{"id":4957,"date":"2012-10-13T10:25:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T14:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4957"},"modified":"2013-10-02T10:57:23","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T14:57:23","slug":"game-5-recap-leaky-bullpen-and-a-gutwrenching-ninth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4957","title":{"rendered":"Game 5 Recap: Leaky bullpen and a Gutwrenching Ninth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Not the best outing for Storen. Photo Andrew Harnik\/washingtontimes.com<\/p><\/div>\n

What a gut-wrenching game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It started out as great as you could hope; scoring 3 runs in the first inning and igniting the largest crowd in Nats history.\u00a0 The offense finally strung together a series of big hits from the top of our order against the same pitcher (Adam Wainwright<\/strong>) who shut us down so easily in the first game of the series.\u00a0 The Nats offense woke up again in the 3rd and bounced Wainwright (the same guy that pundits expected to completely shut the team down again).\u00a0 You can’t blow a 6-0 lead, can you?\u00a0 Here’s a stat; on the Season the Nats were exactly 45-6<\/a> when scoring 6 or more runs.\u00a0 But they’ve also coughed up larger leads; they blew a 9 run lead<\/a> in Atlanta in July in a game that looked eerily similar to last night’s game; get a big lead, your starter gives up a few innocuous runs, then the bullpen slowly leaks runs until its all over.<\/p>\n

Gio Gonzalez <\/strong>wasn’t really that effective, all told.\u00a0 His final line: 5ip, 5 hits, 4 walks and 3 runs (all earned).\u00a0 In the first inning he honestly looked startled on the mound, scared to be there.\u00a0 He scuffled through the first inning looking tentative and got bailed out by some slightly over-aggressive hitting from the top of St. Louis’ order.\u00a0 He did pitch with better confidence the next couple of innings (who wouldn’t with a 3-0 first inning and 6-0 third inning lead?). \u00a0 He was definitely commanding his curve ball far better than in game 1 and was keeping St. Louis at bay.\u00a0 However a lead-off walk burned him in the 4th for the first run, and then a complete meltdown in the 5th from Gio turned into two more runs.\u00a0\u00a0 His 5th inning line is as ugly as it gets for a starter; Double-Single-Walk-run scoring wild pitch-walk-walk<\/a> to force in a run before finally getting the 3rd out.<\/p>\n

Here’s where the bullpen just failed to get the job done.\u00a0 Edwin Jackson<\/strong> walks the lead-off guy and he scores, making it 6-4.\u00a0 The Jordan Zimmermann<\/strong> experiment from game 4 couldn’t be replicated, costing the team a run.\u00a0 I can’t second-guess the move though; it had worked so well the night before.\u00a0 Tyler Clippard<\/strong> gives up a home-run to Daniel Descalso<\/strong> to make it 6-5.\u00a0 And of course we know what happened to Drew Storen<\/strong>, who picked a really bad time to match his career worst outing, giving up 4 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks in the 9th.\u00a0 And the big hits didn’t come from the middle of St. Louis’ order; it was Descalco and Pete Kozma<\/strong> of all people getting the clutch hits.<\/p>\n

My dad pointed out an interesting question; Storen was sharp last night but not tonight; could it be because he threw three straight games? \u00a0Storen had appeared in 3 straight games twice before this season but didn’t pitch full innings each time. \u00a0In this series he threw an inning each in games 1, 3,4 and 5. \u00a0His pitch count by game? \u00a010,11, 26, and last night’s 33 pitch debacle. \u00a0Dad’s specific complaint was about the use of Storen in the blow-out game 3. \u00a0Why waste an inning there when you pretty much well know you’re going to need your 8th and 9th inning stars both subsequent nights? \u00a0 Is it possible that Storen was just a bit gassed from the cumulative effects of a 26 pitch outing the previous night AND having pitched three consecutive days?<\/p>\n

Another pet peeve of mine; how do you let Descalso steal second base un-challenged in the 9th?\u00a0 Yes there’s two outs, but that put him in scoring position to tack on an extra run on the subsequent single.\u00a0 If you hold that guy on, maybe you throw him out and get the 3rd out right there before the Cards get the lead.\u00a0 He certainly doesn’t score on a single to RF.\u00a0 This isn’t a problem just with Storen; the Nats pitching staff is notoriously bad at holding runners.\u00a0 In the end, that extra run didn’t really matter … but it could have mattered if Suzuki threw the guy out before the go-ahead single, right?<\/p>\n

There’s not much else to say in the way of analysis; the Nats should have been able to hold onto a 6 run lead, and Storen just had a bad night.\u00a0 The fact that it came in such an important game is a shame.\u00a0 If we want to look at a critical issue with the pitching staff on the night, it is probably this; the Nats pitchers put the Cards lead-off guy on in SIX of the nine innings, and that runner scored 5 of those times.\u00a0 They got the lead-off hitter on base every inning after the 3rd.\u00a0 That’s just a failure to execute by your pitching staff.\u00a0 Of course it’s also a testament to the hitting ability of this St. Louis team up and down the lineup.<\/p>\n

There goes the season; I had tickets for Game 1 of the NLCS.\u00a0 I guess we have to wait til next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a gut-wrenching game. It started out as great as you could hope; scoring 3 runs in the first inning and igniting the largest crowd in Nats history.\u00a0 The offense finally strung together a series of big hits from the top of our order against the same pitcher (Adam Wainwright) who shut us down so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,2036],"tags":[346,1151,52,253,385,43,1152,128],"class_list":["post-4957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-natsgeneral","category-post-season","tag-adam-wainwright","tag-daniel-descalso","tag-drew-storen","tag-edwin-jackson","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-pete-kozma","tag-tyler-clippard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4957"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7832,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4957\/revisions\/7832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}