Nationals Baseball: Playing spoiler to the Phillies and an idea

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Playing spoiler to the Phillies and an idea

The Nats are going to do it, aren't they? They are going to go 7-2 against the Phillies in those last nine games and yet somehow they are still going to finish nowhere near the title. Damn this team.

OK, I want to take a minute here to talk about something I've mentioned on Twitter but I'm not sure I've really gone into here, which is the lionization of Jayson Werth the clubhouse presence.

Now, I don't want to go into what he meant to the team. I don't know. You don't know. The beats... well the beats probably know somewhat. Seems like the clubhouse liked him and he helped guys out and was a leader of sorts. That's what we're told and I have no reason to not believe that. That's fine. But after that there is an illogical next step taken, that having Werth or a Werth like guy on this team would have cured at least some, if not most, of their ills this year. That Werth's attitude - that type of play and lifestyle - helps a team win, rubs off on others, and gives the team a backbone to overcome adversity. That's basically the crux of what Boz said in his chat yesterday. 

But here's the thing. In all the years Jayson Werth was here. In all the different configurations of this team they have never overcome adversity.  In 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017 they walked to the division title, then when faced with the pressure of the playoffs - they lost. In 2013 and 2015, they faced in-season difficulties, and collapsed failing to make the playoffs.

So now you're telling me that was the missing piece for 2018? Something that never showed itself to be important over six previous years of baseball?

I'm not dismissing the notion that a Werth type could help in the clubhouse. It would certainly help the baseball reporters who love a good quote, anonymous and on the record. But it's nowhere near a necessary thing to help a team get through bad times and tough situations. The Nationals themselves basically proved it over the length of the window.

Now you might say - "but they never tried being all scrappy fun max effort veteran leadership guys!". I suppose that's true but like I said there were different configurations. The 2012-13 team with had guys like Morse, LaRoche, Lombo, Tracy that were along those scrappy fun max effort veteran leadership lines and a manager in that vein too. In 2014 they hired a manager that fit that max-effort quality and would bring in guys like Max, Papelbon, Escobar with a little more edge. 2016 featured Joe Cool manager and lots of bench vets and bullpen vets. I mean I guess no, they didn't do everything at once, but they never had a boring milquetoast team top to bottom either. I could just as well say maybe that's the key.

What I want, at the end of this season, is a fair assessment of this squad. I want to identify the definite issues, the probable issues, and then brainstorm solutions. I want to take what we know generally and what have we learned specifically from 7 years of Nationals contention and figure out how can they keep that going. This Werth thing is a distraction. Generally it's claptrap. Specifically it's shown to be unimportant. This needs to go away. 

38 comments:

cass said...

Dusty Baker is the missing presence, not Jayson Werth.

Who knows what goes on in the clubhouse, but players sure do seem to like playing for Dusty and his teams sure do make the postseason an awful lot. We know nothing, but that's the feeling I get - the Nats made a big mistake firing their first back-to-back postseason manager and going with someone who's never done it before.

Remember how great Manny Acta was going to be? How he was going to be the next great manager?

I really doubt the Nats would have had to release a reliever the day after the deadline if Dusty was still here.

Mr. T said...

But Joe Cool smoked a j with Hendrix! Need to add that to his Manager Intangibles score.

blovy8 said...

Sometimes it's not possible to know. It's not a fun post, but there it is.

Kubla said...

Even if there is a belief that veterans add some wins via leadership, Werth also cost wins by playing like butt or due to injuries. Lots of grizzled old guys can do that if you want. "Leadership" is just a justification for paying a sub-1.5 WAR player lots of money and starting him when you know he isn't getting any better.

Who is out there that is a gritty, determined player that's also good? Max Scherzer, who is already on the team, and they're still not making the playoffs.

This is Bryce's 7th year in the game and Rendon's 6th. It's Mike Trout's 8th. Why aren't they considered "veterans" by Boswell et al? Is it because they're not old and they don't suck?

SM said...

Thank you for emphasizing that the Werth thing is both a distraction and claptrap.

The most fiery clubhouse guy ever--literally--was Damaso Garcia who, in 1986, burned (as in "set on fire") his uniform in the Blue Jay clubhouse. Didn't help the Jays, didn't help Garcia's slump. This is as close as you will ever, truly, see a ball player light a fire under his team . . . and it didn't work.


Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago I asked if there was any aspect of managing that Dave Martinez was good at. (And alas, got the answers I expected, but wasn't hoping for.) But when the 2018 season's post-mortem begins officially, I would like to explore that question again, because I believe Martinez was hired as much for 2019 as for 2018. (I'm skeptical of the front office's Martinez-is-here-to-take-us-all-the-way-to-the-World-Series pre-season spin.)

And by the way, Dave Martinez played for Dusty Baker for the first two years of Dusty's managing career.

Johnny Callison said...

cass: Have thought of the Manny Acta parallel several times. Good call. Nats have tried the rookie manager approach three times with only one playoff appearance in five seasons. The crusty veteran manager type who apparently annoys the Lerners with his entitledness (contract extension talk) has delivered three playoff appearances in four years, so, one would hope the Lerners might see that as a trend in favor of experience (Bud Black's doing well in Colorado), but I guess not.

SM: I was living in SF in 1993-1994 when Baker got his start and had no recollection of Martinez being on that team, but there he was, putting up 0 and -0.5 WAR. He made zero impression on me. If you look at his career, he is the definition of mediocrity, averaging 1.2 WAR per season, only having two seasons over 2 WAR and defensively a wash over his career. He started here and there where a team was needy, but they always replaced him within two or three years, if not sooner. Never hit more than 12 HRs, never had more than 66 RBIs. Career .276. .341 OBP, .379 slugging, .730 OPS. Accumulated 1600 hits in 16 years. A great fourth outfielder, a mediocre starter. Neither good nor bad career stats translate to managerial ability as far as I can see, but I thought it was interesting to note how little he registers to a longtime Giant fan (and other Giant fans I still check in with NEVER mention Davey M, ever).

Harper: I agree about Werth. Came up big once in awhile, vanished once after a huge loss (refused to speak), and hurt the team hugely in last year's playoffs because he couldn't play anymore.

Kubla: Yeah. Guys in their sixth-seventh-eighth years aren't vets? Huh? Harper simply isn't a leader; he's a brand, which helps him and maybe the Nats' and MLB's marketing, but I think it is distracting for the team's play at best.

The Nats have been very good for seven years, but had some bad luck and some serious chokes, and then this year's mess on many levels. A shame if the window closes without one playoff series victory. I am thinking now that the Nats got crazy lucky with Murphy and he helped extend the window. Losing him AND Harper might be tricky to fix. If Zim were leaving after this year, I'd say sign Murphy and put him at first Great, great bat.

blovy8 said...

Actually Harper, the Nats DO have a reputation as being soft.

Ole PBN said...

It's all about the buy-in. Whatever Werth, Dusty, Martinez, Zimmerman, etc. were selling, the collective TEAM wasn't buying. Everyone has to be all-in. Ultimately that falls on the leader (player, manager, whatever) to get those guys all on the same collective goal. It is a very hard thing to do, but baseball requires that as one player can't take over a game.

It's been said by me, and by many on here, that this group is a collection of talented individuals. Tim Hudson alluded to this, so did Harold Reynolds, among other pundits as well. No leadership on the team since 2012. Who should they go get to be a leader? I have no idea. But whomever that guy is, they need to effectively pass that buy-in to everyone in the clubhouse.

I've played at a high level where people burned jerseys, threw chairs in locker room, war speeches, coaches threatened to quit, team fights during practice, and none of it worked because there were inevitably a handful of guys looking around like "really? Chill out dude." The only team that I've been on that faced adversity and overcame it to win a championship was a year where everyone truly loved each other like a brother, win or lose. All it took was for breaks to go our way and it did. So we were always at the cusp of overcoming adversity, whereas this Nats squad needs more than luck. They have no glue to keep the unit together, no common bond, no collective interest to success.

Can't say that the team I was had that ingredient the Nats are missing, but it was something to behold. Just wish my hometown team had the personalities that invited that sort of collective urge to get better everyday, win or lose.

SM said...

@ Johnny Callison

Hah! Same thing in Montreal, where earlier he was pushed out by Marquis Grissom.

I agree that neither bad nor good career stats translate to managerial ability, but I do think that, talent aside, how a big league player's career unfolds--how it begins, (especially) how it ends, what he learns, what conclusions he draws, etc.; in short, what imprint his experiences have left on him--can provide some insight in his managerial tendencies.

Without going into it, I think somebody like Dusty or Cito Gaston have/had tendencies to favour veteran players over youngsters because of the arc of their playing careers. (Strong GMs play a role, too, but that's another issue.) Managers like Bobby Cox and Davey Johnson, on the other hand, were very good at breaking in young players. And successful big league managers (like Earl Weaver) who never played in the majors fit into yet another category.

Any way we approach Dave Martinez, there will be lots to talk about. Boy, will there be lots to talk about.



Robot said...

Ole PBN, I recall LaRoche being something of a clubhouse leader, especially with the younger guys, but that was like 2012-2013. He's long since moved on to things like hanging out with his son, breaking-up sex-trafficking rings, and shootin' stuff.

JE34 said...

I look forward to the "what makes a great manager" part of the program, as that will indeed be an interesting topic to explore. In the meantime, let's hire Miller Huggins. Oh, and Murderer's Row.

SM said...

JE34:

. . . unlike Washington's Misdemeanors' Row.

Mr. T said...

"Ultimately that falls on the leader (player, manager, whatever) to get those guys all on the same collective goal."

So without a "leader," these professional baseball players would be incapable of winning baseball games?

Winning teams make happy players. Losing teams make unhappy players. "The clubhouse is a mess"--well yeah, they were supposed to win and they're not. If the Nats want to win more games next year, they should hire better baseball players, try to avoid injuries, and sign better backups for when the injuries occur. We fetishize this clubhouse-leadership stuff because we need a story, we need heroes and villains. I enjoy that stuff too, but we shouldn't let it cloud our judgment about what actually wins baseball games.

Silver Fox is Drunk said...

At the end of the day, some of this is just bad luck. The Nats have lost a lot of 1 run games, have had more than their share of injuries and have way underperformed their pythagorean win total. Just like the playoffs is a bit of a crap shoot, so is the season. The wrong thing to do would be to overreact and start fixing problems that will fix themselves. Bring back Bryce, deal Robles and someone else for Realmuto and get as much starting pitching as you can afford and that's a pretty good team they run out there again next year.

Rolaids Call for Relief said...

I'm probably over simplifying here, but I feel like when the team has made the playoffs, they did so despite the bullpen.

Since 2012 when they haven't made the playoffs it was because of the bullpen.

And some injuries have played a role in this year and others. I don't think enough can be said about what the team lost this year when Kendrick went down. He was the glue that kind of held the injury prone position-players portion of the roster together.

But fixed the gosh darned bullpen.

Froggy said...

Two things I remember when I think of Werth, was the epic 13 pitch walk-off home run battle with Lance Lynn in the 2012 playoff game against St Louis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9vbKB3tamo

And just how utterly terribly bad he was in game 5 against the Cubs in last year's NLDS. To be fair that wasn't all Werth's fault, but...it is what I remember.

JE34 said...

@Rolaids, to your point:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-as-changed-baseball-once-they-may-be-changing-it-again/

Interesting how Oakland's run has been fueled in part by an awesome pen, and getting great value from retread starters. Re the latter, that has a lot to do with...
...
(wait for it)
...
...
...
coaching! Unless their starters just happened to decide on their own to do what they're doing, re pitch selection and whatnot.

JE34 said...

@Rolaids - but yes, you are still definitely oversimplifying.

Ole PBN said...

Me. T you sound like a guy who has never played on a sports team before. What about the years where the Nats were winning 95 games a season? Happier players equals what? A first round exit? What about the fact that the best team doesn’t always win? Randomness and pure luck? It’s more than a narrative, as I already outlined in my prior post. If you’ve never been there, I’m sure it’s just fantasy.

Josh Higham said...

Ole PBN, I don't say this to put down your experience on an actual good, high level baseball team, which I have certainly never had, but a happy clubhouse full of friends and a winning team are almost certainly co-determined/synergistic if Mr. T is wrong and the causal link is not as simple as winning->good clubhouse.

You don't have to play sports at a high level to see how quickly winning turns things around. Earlier this year I was on a mediocre city league softball team full of guys who made me very mad because they took themselves too seriously and didn't try hard enough for my liking. I was determined to avoid playing with them again, even if it took leaving my friends behind, finding a different league or sitting out a season to do it. We won the (meaningless) championship in a 1 game playoff against a team that was head and shoulders better (and more fun) than us, and the next thing I knew I was telling my friend on the team "yeah I'd play with those guys again, they're not so bad." I know beer league softball is nothing like the majors except for the basic shape of the game, but winning can absolutely transform an unhappy, uncooperative team.

Also, apologies if any of you were on that team--yes, I'm a v bad person.

Ole PBN said...

Josh, totally understand. I don’t take your message the wrong way, just thought Mr. T’s was a little dismissive of what is a big piece in holding a clubhouse together. Winning is contagious, but losing is far more contagious in my experience. All it took was for the happy winning Nats of 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017 to run into a team that wanted to win a short series just as bad as them (if not more than them) to turn those happy Nats into unhappy, and not able to overcome adversity. Quality leadership plays a huge role in overcoming adversity. Talent alone will win you a bunch of games, as the Nats have found. But what adversity have they overcome? To me, that’s where the hole in their organization lies. Of course it’s much easier said than done, and we all don’t have a magic formula other than our own anecdotal evidence through personal team experiences.

Sammy Kent said...

I don't think Jayson Werth would have made much difference in this team this season. His presence as a coach or in some other non-playing capacity would most likely been a positive influence, but this team had problems that couldn't be fixed by planting him in the dugout. No way, no how.

That being said, there are three players I credit with being inspirational forces that together changed the clubhouse culture at Nationals Park from baseball team to WINNING baseball team. In chronological order, Jayson Werth, Doug Fister, Max Scherzer. I should not have to rehearse why those names were so important in creating an aura of confidence, a swagger, a competitive superiority. They were winners. They acted like winners. They expected their teammates to act like and think like winners, and therefore to play like winners and BE winners. They changed the attitudes among the position players (Werth) and the pitchers (Fister), and then Scherzer just set the example in every phase of the game and said we're gonna kick ass and take names. Only Max will make the HOF in Cooperstown, but all three deserve a big ovation for that big intangible they brought to the Nationals.

Unfortunately, none of that helps the 2018 Nationals. Confidence became arrogance, swagger became self-centeredness, and competitive superiority became lethargic apathy. The talent was there, even with the injuries. The leadership was lacking. The tail wagged the dog, and the dog didn't hunt.

G Cracka X said...

Holland slams the door with a game ending double play, completing the comeback!

Ole PBN said...

Sammy, I think the issue is that all three of those players you mentioned had that attitude of "kicking ass and taking names" and.... no one else did. That's the problem. They didn't set the tone for the pitchers/position players. Who followed their example? No one. That is why you can only name three people. And so can I. Just three. Everyone else would rather do it a different way, so that either says something negative about the rest of the team or about our leaders. Not sure who is to blame: the rest of the team or the leader, but if it's not transcendent leadership, than it's just going to the beat of your own drum (like the rest of the 24 guys on the roster), but just in a more appealing way to the fans (like Max).

Sammy Kent said...

Ole PBN, I agree that no one followed suit THIS SEASON, but those three guys definitely changed the persona of the Washington Nationals. You are correct that it says something about our leadership THIS YEAR. As much as we rail on Matt Williams sometimes, and deservedly so I think, he did have the good sense to nurture the influence of Werth and Fister. Dusty certainly encouraged the swagger and had the savvy, experience, and authority to keep the egos in check and all pulling in the same direction. Davey Martinez was handed a team that he obviously felt needed only to take the field and smack dingers, then didn't know what the heck to do when guys got hurt and the big star started playing with a protect-my-value attitude. When the rest of the team sees an inconsistent standard and realize their manager is in over his head, their motivation tanks. Many things combined to spoil what could have and should have been a banner year for the Nats, but IMHO that is the top of the list and whatever's in second is far back.

But thanks to the Phillies for gift wrapping another curly W. We'll gladly take it. My hometown boy (McDowell County, NC) Greg Holland got his first save. Very happy for him. I bought tires from his uncle from age 16 'til 30 when I moved to the DC area.

Josh Higham said...

In other news, Giolito has been a totally acceptable pitcher this month. That's just what I like Fangraphs to tell me.

Mr. T said...

@Ole PBN: I promise, it is possible to have played on many sports teams and to also think that this "clubhouse chemistry wins games" theorem is a little far-fetched. You're really asking how come the "happy Nats" didn't win a postseason series? I dunno! I'm not arguing that UNHAPPY clubhouses win games; I'm arguing that it's irrelevant to a discussion of how to improve the team. I hated the guts of half the guys on my junior year high school baseball team and we won the championship; I've been on other teams since where we got along great and we sucked. Does this mean that bad blood helps win championships? Or is it more likely that my teams won when we had a better group of players?

There is indeed something special about the journey during a championship season and I don't mean to imply that personalities and camaraderie don't matter to those lucky enough to be on the team. It's one of my favorite things about sports. But we are not on the Nats. Your diagnosis of clubhouse dysfunction is based on quotes from beat writers and something mean Tim Hudson said once. We have no idea what it's like in there day in day out, or how much they may or may not be "coming together;" too assert that we do, and that this is what's causing them to lose just seems silly. I do think you'd have a better argument with a sport like basketball or football or hockey, where teams have to work in sync to a much greater degree. Baseball is a series of individual battles between hitter and pitcher, and solo performance by fielders and baserunners. If they fail at those things, your team is not going to win the game, regardless of how well they get along off the field.

Jon Quimby said...

So, I loved it when Werth was on the team and probably apologized too much for him when he was finally too old to play. But since he's retired, I really haven't thought about him except when I put on the jersey for days I take in a game at the park. I still dislike Zimm as a player, but stealing third to force the issue last night was pretty cool.

I think Davey is going to learn a lot from this year and end up being a good manager. He seems smart and he certainly had a lot of things break the wrong way. The players mostly seem to accept/like him.

It occurred to me that the leadership problem is a Bryce problem. Harp SHOULD be the leader of the team, but that's just not his personality. If Bryce is resigned he needs to become the leader or get out of the way. I don't think Bryce is a clubhouse problem in any way and I think he's doing his best to lead by example, but that's not enough.

Froggy said...

I see the A's are having some injury issues with their SP's. What a great opportunity to unload Gio (and his salary) for a PTBNL, no?

elchupinazo said...

To anyone wondering why Bryce isn't a leader while calling for a Werth-like presence in the clubhouse, does... does no one really remember Werth's well-documented, borderline sadistic treatment of Bryce from more or less the day he got called up. Argue all you want that a possibly generational talent like Bryce needed a steadying, even stern hand guiding him, but don't praise that and wonder why he's not primed to step up and take on a leadership role.

Jay said...

I totally agree on Gio. If they can get under the tax/cap that would be great. I think the playoff losses weren't a general inability to "want it" or "clutchness" or whatever of the entire team. I think it was putting our faith in the wrong people that didn't do well in the playoffs. 12 was all about Drew Storen and to a lesser degree Clippard. Clippard was awful for the Mets in the WS a few years back as well. Gio is a repeat offender but was especially awful in 12 game 5 (giving up the lead) and last year (he never should have pitched game 5). The only year the entire team was awful was 14 against the Giants when they couldn't score. In game 5 of 12 they scored 5 runs in the early innings. They had a 2 run lead going into the 9th. Against the Dodgers it took Jensen pitching multiple innings and Kershaw and no rest for the 9th. Against the Cubs there were several people that failed - including Max - Gio, Wieters, Dusty. All contributed to losing game 5.

Anyway, you only have to look at the Caps to see you don't have to blow the team up. They need to stop cutting corners and having a team that is maybe just good enough, but even that doesn't prove anything. The Caps were supposed to have missed their window and they won it all. Of course it did take Ovechkin decoding, "we not going to be suck this year."

Anonymous said...

We have absolutely no idea what these guys are actually like and whether their teammates like them or respond to them. I liked watching Doug Fister pitch; he worked quickly and hustled. I have no idea whether that did or did not influence his teammates. Maybe he was an asshole? Nobody in this comment section knows, and we should stop pretending like we do.

"The only team that I've been on that faced adversity and overcame it to win a championship was a year where everyone truly loved each other like a brother, win or lose. All it took was for breaks to go our way and it did."

"I've played at a high level where people burned jerseys, threw chairs in locker room, war speeches, coaches threatened to quit, team fights during practice, and none of it worked because there were inevitably a handful of guys looking around like 'really? Chill out dude.'"

So a good clubhouse causes winning and a bad clubhouse causes losing because you had a good clubhouse when you won and a bad clubhouse when you lost? In addition to being a small sample, this is bogus because it's selecting on the dependent variable. We just don't know. My prior is that winning causes a happy clubhouse and not the other way around. But that too is just a theory. The truth is this is a useless exercise because a) we don't know (and will never know) how "happy" the clubhouse is; we and the beat writers have an incomplete - and manipulated - picture; and b) to really know, we'd have to measure happiness at the beginning of the season, which is more or less impossible.

Ole PBN said...

Fellas, I don't mean to wave around an experience card, because I think none of us truly know what is going on in the Nats clubhouse (including me!) - but I appreciate everyone ironically taking my statements as gospel and then attempting to shoot them down. It's just thoughts folks, I don't claim to know this team any better than anyone else.

But the talent pendulum swings far to either side in lower levels. To compare junior high to to pros and college ball to the pros are vastly different. At a lower level, the better team usually wins. The higher you go, the more intangibles and fundamentals matter, as everyone is supremely talented.

There's a reason Al Davis coined the phrase "Just Win, Baby." Because its indeed true! Winning cures almost everything. In little league, talent usually gets you there by itself. But as people grow up, and the talent threshold because razor thin, the more clubhouse chemistry matters. Championship teams have a collective buy-in. You hear it from almost every team when reflecting on a championship season. Started from Day 1. They hit adversity, but because they had each other's back, they were able to overcome. I think a team full of selfish players doesn't get past that adversity, because in baseball, very rarely are 1 or 2 players going to win the game by themselves.

That is common knowledge guys, I don't know how else to say it. But if you want to disagree, that's okay too. Now... how this applies to the Nats? I'll say it loud and clear: I DON'T KNOW. No one does. I THINK... that some of this could be applied to them, but it's all conjecture, as is everything not based in numerical evidence. Hmmm... I think it's why we all like baseball and this blog :)

Anonymous said...

"You hear it from almost every team when reflecting on a championship season."

I don't doubt it, and I think that is the crux of why many of us find it so hard to believe the causality runs primarily in the direction of intangibles dictating postseason success.

To borrow Arendt's take on a far more serious subject: if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense. ... This is the real problem of every philosophy of history; how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn’t have happened otherwise?

G Cracka X said...

@Jon Q I was surprised by your comment that you don't like Zimm as a player. Absolutely nothing wrong with your opinion, we're all entitled to them.

I know that Zimm is past his prime and has had some poor seasons, but Zimm as a player has earned more fWAR (38.4) as a National than any other player. I recognize part of that is because he's been playing so long, but he has done much for the team over his career, including 11 walk-off home runs. Also, as a player he conducts himself professionally and almost never acts immature or gets thrown out of a game for any reason, like throwing a tantrum over an umpire call.

blovy8 said...

I think most of the 70s championship clubs did not like each other. The A's and Yankees of that period were notorious.

Johnny Callison said...

GCX: I agree on Zim. Past his prime (but seemingly pretty frisky at the moment), but had a solid career. I think anyone over 20 WAR was pretty good at one point or another of their career, and anyone close to 40 was all-star caliber for several years. Zim falls into that all-star for several years, but like a lot of guys, couldn't sustain it for ten years, more like five or six. I think of players like Mattingly (amazing for about six years), Will Clark, Mark Grace (actually, never that amazing, but just very consistent), and John Olerud when I think of Zim. He's pretty much in their class. Guys who might have been HOF if they'd been healthier or could have sustained their excellence longer, although Grace, as I said, was consistently good, never great. I saw Clark in his prime and he was great but the injuries took him down just like they did Mattingly.

The issue with Zim this year is the mystery spring training followed by the mystery injury that took forever to heal. I think that the team bears some responsibility for the bad vibe that created--they were, as usual, ridiculously secretive, and I think it caused some bad feelings toward Zim. Even if it was HIS idea to hide an injury in ST or he really thought not experiencing live action would benefit his stamina in-season, they let him do it. If they were hiding an injury, they made him look bad. Not sure which it was, but it wasn't handled right.

blovy8: Like your handle. Funny. You're right about those A's/Yankees teams. Reggie Jackson was at the heart of both, which tells you a couple of things. He was a winner and difficult. Plus Billy Martin was the Yanks' manager, and he didn't even like himself! The chemistry debate is one that will go on and on. Excellence and chemistry don't always go together, but sometimes they do. So, I guess there's no "right answer." But the Nats haven't quite achieved the correct mix. Or maybe it's luck. Or choking. Or overconfidence. Or personnel. Or manager. Or some or all of the above season after season. Hard to tell, but Martinez has not proven himself so far. If they bring him back next season (short of Showalter falling into their laps, they probably will), we'll know more. Fewer camels, more skill drills.

Anonymous said...

The same Buck Showalter that let the O's season end in the playoffs in extra innings with Ubaldo Jimenez on the mound and Zach Britton (then perhaps the best bullpen guy in MLB) sitting on his thumbs in the bullpen? No thank you. There are sins and there are cardinal sins. Buck committed a cardinal sin. If I owned an MLB team, I would consider him unemployable for that reason.