NLDS game 1

Nats lost 3 to 2. Nats’ hitters couldn’t hit Jake Peavy, They got some hits off the Giants’ bullpen, but not with runners in scoring position. Stephen Strasburg didn’t have his plus command. The defense didn’t help.

I couldn’t write about the game last night, and today I’m just going to link to some things I’ve read.

Harper at Nationals Baseball has a nice review of the key moments in the game. (Actually, a much better review than Boswell’s.)  Harper thinks that Matt Williams should have had Ryan Zimmerman pinch hit for Adam LaRoche when Bochy sent Javy Lopez in to pitch to LaRoche with a runner at second and two outs in the bottom of the sixth. I thought about that too. If we were sure that Zim was hitting like he can when he’s healthy, yeah I’d agree that’s the right move. I’m not sure, though, and at any rate LaRoche drew a walk and Ian Desmond struck out, so the Nats still didn’t score, so it’s hard to pin the game on William’s decision. This loss is on the players. (Well, maybe on Mike Rizzo too, for not giving the team a couple of better options from the bench.) For another review of the game, here’s a post by David Schoenfeld at Sweetspot.

As you may have inferred from yesterday’s post about luck, I agree with the philosophy about post-season expressed in this post by Steven Goldman at SB Nation. Here’s video of Bryce Harper‘s home runs that was “absolutely crushed” into the third deck. Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs has an interesting set of graphics on the unusual nature of Asdrubal Cabrera‘s home run in the same inning.

The Nats really need to win Game 2. Best wishes to Jordan Zimmermann and the team.