Playoff Notes before NLCS Game Three

The Washington Nationals are trailblazers. Washington is defying recent conventional analytical wisdom with the way their roster is constructed in their playoff run.

Since the Kansas City Royals changed the way teams looked at bullpen construction in 2015, baseball has trended toward backloading bullpens hard throwing arms that have the ability to strike out batters at a historic rate. Some, like last years Red Sox, achieve this backloaded pen by transitioning starters into high leverage roles. Some like the 2016 Cubs, make in-season trades to get the arm they need to push them over the edge in October. And some, like those Royals make calculated deals in the winter and start setting up their bullpen attack in Spring Training. The Nationals are doing none of those.

Instead, they are going back to the “dark ages” of baseball and using an extraordinary starting rotation to neutralize the opposing bats long enough for their offense to take advantage on the other side. When Davey Martinez does make that long walk out to the mound, he, along with every Nationals fan hope there is just the right amount of juice in the pen to get the number of outs needed to win the game. The Nats bullpen ERA this postseason is 9.53. That level of non-production in most cases is detrimental to a team’s World Series aspiration. Washington is doing that in spite of the terrible bullpen, thanks to a starting rotation who is pitching at an all-time level, and Juan Soto.

In my Wild Card notes column—I didn’t know if Anibal Sanchez would be able to pitch at the level he has gone to for the Nats, I didn’t know if Strasburg could bounce back from his first ever relief appearance in the Majors, and I didn’t believe in the lineup because this run for the Nationals is so new. Getting their first playoff series win in franchise history and being these trailblazers is why trying to predict how far the Nationals will go in the postseason is truly unpredictable. It could all change tonight if Strasburg blows Game Three, giving St. Louis the chance to open a previously seemingly closed door.

The question that everyone is asking, and it is warranted; how long can this run last? Davey Martinez will turn to Patrick Corbin to patch some of the 27 outs or turn to Scherzer tonight if Strasburg gets in trouble, or Sanchez again, all bets are off. This turns the newfound conventional wisdom and turns it on its head. Which makes the way the Nationals are winning games completely alien to the way baseball is being played in 2019. The closest thing that can be a comp is Justin Verlander. The way Verlander makes up a gameplan to go through a lineup is “old school.” Both Game One and Two for Sanchez and Scherzer are Verlander-esc in their own ways, and it worked. And maybe this run by Washington is the start to balance out the bullpening scale.

Even with Tampa Bay making the playoff run this year and changing pitching staffs for the next decade, it is refreshing to see dominate starting pitchers being able to combat analytical bullpening.

Baseball is the ultimate chess game with unlimited chess pieces, with the way the game is being played changing on a micro-level almost daily, it’s astonishing to see it played out during the biggest games of the baseball season.