When asked about his key strategic decisions after each game of the Washington Nationals 3-1 Division series loss to the San Francisco Giants, Nats Manager Matt Williams' response was almost invariably, "that's the way we did it all year."
And while those regular season moves were good enough to propel his team to the best record in the National League, there is one vital lesson that Williams needs to learn from his Giant's counterpart, Bruce Bochy. And that lesson is simply: The playoffs are different.
There is a good reason why Bochy sports two World Series rings, and has his team playing for a third title in five years. He firmly realizes that the playoffs aren't a "by the book" exercise, where managerial moves can be made by a computer loaded with a season's worth of data.
Bochy practices the "art" of managing with great success, while Williams employed the "science" of managing in his first playoff series, and came up just short in three one-run losses.
In sticking with his regular season tactics, Williams seemingly ignored two important things that make the playoffs different: better competition and player's varying ability to perform under extreme pressure.
The two most important decisions that Williams made during the Division series both involved deciding who should pitch in crucial moments of games two and four. And each time the pitcher Williams selected for these high-leverage assignments, wasn't unable to get the job done.
In game two, even though starter Jordan Zimmermann was mowing down the Giants on only three hits through eight innings, Williams stated after the game that he had pre-determined that if Zimmermann got into any kind of trouble in the ninth, that he would summon closer Drew Storen. After recording the first two outs, Zimmermann's three ball, one strike fastball to Joe Panik slid an inch or two wide of the outside corner, setting off Williams' "trouble alert."
It didn't seem to matter to Williams that Zimmermann was still throwing well, and wasn't showing any signs of being "out of gas." He had gotten into trouble, no matter how modest, so it was time to go to Storen. Of course, Williams was still Arizona's third base coach when Storen last appeared in a playoff game, a four run ninth inning meltdown two years ago that allowed the Cardinals to turn a pending victory celebration into what is now bordering on a curse.
This time, Storen allowed two straight hits, with the Giants scoring the tying run on Pablo Sandoval's slicing double into the left field corner,in what would end up being a 2-1 Giants victory in an series defining 18-inning marathon of a playoff game.
Then with the scored tied in the seventh inning of game four, Williams summoned rookie Aaron Barrett to take command of a two on, one out jam -- a tough situation that Barrett had handled well repeatedly during the regular season. But this time, Barrett wasn't facing the Mets on a Tuesday in August. This was the playoff-hardened Giants under extreme stress.
Barrett looked visibly nervous, and pitched that way, uncorking one wild pitch that allowed the eventual winning run to score, and another pitch just as wild that, fortunately for the Nats, lead to a runner being thrown out at the plate to end the inning.
In contrast, in the the series ending game five of the League Championship series against the Cardinals, Bochy watched his usually reliable closer Santiago Castilla struggle with his control in the top of the ninth with the score tied. Bochy acted what he was seeing in at the moment, not on tendencies or a season's worth of data. So with the bases loaded and two outs, he pulled Castilla, and his miniscule 1.70 regular season ERA, for lefty Jeremy Affeldt, who quickly produced a weak tapper from pinch hitter Oscar Taveras, ending the threat with a nifty unassisted put out at first.
Then in the bottom of the ninth, after Cardinals pitcher Michael Wacha, had thrown six straight balls, a situation that would induce many managers to have one of his lesser hitters, lie Travis Ishikawa, take a pitch to try to eke out a walk. This being the same Travis Ishikawa who had been let go by the Pirates for his lack of plate production earlier in the season. Ishikawa supremely rewarded Bochy's instincts and confidence by lashing Wacha's next offering into the rightfield stands, sending the Giants to the World Series once again.
The Washington Nationals have a good team, built around the best starting pitching in baseball. But by the next time they make the playoffs, which could easily be next season, Williams needs to have gone to school on the managerial moves that have lead Bruce Bochy's Giants to three World Series appearances, and fully realize that indeed, the playoffs are different.
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