Sports make us crazy. The managers and coaches of the teams we adore and spend our adult lives rooting for often make decisions that we either simply cannot understand or are unwilling to. For the Washington Nationals, one such decision was made for their ace pitcher, Stephen Strasburg. They had a pitch count for him in mind—not a game-by-game pitch count, but rather a season’s total pitch count. When the time came to shut him down, the Nationals did so, despite having the best record in the league and being guaranteed a postseason berth. Could they have been more creative with how Strasburg’s pitch count was utilized? Sure. They could have waited to start him in late May or June. They could have used him once every seven days instead of five. They could have given him a week-on, week-off schedule. The Nationals could have done any number of things, but they didn’t. They used him as if he was a regular number one starter, and they rolled him out there every fifth game.
That was their decision.
Once the pitch count was reached, the Nationals shut down Strasburg for the remainder of the year. After 251 innings, Strasburg was done. Regular season and postseason. They did exactly what they said they’d do. Yet it was hardly enough for fans of the franchise and the media—both local and national. No one understood why the Nationals didn’t get more creative during the regular season, and fewer understood why they couldn’t just simply retract the original deal and let him pitch in the postseason. But this organization, having just experienced their first ever postseason as the Washington Nationals, understood the ramifications of going back on their original plan. They understood the reasons for doing what they did, and even though they were in a position to possibly benefit from the use of Strasburg, they didn’t. They made a decision, and they stuck to it.
But when the Nationals were up two runs in the ninth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night, the living ghost of Stephen Strasburg suddenly didn’t loom so large. The fans stood the entire inning, willing their team toward victory—only to watch one of the biggest collapses in postseason history. Their closer, Drew Storen, took the mound up two runs, 7-5, and instead of going after the hitters, he danced around just about everyone. Some walked. Some saw good pitches to hit. Some hit those pitches for singles or doubles. Before you know it, Drew Storen gives up four runs, and the momentum has shifted in favor of the Cardinals, now up 9-7, as it would finish.
Yet afterward a heartbroken town once again turned to the “what-if” scenario. What if we had Strasburg? What if they would have activated him for this series? Surely, with Stephen Strasburg, the Nationals would have won the series! Right? No. Where the overwhelming majority of fans are mistaken comes in both the assumption that players will perform the same in the regular season as in the postseason, and the lack of evidence to state otherwise.
Stephen Strasburg has pitched a grand total of zero postseason games. He’s faced zero batters in the postseason, thrown zero pitches, made zero appearances. There’s simply no barometer to say with any confidence one way or the other how Strasburg would have performed in his first postseason game. To blindly state that with Strasburg the Nationals would have won is just silly. It’s not that the evidence doesn’t support it; it’s not there to begin with.
Look at Alex Rodriguez. He’s one of the best regular season performers in the history of the game. But in the postseason? His 2006 performance is as abysmal as it gets with a batting average of .071, and here again in 2012 he’s currently averaging .125. Look at Jeff Reardon, a great closer for the Twins in the regular season, yet he blew games 2 and 3 in the World Series for the Braves in 1992 (they lost the series). Look at Jose Canseco in the World Series in 1988 and 1990, where he went a combined 2-31.
Look, I’m not saying that Stephen Strasburg would have gone out there and given up ten runs in three innings. And I’m not saying you can’t find tons of evidence where people had lousy regular seasons and great postseasons, or great regular seasons and great postseasons. All I’m saying is we don’t know what he would have done, so to place any amount of blame on the Nationals losing the series to the Cardinals for not having Strasburg isn’t fair. They made a decision. That’s it. Get over it. Move on. He wasn’t available, and no matter what they did, he wouldn’t have been.
Instead, old baseball euphemisms hold true. “Walks will kill you.” “Closers need to close.” “Can’t give a good team extra outs.” That sort of thing. Because what happened on Friday night in Washington DC has nothing to do with Stephen Strasburg. It has everything to do with a closer named Drew Storen who danced around batters instead of going after them. It has everything to do with a St. Louis Cardinals team that was far, far more experienced—nine postseason appearances since 2000, including two championships. It has everything to do with a young Nationals team that simply didn’t understand what it meant to be on the grandest stage.
But it had nothing to do with Stephen Strasburg.
A Pleasant Conversation 