Werth it.

And now let us praise Jayson Werth, whose walk-off home run tonight allowed this miraculous 2012 Nats season to continue.

Fans who were privileged to watch it in person will have thousands of stories. But if all of them were to tell all of their stories all at once, the roar would not be one-tenth as loud as the roar of the crowd at Nats Park tonight. This was probably the loudest I, personally, have ever heard the park. It was certainly the loudest I had heard it since the debut of Stephen Strasburg.

Loyal Nats fans will probably recall Charlie Slowes’ account of the home run–which perfectly captures the utter emotional release of the moment.

The rest of the baseball-watching public will probably remember this image of the walk-off: the ball sailing into the visitors’ bullpen in left field, touching off absolute bedlam at Nats park.

But perhaps the best way to understand Jayson Werth’s walk-off tonight is this video–a pitch-by-pitch account of the entire thirteen-pitch at-bat that culminated in the home run. Werth fouled off six pitches, took a two-strike curve for a ball, before crushing the thirteenth and final pitch into the left-field bullpen.

Werth’s two-strike approach tonight was as cool as a Test Cricket batsman at his crease, methodically wearing down Cardinals reliever Lance Lynn. It was precisely for this type of performance that the Nats paid such an extravagant sum.

I counted myself as one of Jayson Werth’s detractors during the 2011 season, particularly during the miserable month of June, where he went .154/.291/.286 with 25 strikeouts. His 2012 season, however, has been a tremendously pleasant surprise to me. At the close of the regular season, he batted .300/.387/.440 and posted a wRC+ of 129–roughly the level of his 2008 and 2009 seasons with the Phillies. Tonight’s walk-off is just another example of Werth’s tremendous 2012 season.

He may not be my personal favorite National, but Jayson Werth has earned my respect–and my full-throated, roaring acclamation.

Det Row?

This story on Ross Detwiler’s upcoming Game 4 start, by the Post‘s James Wagner, reads uncomfortably like the story of an execution:

Detwiler, like he does during the season before his starts, will wake up without an alarm. He will eat small meals continuously throughout the day, loading up on as many calories as he can without having a big meal. And then, in the afternoon, he will take the ball with the Nationals’ playoff future in his hands.

Don’t believe me?

Compare that passage to one from this story:

It’s 6 a.m., and Hicks has been up almost an hour. He’s shaved, made his bed, gotten dressed and read for a while in his cell.
At 10 minutes after 6, he says he’ll pass on the prison breakfast: toast, peanut butter, cereal, pineapple juice, coffee — with six packets of sugar. At 6:25 a.m., he changes his mind and opts for a couple of sweet rolls. Nine minutes later he brushes his teeth, then sits down to read the Bible.

At 6:40 a.m. he tries the call to Mom again. Still no luck. He decides to take a shower.

It’s now 6:44 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2005. Hicks doesn’t have long to complete the call.

In a little more than three hours he’s scheduled to be executed.

I report, you decide.

Down to the Last

Today was the first post-season major league game played in the District of Columbia in 79 years. The Nationals, mindful of the occasion, performed all the propitiatory rites worthy of an Opening Day.

The ceremonies came to a climax as Frank Robinson, manager of the 2005 Nats that returned baseball to the Capital City, threw out the first pitch to Ian Desmond, to thunderous applause.

These rites concluded, the Nats proceeded to pay tribute to Frank Robinson by re-enacting the very worst scenes of Robinson’s tenure, to the horror of the announced crowd of some 45 thousand.

Edwin Jackson went 5 innings, surrendering 4 runs on 6 hits, striking out 4, and walking only one. On any other day, even a 4 run deficit would not have been too much for the 2012 Nats to overcome. That ball club had averaged 4.5 runs per game.

But this was no ordinary day. The nats had a formidable opponent in the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter, who scattered six hits in his five and two-thirds innings, allowing no runs. Again and again, Nats hitters lofted balls into the air, only to be caught. Eleven Nationals were stranded on base.

Your Correspondent suffered his most acute case of déjà vu during one particularly harrowing sequence in the 7th. As rookie reliever Christian Garcia issued a bases-loaded walk to Alan Craig, scoring Carlos Beltran, it was almost possible to believe that the clock had been turned back to the bleakest days at the very end of Frank Robinson’s managerial tenure.

What began as a trickle of fans leaving in the 7th became a torrent in the 8th, as a long line of dejected, red-clad supporters deserted Nats Park. The remaining faithful in the upper deck could see the gloomy column stretch from the center field gate down the whole length of Half Street.

By the time Nats closer Drew Storen appeared in the top of the ninth to the stunned silence of the remaining faithful, the rout was complete. The stands looked as if they had been bombarded with grapeshot as their erstwhile inhabitants fled headlong towards the exits. The nats park faithful managed a faint roar for Jayson Werth’s two-out walk in the bottom of the ninth. Bryce Harper then struck a line drive right into the glove of the waiting John Jay, stranding Werth yet again.

Tomorrow, the Nationals’ Annus mirabilis—a year that saw them win ninety-eight games—will come down to perhaps its final twenty seven outs. It is this writer’s sincere hope that tomorrow’s contest is as reflective of the ball club’s present success as today’s rout was evocative of its past futility.

Don’t Look Back in Anger

OK, fine. The Nats got a 12-4 beatdown in St. Louis. They leave the gateway city with the NLDS tied at one game apiece. This is not the end of the world, Nats town. The 2012 Nats had a .593 winning percentage on the road, but they have a .617 winning percentage back on at Nats Park. As luck would have it, the Nats need to win two out of the next three games to win this series. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s not like they are being asked to do anything that we have not already seen them do this year.

Or, as someone helpfully asked: https://twitter.com/DavidHuzzard/status/255493169360281600

The Nats have won the first two games of a three-game series 16 times. This doesn’t count four-game series where they won the first two games. Nor does this count three-game series that they won, but split the first two games.

I am confident.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

The Nats won Game 1 of their NLDS series against the Cardinals, 3 runs to 2, on a dramatic two-out RBI single by rookie Tyler Moore. But let’s rewind and remember how they got there.

Michael Morse reached on an error. Ian Desmond singled, putting runners on first and second and nobody out.

Danny Espinosa then, inexplicably, bunted. Many of us in Nats town scratched our heads (which were already raw from pulling our hair out in clumps all game). Why the hell would Espinosa bunt? On the radio, Slowes and Jaegler wondered if perhaps Morse had missed a sign–was that a safety squeeze? A suicide squeeze? What the hell was going on?

After the game, Davey Johnson said he had called for a straight sacrifice bunt, figuring it was the best way to win. (Upon hearing this, I’m sure that Bob Brenly, giving small-ball analysis for the TBS television feed, achieved orgasm).

But did it really give the Nats a better chance to win? Let’s look at the numbers. Before the sacrifice bunt, the situation was runners on first and second, nobody out. Looking that situation up in our handy run expectancy matrix , we see that in that situation, the Nats had a run expectancy of 1.556. That is: when you look at all the times that situation has occurred in baseball between 1993 and 2010, the team in that situation scored, on average, 1.556 runs.

After the sacrifice bunt, the situation was runners on second and third, with one out. That drops the Run Expectancy slightly, to 1.447. So, did the sacrifice give the Nats a better chance to win? Strictly speaking, no. But the drop in run expectancy isn’t big enough, really, to get all that upset about it–especially if all you’re trying to do is get one run over and tie the ball game.

Where things really got dicey was after the Kurt Suzuki strikeout. That made it two outs, runners on second and third: a run expectancy of 0.626–a huge drop from 1.447!

That puts Tyler Moore’s pinch-hit RBI single into perspective. When we watched it, it felt deleriously unexpected–that’s because it was.

Incidentally, I wish TV broadcasters kept a little base/out state run expectancy figure off in one corner of their broadcast. It would be an excellent bit of additional information.

Hunting the Dreaded Sun Monster

Nats fans are all too well acquainted with the dreaded Sun Monster that ate up both Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth during a Sunday afternoon horror show against the Brewers at Nats park on September 23. (Of course, this creature already has its own twitter account.)

Well, the Nats will travel to Saint Louis to play the Cardinals in the National League Division series. Because television is run by media elites who write idiotic hit pieces about DC, the Nats will play at 3:00 P.M, Eastern time. Thanks to the New York DamnYankees and their stranglehold on prime-time television scheduling, the Nats will have to play an afternoon game for the benefit of the legions of unemployed television-viewing baseball fans everywhere who would otherwise be numbing their pain with vicodin and bourbon cocktails while watching Dr. Phil.

This also means that Harper, Werth, and possibly Morse might have to contend with a Saint Louis Sun Monster. James Wagner of the Post has already written a fairly good piece on the difficulties of the sun in Saint Louis. I commend that piece to you if you want to read about how players felt about the sun.

But here at Natstradamus, we like verifiable phenomena where we can find them. So the question is: when is the worst sun field time at New Busch Stadium in Saint Louis?

If you don’t want to be blinded with science here’s your short answer: the Sun Monster is going to gobble up whoever is standing in center field at 4:02 P.M. Central Time (5:02 Eastern).

Let’s start with the ballpark orientation. You should all bookmark this diagram by the brilliant FlipFlopFlyBall. That’s a graphical representation of the direction a batter faces in all MLB ballparks, relative to True North.

Let’s assume that a center fielder in straight-away center field lines up so that he could stare at the batter directly in the eyes–that is, they would be on the same line, facing each other. (I know this isn’t how real defensive alignment works, but go with me on this, OK?) That means that the center fielder would have to be facing 180 degrees opposite the batter’s facing.

Refer again to that diagram and look for Busch Stadium. If you plug Busch Stadium into Google Earth and measure the angle from home plate to straight away center field, you will see that the batter faces about 68 degrees from true North. The Center Fielder, then, would have to be facing the other direction (180 degrees opposite!) so the Center Fielder’s facing is about 248 degrees from true North.

Thanks to the hard work of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the general public has access to an excellent Solar position calculator. The value we’re looking for is the Solar Azimuth: the position of the sun in degrees clockwise from north.

At the start of the game (2:00 P.M. Central Time, 3:00 P.M. Eastern), we can already see that the solar azimuth is at 221.94 degrees. Things get progressively worse as the afternoon goes on, however. At about 4:02 local time, things are at their worst: the solar azimuth reaches the dreaded 248.06 degrees: right into the eyes of the center fielder.

Yikes. How about a shadow? That’s going to need a bit of trigonometry.

At the start of the game, the solar elevation (the angle of the sun, measured from the horizon) is 36.06 degrees. I don’t have good measurements of the height of the stands at Busch Stadium, so I’m going to assume the stands are about 100 feet tall at their highest point. We’ll also imagine that the center fielder is playing about medium depth (start of the inning, no basenners, no defensive shifts on) which puts him maybe 375 feet from home plate. I don’t know the measurement of the foul ground between the plate and the backstop. Let’s assume it’s 12 feet.

The length of the shadow at any given time, then, assuming that the sun is shining directly behind home plate, is the long side of a right triangle formed by the base of the backstop (A), the top of the stands (B), and the position of the center fielder (C). If that value is equal to or greater than 387 (375+12), the center fielder is in the shadow; if less, the Sun Monster has him.

So how long will the shadow be at 4:02 PM central time? well, that’ll be

Which means

Where

With an angle of elevation of 16.51 degrees at 4:02 PM local time,

Our center fielder will get no help from the shadows, then. If he stands 375 feet from the plate, he’s 387 feet from the backstop, and in the full sun. Fifty feet ahead of him (in what would now doubtless be infield-fly territory), the relief of the shadows beckons. But he must live with the full sun.

At the start of the game, by the way, the shadows are much shorter–a mere 137 feet–so even if the sun isn’t directly in the center fielder’s eyes, pretty much the whole outfield is in direct sunlight.

There you have it, Nats fans. We had better hope that there are no fly balls hit to Nats outfielders tomorrow.

Teddy Wins!

I missed it at Nats park today, but Teddy has won. Our long Nationals nightmare is over.

In honor of the achievement, I present to you a ballad of how the real T.R. first came to greatness in Washington–after an assassin’s bullet took President McKinley’s life in Buffalo, N.Y.

First in War, First in Peace, First, at last in the N.L. East.

The Nats are NL East champions.

Somehow, though, it was so bizarrely fitting that it should happen in a game where the Nats scored no runs, in which John Lannan pitched and allowed two runs that may not have really even been his fault–and that it happened against the Phillies. 

So many bizarre, confusing, feelings. But the Nats are N.L. East division champs. 

The Nats Playoff Rotation: A Poem

First we’ll use Gio,
Next up, J-Zim
Followed, we hope, by a Detwiler win.

Next series? Gio
Followed by Zim
Then Det and E.J. (if he doesn’t give in.)

This was obviously inspired by Gerald Hern’s “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain“

Milestones on K Street?

A friend of mine remarked recently:

So the Rays’ pitchers just set the record for most K’s in a season by an AL team with 1,246. The 2003 Cubs hold the MLB record with 1,404. The Nats currently have 1,237 K’s on the season. What are the odds that the Nats’ pitchers break the Cubs’ mark in the next 3 years? I say even money.

This is one of those things that sneaks up on you. As much as I follow the Nats’ pitching staff, I had not really been keeping track of their cumulative strikeout figures. Currently, the Nats are third in the league, behind the Phillies (1290) and the Brewers (1299), although I have to believe the Brewers’ strikeout totals are somewhat inflated from having to face the Astros and the Pirates (who are, respectively first and second in strike-outs while batting) so often.

Let’s get one obvious thing out of the way. The Nats pitching staff posts a collective 8.18 K/9. There are about 90 innings left in the year. Assuming nothing changes radically, we’d expect around 82 more strikeouts through the end of this year, bringing the total to something like 1,328 or so. So, no way the 2012 Nats come close to the 2003 Cubs’ unbelievable strikeout totals.

Could the Nats equal such a mark?

We can try to make an extremely crude projection. Let’s assume an unlimited, 200-inning Stephen Strasburg. Let’s further assume that Edwin Jackson re-signs with the organization, and that Ross Detwiler remains in the rotation. That gives us a five-man rotation of Strasburg, Gio, Jordan Zimmermann, Edwin Jackson, and Ross Detwiler. So let’s start by looking at how they’d do.

Looking at totals since 2008, here’s what the K/9 rates look like:

Strasburg: 11.21
Gonzalez: 8.79
Zimmermmann: 7.41
Jackson: 6.92
Detwiler: 5.48

Assuming all of them pitch 190 innings (I know, very very crude here), this is what it looks like:

Strasburg: 236 strikeouts
Gonzalez: 186 strikeouts
Zimmermann: 156 strikeouts
Jackson: 146 strikeouts
Detwiler: 116 strikeouts.

That gives us a starting pitching rotation total of 840 strikeouts. So far, in 2012, those same five have recorded 800 strikeouts. This seems plausible. So the 840 strikeouts from the starting rotation would need an additional 564 strikeouts from relievers to equal the 2003 Cubs. 2012 Nats relievers put up 433 strikeouts, all together.

What if we don’t bother with all this tiresome averaging over the past several years, and assume the Nats pitch at the same level they’ve done in 2012? Well, assuming 190 innings for everybody:

Strasburg: 11.13 K/9; 235 K’s
Gonzalez: 9.36 K/9; 198 K
Zimmermann: 6.95 K/9; 147 K
Jackson: 8.03 K/9; 170 K
Detwiler: 5.68 K/9; 120 K

For a staff total of 870 strikeouts.

But let’s look back at those 2003 Cubs K/9 rates:

Kerry Wood: 11.35 K/9; 211 IP; 266 K
Mark Prior: 10.43 K/9; 211.1 IP; 245 K
Matt Clement: 7.63 K/9; 201.2 IP; 171 K
Carlos Zambrano 7.07 K/9: 214 IP; 168 K
Shawn Estes: 6.11 K/9; 151.2 IP; 103 K

Wow. Strasburg today has nothing on Wood and Prior in 2003. They got more strikeouts, more often, over far more innings than we now think prudent. The forgotten man here was Shawn Estes, who racked up 103 strikeouts in 28 starts for the 2003 Cubs.

If the Nats are going to challenge the 2003 Cubs for the most strikeouts by a pitching staff in a single season, they’re going to have to hope that several of the following happen in the same year:

• Stephen Strasburg pitches over 200 innings
• Jordan Zimmermann pitches over 200 innings
• Gio Gonzalez pitches over 200 innings
• Ross Detwiler discovers some way to get 2 more strikeouts per 9 innings
• The bullpen gets more strikeouts