Its Up To Max Scherzer to Get Nats' 1st Playoff Series Win
Opportunities abounded for the Nationals to seal the deal and advance to their first ever NLCS but they squandered all of them and ultimately lost 6-5. It looked as though Playoff Kershaw came out when 3 of the first 4 Nats batters reached base but he calmed down until the 7th when he probably should’ve been taken out of the game anyways. We could’ve benefited from Dave Roberts’ poor decision to keep Kershaw in the game after short rest for 110 pitches – and for a while there it looked like Roberts keeping him in would be the defining moment of the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ season. But, after Daniel Murphy tied the game at 5, 37 year old Chase Utley knocked in what would be the winning run in the bottom of the 8th.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. The Nationals managed to put themselves in a pretty enviable situation and still blow the game. If you had told me prior to the game that the Nats would knock up Kershaw for 5 runs, I would’ve put $2000 on a DC victory. Daniel Murphy was phenomenal. Trea Turner was phenomenal. Jayson Werth was great. Rendon homered in game 3, and Bryce Harper, as bad as he’s been, has a .421 OBP. Jose Lobaton was a hero. Danny Espinosa has been terrible but even he has reached base 4 times in 4 games – awful? Yes (and the fact that 3 of those 4 instances were by HBP doesn’t help) but his .286 OBP isn’t too far off from his seasonal mark of .306. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that the offense isn’t really the problem.
Its the starting pitching. I don’t know what is worse, the 6.75 ERA through the first 4 games or the fact that ERA is based off of only 17.1 innings pitched. To do the math, the Nationals are averaging just over 4 innings per start. This is a rotation that pitched 960 innings in the regular season, 6th most in baseball, and averaged just a touch under 6 IP per start through the first 162. The Nats’ ERA in the regular season? Try 3.60, 2nd best in all of baseball.
It is clear that if the Nationals want to get the monkey off of their back and win their first playoff series ever, they will need to have a better starter performance in game 5. Max Scherzer is just the guy to make Nats history and carry them to the NLCS.