30 for 30: The Matt Williams Story: How One Man Led a Collection of Stars into Mediocrity

The Nationals have former all-stars at each offensive position except for catcher (Ramos can’t stay healthy), 3rd base (Yunel Escobar has the 7th highest batting average in the NL this year; .313), and CF where Michael A Taylor is rookie who’s glove is ahead of his bat. 4 Nationals starting pitchers have played in the All-Star game, Doug Fister (the one who didn’t) finished 9th in National League Cy Young voting just last season, and Joe Ross has been out of this world in his 5 quality starts (6 total starts). Drew Storen had a sub-2.00 ERA as an all-star closer and they ADDED another reliever to improve the ‘pen. Yet this ‘superteam’ is just 54-50 (.519) and a game behind the freaking Mets and their anemic hitting.
Sure, injuries are a MAJOR culprit for the Nationals struggles. Those 5 All Stars in their lineup? (Not including Dan Uggla because he can go suck a dick) Only Harper has performed while Zimmerman, Rendon, and Werth have all dealt with injury issues and Ian Desmond’s struggles have been well chronicled by me. Though Zimmerman homered in the 9th to kick off a great almost-rally and now has 2 homers in the 7 games since his return, he and Werth have been hovering around the Mendoza line and such lack of performance is completely inexcusable for players cashing in the amount of dough that they’re earning. Rendon, fortunately has been a great contributor when he’s been healthy.

DBacks supress a 4 run 9th to beat DC 6-4

When I was watching the Nationals give up 6 consecutive runs to the lowly DBacks, I was asking myself “How the fuck can a team with more overall raw talent than probably any team aside from probably the Dodgers (Yes, this includes the Cardinals, Pirates, and Royals) be this bad?” I was checking up on the Mets just annihilate the Marlins and the realization that we could be behind a team that ranks towards the bottom of the league in all offensive categories really flabbergasted me. This is a team that had the best odds to win the World Series entering the year, not a 4-games-over-.500 team fighting for a playoff spot (Yup, as you read this, the Nationals are 3 games out of the 2nd wild card and, of course, a game out of the division).

So, Why is this team struggling so much? We’ve used health as an excuse in the past but now, many of the injured stars have returned and things haven’t improved. They got worse. Maybe it was foolish or wishful thinking to anticipate that the return of Rendon, Werth, Zimmerman, and Strasburg (when he comes back in a few days) would be the sparkplug that pushed the Nats into turbodrive. Maybe this is just a short sample of a handful of rough games that we’re all over-reacting to. What I do know is that the Nationals team is underperforming and that there is one constant in all of this: Matt Williams.

Williams has always had questionable at best pitcher management and bullpen habits. He has put the Nationals 9th in the MLB with 26 intentional walks surrendered; NEVER a good thing. Matty is a complete complete slave to the save statistic. If a game is tied entering the 9th, look for Williams to throw someone like Filipe Rivero into the game rather than ace relievers Drew Storen or Jon Papelbon (and then inevitably be forced to use Storen and Pap in a 6-0 game that they’re losing in order to give them some work). The fact that this guy is paid more than any of us to screw up astounds me. If you don’t put Pap or Storen in the game during a late inning tie then there’s a pretty good chance that the worse relievers will blow the game and there won’t even be a game to save. It’s not fucking rocket science.

Williams Conspiring to Blow the Game (Probably)

Williams’ ineptitude was on full display during Saturday’s game against the Mets when, in the 8th inning with the score tied at 2, 1 out, and Curtis Granderson on 2nd base, Matt Williams told Thornton to intentionally walk Yoenis Cespedes. That’s right, the same Cespedes who is hitting .181 against lefties this season (for reference, Dan Uggla is hitting .194 all season). Who was the batter that Williams was getting to? Was it some soft-hitting shortstop? Nope, it was red hot Lucas Duda who had already homered twice in the game. Duda hit a double and ultimately drove in what would be the Mets’ winning run. I really can’t believe I think that this could be even possible— but is Williams dumb enough to think that Duda was ‘due’ for an out since he had already homered twice? How does he not know Cespedes can’t hit lefties? How does he walk him to bring up the hottest hitter on the Mets? It’s insanity.

Lots of other reasons to hate Williams such as his hitting Harper in the bottom 3rd of the order last season, his ability to manage a team into collapsing in October, and his continued use of Rendon at 2nd base (I really don’t think Rendon is able to play 2nd base for long stretches without severely increased risk of re-injury; maybe this is Rizzo’s decision though). He is just a bad manager and, based on the sub-par performances by so many Nationals players this year, one must also wonder whether he is failing to extract the best performances out of his slew of stars. Every day it’s more and more apparent that the players don’t enjoy playing for him, and that is a bad, bad thing.

So, the Nationals are still firmly in the playoff race and any change to the current status quo would negatively impact the team’s performance, right? no. This team needs a capable skipper at the helm and Williams just is not that, sure its rare to see a team in the thick of the playoff chase abandon their manager but it has happened recently (The Brewers fired Ned Yost with 12 games to go in the 2008 season yet still reached the playoffs). The Nationals are a very, very talented team as it is but if ownership and Mike Rizzo ever want to make the most out of the team’s advanced skills, firing Matt Williams is a must.

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