Nationals' World Series hopes end with painful rewind of two years ago

SAN FRANCISCO – This was going to be their year. They were the most talented. They were the deepest. They had done this before, gotten their hearts broken, and returned healed and secure in how to get it right.

Everybody said so.

Then, right in the middle of them making this their year, on their way to being something special, the Washington Nationals found nothing had changed at all. They looked out at another team in another ballpark, and those players were jumping around and their fans were waving towels, and it turned out it was the Nationals who were a hit short, a strike short and now, again, a season short.

"The window isn't closed," their shortstop, Ian Desmond, said. "But it is closing."

If that sounds slightly melodramatic, that was the heartache talking. The Nationals were eliminated Tuesday night in the fourth game of the National League Division Series. The San Francisco Giants, a wild-card team, had knocked them out, ultimately by a 3-2 score at AT&T Park, but incrementally by how they played, and especially how they first created and then performed in more of the critical moments.

A week and a day into the postseason, the best regular-season team in the American League is out. The two best teams by record in the National League are out, one of them being the 96-win, built-for-October, all-grown-up-and-ready-to-bring-a-championship-to-D.C. Nationals. And, turned out, in one game faster than the 98-win Nationals from two years ago.

In four games, they batted .164. Jayson Werth, who in the first 49 games of his postseason career hit .264 with 14 homers and 27 RBI, batted .059 with zero and zero in the last four. Adam LaRoche hit .056. Ian Desmond hit .167. Denard Span hit .105.

As miserable as that sounded, really this elimination came packaged in the tiniest acts. The batting average was terrible, of course. But, in the final hours, they field a soft two-hopper back to the mound (Gio Gonzalez) and not have it doink off their right ankle (leading to two unearned runs), or they throw a reasonably precise fastball (Aaron Barrett) instead of a dirt bomb (leading to the winning run), they're still playing, and they're playing in their ballpark in front of their fans with their best pitcher suited up for Game 5.

Yeah, maybe manager Matt Williams has his second-best pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, in the game in the seventh inning, or even his second-best reliever, Tyler Clippard, instead of the lefty Matt Thornton and rookie Barrett. Then maybe Williams doesn't get into a postgame debate – one-sided as it was – over whether Oct. 7 qualifies as a day to go with your studs or as a day to play it as you did for the six months that got you here. The results were the results. The moment looked a bit large for the rookie as it was and, indeed, the last pitch Barrett threw was to conclude an intentional walk of Pablo Sandoval, and that most easy of tosses left his hand like a freed pigeon, fluttered over his catcher's head and one-hopped the backstop. After some tumult, Buster Posey was thrown out at home attempting to score on that heave, but by then the Nats' elimination was nearing inevitability.

He played it the way he played it, Williams said, "because those are our seventh-inning guys."

So there you go.

Williams did a fine job in his first season on the top step. The Nationals won a lot and when they did, he was humble. When they didn't he was accountable. He'd never said, "World Series or bust," like his predecessor, but he didn't have to. It was understood. They could pitch, end to end. They could hit. They played hard or they sat next to Williams for a while. Because of this, they believed they would win, even down two games to none, especially when they won Game 3 here, and so it came as a jolt when Wilson Ramos grounded out and the Giants met at the pitcher's mound, something they always seem to do this time of year.

"We're a great team," said Bryce Harper, who, nine days from his 22nd birthday, homered and doubled and drove in both Nationals runs. "We have a great organization. The only way we have to go is up."

He shrugged, as that seemed perhaps too shiny for the moment.

"It hurts," he granted.

Thing is, it's not something that is or isn't there. It's a week. Sometimes less. And it's baseball, which settles nothing in a week, other than the most important thing, which is the team that advances. The Giants, and not the Nationals, were smoking cigars and soaking each other and being knuckleheads, and just down the hallway. They were going to St. Louis. They were the team everybody decided a few weeks ago probably didn't quite have it this year, even in an even year, which is their specialty.

So the Nationals were asked late Tuesday what had gone wrong. They were asked to search their souls and find a flaw. And they found nothing. That is, nothing that should have led to this.

A rookie pitcher overthrows a 2-and-1 fastball, and a veteran catcher tries to backhand it because it's coming in hot, and you're slung over the rail working over your gum and wondering where it all went wrong. You go 18 innings one cold night and a pitch finds somebody else's bat barrel, and you're sleeping on that for 3,000 miles. You hold the Giants to nine runs in four games – nine! – and a .222 batting average and that one stupid home run, and that's it, pack up boys, you weren't good enough again.

Is it over? Is it really over? Can it be?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

"There's just small things," reliever Drew Storen mused. "When you're playing games of this weight … it doesn't take a whole lot. It's a matter of inches."

That's the game, of course.

"Uhhhh, wish we could have a redo on this whole season," LaRoche said. "Feel like we didn't see the team the last few days we were for the last six months."

They'd started on Friday. By Tuesday, the Nats were gone. And there was something the young right-hander, Barrett, said that sounded a lot like how that must feel. He was describing the 60-foot flip that was supposed to be ordinary, that instead went terribly awry. It didn't harm the Nationals like the previous wild pitch had, but it wasn't pretty, either.

"As soon as that ball left my hand," he said, "I didn't even feel it come out of my hand. I have no idea what happened."

And so too did the Nationals' season just float away, almost like they'd never had it in their hands at all.