had lost control completely and Johnson had no one ready to replace him. After that inning the Nats were shook up and never recovered. Gonzalez should have been pulled before those runs scored.
Yes. He also left Jackson in too long in the 7th. And left Storen in too long in the 9th (though by then he was out of good pitching options).
Davey Johnson’s record tells you something about how good a manger he’s been in the past.
Tonight’s game speaks volumes about how good a manger he is right now.
Just to be clear, your argument is that Johnson is incompetent because he didn’t get his ace starter out of the game at the first sign of trouble in the 5th inning with a 6-1 lead. That’s the argument.
When the first sign of trouble is a run coming in on a bases-loaded wild pitch, followed by a walk that loads the bases again, I think you probably pull your starter.
And the wild pitch wasn’t the first sign of trouble. The bases were loaded because Gonzalez walked them loaded.
Well…
1) His actual ace starter was “shut down” by his gm in September.
2) Gio’s a great pitcher, but he’s prone tooccasionally fall apart…and quickly. In a Game 5, Johnson should have had a quicker hook.
3) Of the three major mishandlings of the staff in this game, I actually think that not yanking Jackson in the 7th was the worst.
1)I don’t know how Strasburg, who was no more effective than Gonzalez in many fewer innings, ranks as the Nationals “ace.:
2)Except possibly for Storen, this Tim McCarver-level second guessing is problematic individually and senseless collectively. Nobody in his gassed bullpen was reliable so…he should have used an extremely quick hook on his ace starter with a 5-run lead, and also used an extremely quick hook with his relievers so that the high-leverage innings could be pitched by the back end of his bullpen? If that’s the case for Johnson being incompetent, I’ll stick with my evaluation, thanks.
Surely the game was lost in the ninth inning, when Storen blew a two run lead?
John – Yes, Storen had two batters with two outs, two strikes. It was like evil karma for the night before. All I can say is, after the fifth inning I sat in front of the TV with a very very bad feeling in my gut.
He is my favorite ex-Reds manager. He is fantastic
A Braves fan who’s tired of watching teams buy their way to the top of the division. Not to mention, this Nationals team is just so detestable, from Johnson on down. Love watching them disappoint all their bandwagon fans in dramatic fashion.
Buy their way? The only “expensive” free agent on the roster is Jason Werth.
Fair point! But it was the Braves’ turn. Sub-.500 to division crown, Johnson and his shit-eating grin… just despise the team, almost as much as the Phillies. Hope they have years of misery to expose what a fair-weather town D.C. really is.
Fair weather? Right. That is why it is so easy to get tickets to Skins games now days.
Look, read this article about how Wolf goddamn Blitzer and little Lukey Russert are oh-so-excited about their little pennant race. I defy you to come away from it without hating the D.C. fanbase, and by extension the team, just a little bit more. And I already had a pretty solid foundation of hatred to build on.
Fair point, at last! Watching Wolf Blitzer and li’l Luke Russert–say it with me–having a sad may well be worth the ending of an otherwise fine Nationals season.
I was rooting against the Nationals solely because Will, Russert, et al were rooting for them.
I was also happy as hell the Orioles beat the Rangers so I wouldn’t have to endure the constant camera pans to Bush in the crowd (although it’s quite possible the Republicans may have paid him to stay out of the public eye for the duration of the election season).
That’s a reasonable point. I’m from DC, so I have family and friends who are Nationals fans to counteract that. But yeah, those people are intolerable.
1) Nobody gets a “turn” in baseball; if you don’t win the division and can’t win a home wildcard game, you’re done.
2) Braves fans were notorious in the late 90′s/early 00′s for not selling out early round playoff games. Fans who hold out until more “important” games seem pretty fair weather to me.
2A) Some Brave fans are of course notorious for racist chants.
3) We’ve had years of misery already, thanks. And yet in 2009 we were drawing over 22,000 fans. Doesn’t sound like much, but that was a 100 loss season, after a 100 loss season, for a team that had been in town less than five years.
1) I know that, obviously. But it doesn’t stop me from hating the Nationals’ guts for wrecking the Braves’ chances at a division title.
2) Turner Field is larger than the typical MLB stadium, and yeah, Braves fans in those days had a bit of an entitlement mentality towards the playoffs. That’s not really fair-weather, just apathetic.
3) Oh, I know about the years of misery. And I hope you have many, many more. I’d love to see the Nationals chasing the Marlins for terrible attendance and mismanagement. I doubt it’ll happen, but hope springs eternal.
Yeah, the Tomahawk Chop is a source of embarrassment. More to the point, it isn’t even original: Braves fans did not start doing it until Neon Deion Sanders imported the concept from FSU. (It’s the FSU marching band playing in the recorded ‘chop melody’ broadcast at Turner Stadium.)
But, Dude, your football team is the Redskins! You really wanna get pious about racist mascots?
He could be from Montreal…
Yeah, the one legitimate reason for hating the Nats is the way they did Montreal dirty. Intentionally got rid of all those great players to demoralize their fan base and engineer a move to DC. Ugh.
No, the absolutely legitimate reason to hate the Nat’s, is that they’re the DC Pundit’s new favorite team.
Watching Disco Dancin’ Davey Gregory and other Beltway twits jumping aboard the bandwagon, and wearing Nat’s caps on TV all week makes me HATE a team I would normally love and root for.
Sh*t, when Rudy wears his Yankee cap I question my own Yankee loyalty.
But then I remember watching, listening, and going to games, in the mid 60′s, seeing the great Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris, even as they declined, and seeing Reggie and Mattingly in their primes, and I realize that I shouldn’t let seeing a narcissistic sociopath like Rudi wearing a Yankee cap spoil my memories and love for my team.
Making other people unhappy is what makes Rudy happy.
And everytime this psycho-grifter puts on a cap and goes to a game, he knows REAL Yankee fans hate his miserable feckin’ guts!!!
But we cheer the team, despite him.
Ok, I kinda just talked you guys out of hatin’ on the Nat’s.
Alright, you can go ahead and love ‘em, despite the Beltway Davey-come-latelies rooting them on. These idiot’s are just rooting for their Village.
Disco Dancin’ Davey and his fellow Beltway puntwits know as much about baseball as the man who wrote the absolute WORST book about the greatest game ever – George Will.
Now they’ll go on TV and put on their Redskins helmets – no, they won’t do that. They’ll just put on Redskin caps and RG3 jersey’s.
Since you sort of talked yourself out of your point of hating a team because of a handful of its fans, I guess I’ll cut you a little slack. But please stop thinking DC is just a village of pundits and politicians. Tell it to the very nice man who was the usher in my section at Nats Park last night or the vendors at the concession stands or the fire deparment EMTs standing by in case of an emergency. This is a city and region with millions of regular people. Read a George Pelecanos book once in a while.
Yeah, that was awful, although unlike the case with the Ravens or the Thunder, say, there’s very little direct connection between the present-day Nationals and the people who destroyed the Expos.
This is quite true, but I was mainly saying that to point out that there is one extremely legitimate reason to hate the Nats with a passion for the folks above who seemed ignorant of the franchise’s history. That said the person most responsible for the Nationals move (Jeffrey Loria) is still in baseball after extracting a publicly funded albatross from Miami.
It’s no solace to fans of Montreal, but DC had teams stolen away twice. And Peter Angelos blocked any team from moving here for years. You should not hate this very likeable group of young men for what others did. Be as happy as you want for the disappointment of fairweather fans, but don’t paint all of us with that brush.
I’m well aware of the history of the Senators abandonment. I did not paint “all” Nats fans with any brush, I’m well aware of D.C.’s solid history as a baseball town, but I think I accurately described the Expo’s relocation process.
I don’t hate the Nats, in fact I was rooting for them because I’m tired of the Cardinals, but I am understanding if somebody somewhere has hard feelings over that history. Fair enough?
The ones who hang out in internet comment sections are incredibly annoying. Like, worse than Phillies fans and getting pretty close to Cardinals fans bad.
But they’re so new to Baseball, its cute!
Loved the Expos. Andre, Warren and who was the other outfielder?
Tim “Rock” Raines
You’re forgetting Ellis Valentine.
And Ron LeFlore stole a couple thousand bases one year for them back then, or so it seemed
Why isn’t he in the HOF yet?
The coke?
Look, if we can forgive the suspected juicers and greenie poppers, we can forgive the sniffers.
Ooops, other commenters chimed in, and it may look like I’m talking about Cromartie, Valentine, or LeFlore – I was referring to Tim Raines, of course.
Paul Molitor was forgiven. Can you think of any reason why Molitor would be forgiven but not Raines?
Poor nice white kid, succumbing to temptation and sniffed some coke, but racked up the hits despite it.
Black man snorting blow, and STEALING bases!
Just kidding! ;-)
I hope…
I don’t think you are. Intentionally, at least.
Vladimir Guerrero!
He came much later.
Vlad’s the best bad-ball hitter since Clemente – who was the best bad-ball hitter since Yogi.
Cards make victims of lots of teams. See, e.g., the Rangers in the World Series. It is say Gio came up small twice. But, it is not like the Nats were up 2-0 or something.
As to Beltran, fans are repeatedly “what have you done for me lately” types & no feeling burned after years of hoping was unfair but it didn’t mean they deserved two collapses. Beltran and Pagan aren’t Mets any more. I don’t really care what rallies they start any more.
The Ken Tremendous tweet is absolutely right. The interesting teams are out. I’m left with only the Tigers to root for. I have a great dislike for the Cardinals and as a lifelong Dodgers fan I have a visceral hatred for the Yankees and Giants.
When Tony LaRussa managed the Cardinals, even St. Louis fans could barely stand the guy. (Serious Cardinal fans revere Whitey Herzog above all else–and for good reason–and LaRussa, if anything, was the “anti-Herzog.”)
So, this season St. Louis is managed by a former Cardinal player who is in his first year of managing. It would be treat for the new guy to make a mutt of LaRussa’s highly over-valued reputation by taking the team all the way.
The absence of Pujols also makes for a half-way decent story. But certainly the Nationals, Orioles, and A’s were the exciting stories here. (The Reds were fine, and I like them better than the Giants, but they don’t strike me as a particularly interesting story – no more interesting than the Tigers, certainly).
You don’t have to like him, but it is silly to call LaRussa overrated. He won 6 pennants.
I agree. LaRussa was one of the greatest managers in baseball history, and after last year you can’t even seriously complain about his postseason record.
Yeah, definitely a pretty uninspiring field. I guess I default to the Tigers at this point, but I don’t think I’ll pay as much attention now that there are no more Nationals to kick around.
So in other words you’re a fan of a team, not the sport.
Oh, absolutely. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once the Braves are eliminated, I just have no further interest except a bit of Schadenfreudey root-against that doesn’t extend so far as actually watching the games.
How is a series between the two scrappiest teams of all, the two with the best catchers in the game each surrounded by late-career rags and tags the likes of Beltran and Rolen, Scutaro and Pence, the two most recent World Serious winners, NOT interesting?
How about a 7th game match-up of Carpenter with his rebuilt body against Lincecum and his rebuilding psyche?
Scott Boras is one happy, happy mofo right now.
For crying out loud, I haz a sad, too, and I can’t stand Wolf & Luke. I am also amazed by the hatred for the Nats. Don’t get it at all. Thanks, LarsMacomb, for your otherwise thoughtful comments.
Methinks Anon21 is still mad about 2011. Why isn’t he wishing 100-loss seasons on the Cards? They also beat the Braves.
Nah, the Braves beat themselves. Three errors–horrible game. The Cards were just in the right place to benefit.
I would prefer to see the Cards lose in the NLCS, but I don’t care that much.
Ugh, I suppose I’ll have to go with the Tigers now. I loathe the Yankees and Cardinals, and am not fond of the Giants. I suppose the NLCS could be worse, it could be Dodgers-Cardinals.
I certainly didn’t expect my A’s to make the playoffs, but it’s still not fun that they were bounced in the ALDS..
I was really rooting for the A’s, and not just because the idea of a possible Bay Bridge Series 2: Fewer Earthquakes sounded awesome. I’ve watched the occasional A’s game this season, and I thought the team, the fans, and the city had more than earned a celebration.
Also, too, I hate the Tigers.
Hate? The Tigers???? What’s to hate?
Probably a White Sox fan.
Their automatic postseason bid?
They clinched after Game 161, and have, what — one-half of a playoff-caliber lineup? Granted their division has been weak lately, but this year wasn’t exactly a given for them.
Guess I’m hoping to see Verlander and Prince get a trophy at this point. Especially since they’re
not the Cardinals or the Yankeesthe only team still in it without a recent championship.I feel bad for the next pitching prospect the Nats produce. He’ll get worked until his arm falls off, because “we babied Strasburg, and look where that got us”.
I’m rooting for the cardinals just to give Beltran the opportunity to add to his HOF resume with a world series MVP. The highest post-season OPS in baseball history btw, and the most under-appreciated player of his time. Every Mets fan I know loves the guy. It was the media and a handful of sport radio listening morons who disliked him.
Isn’t that “highest post-season OPS” a bunch of stuff? It’s akin to pointing out that Joe Carter has the most all time 2-out homers to win the Serious in a walk-offs: not a whole lot of contender, opportunities or events to actually mean anything.
In the mid-aught nineties, pre-blogosphere, Bill James had a little over-wonky under-flashy newsletter he sent out to subscribers occasionally, and in one I remember best, off history plus a kajillion computer-simulated seasons-plus-postseasons, he determined the “best” team in baseball defined by in-season play, won the Serious a little less than half, or about a quarter, or an eighth (so presumably now a tenth) of the time (It’s a little less than half, because it’s unlikely but conceivable, and in fact appears to have happened more than once, that the best team in baseball never even got the post-season.).
So, to begin with, this post-season is like any, in being a lot more about luck than the season that preceded it.
Then on top of that, you have certain teams that never got their act together until August (2010 Giants) or even September (2011 Cardinals), and the fact that Spahn-and-Sain-and-two-days-of-rain (or Verlander in any given game, or 2-3 times in any series) is a lot easier to pull off the shorter the context of competition.
The drama and the narratives are fun and all, but it’s prudent to consider that, as I recall James put it, at the MLB level, over the course of a full season, luck is close to being on par with one full standard deviation of skill difference — and that for a context like 4 of 7 games, luck can overwhelm SEVERAL skill deviations.
I only point it out because it so contradicts the media narrative here in new York based upon one at bat against Adam Wainright.
I love sports! As this thread nicely illustrates, while you can’t always have your own team alive in the playoffs, or even a team you can stand, you can almost count on there being some team still in the playoffs that you hate with every fiber of your being. When my A’s lost, I was pulling for the Nats and O’s. Oh well, easy come, easy go! Time to root against the Yanks and the Giants!
And BOOMER SOONER,
(Class of ’75 here)
I have no rooting interest at all, its one ESU (Enormous State University*) against another, but this is pure red-faced embarrassment for the Texas program.
(*)h/t Tank McNamara)
Too bad Steven Stasburg didn’t pitch this game 5. Silly organization….thinks it will always be in the playoffs. Doesn’t work that way
Christ. Gonzalez’s FIP 2.82. Strassburg’s FIP 2.82.
And Detwiler threw a shutout in game four
Yeah, really. If anything, this series proved to be a good example of why the “who gives a damn about next year, you have to WIN NOOOOOOW!” argument never really made any sense.
Because they won now?
No, because the notion that they were going to win if only they had Strasburg was always hopelessly myopic. Even putting aside the question of how effective he would have been in the series with the extra mileage on his arm, just plugging him into the equation and removing Detweiler doesn’t in any way make it appear like an obvious Washington win. And pushing the shit out of him only to lose the ALDS would kind of be the worst of both worlds.
Yes, but Jim Kaat would have been happy.
This is the single dumbest thing you have ever said. Baseball history is full of one and dones
Since you appear to be a Braves fan, you should realize how silly you sound. The Braves are one of the best examples of building a team for the long term. Even though the Marlins have won two World Series since 1990 and the Braves only one, I’d say Braves have been a lot happier with their teams because they are always competitive.
I’m a Reds fan, Beth, but the point is less about the Braves record of futility in post-season baseball, than the assumption by a team with no history of success that they will be in the playoffs year after year.
Doesn’t work that way
Oops. I was confused by your “as a Braves fan” comment. The Braves are still a good example. They were horrible in the 80s. And why wouldn’t you build a team assuming you will get into the playoffs year after year. It might not happen, but why build a team assuming future failure?
Amen!
Christ, Strasburg is their best pitcher in terms of stuff and lefty dart throwers have more success in the regular season against sub-par line ups than against play-off caliber line ups. Your reliance on saber-esque bullshit stats in defiance of one of the few pieces of conventional wisdom which is correct is the “Christ” in this discussion.
See, eg, playoff John Smoltz versus playoff Greg Maddux.
But you can’t plausibly argue that they lost this series due to his absence from the rotation. He would have replaced Detwiler, who threw a freaking shut out (6 innings). Query whether they should have shut him down a couple of weeks earlier and put him in the bullpen.
You do realize that:
1) Maddux was still very good in the
postseason
2) Throws right handed
3)Gonzalez’s FB average 93
I do realize you are wrong
especially when you believe a 93 FB is just overwhleming
Thats a pretty good fastball for a lefty.
Thank you for bringing sanity into the discussion, Scott. To all you people who think it makes sense to hate the Nats because DC pundits root for them, a case could be made to hate any team. I’m sure they all have horrible people who are their fans. For example, Grorge Will & Cubs, and previous Yankee fan examples. I am also sick of people dumping on the Nats for trying to build a team that will be good for the long term, as if they don’t know their place. I’ll buy it when I start seeing pot shots at the Yankees, Braves, Phillies, Rangers, & many others. The Nats are not the Marlins, with a history of blowing up one-year wonder teams.
Yeah, exactly! And I hate the Nationals. Try not to take it too seriously.
As a braves fan, you should get used to it, since they will be kicking your ass for the foreseeable future
Master plan: Werth reverts to 2011, all other Nationals break all their limbs, Braves romp to an easy title, Nats win 65 games.
Doesn’t sound like you have much faith in the Braves if you think all the Nats have to break limbs in order for the Braves to win the division.
Yeah, hardly. The Braves are losing their awesome center fielder and their awesome third baseman. I suppose a great offseason could change my mind, but right now I expect the 2013 Braves to be worse than the 2012 Braves, while the Nationals stay the same or improve by signing a true center fielder like Bourn.
I pretty much expect the Tigers to win, just to continue to stick it to Selig’s “let’s rush my second wild cardz!” plan.
I’ve been waiting for some pundit doofus to say that the Nats-Cards game was an omen for Romney. You know, “the Washington team started out with a big lead, but we kept chipping away and never quit,” etc.
Thanks, Anon21. Stay classy.
Finally! Glad to see your comment, Brien. That mentality seems to be a problem in areas other than sports as well.