Do not understand it. Last night you have a string of righties vs. a lefty who has a propensity to give up homers and nearly did the inning before, yet you leave him in because ostensibly your lone righty outside of your closer, Casey Janssen, is unavailable, after having not pitched in two days and that having been his only appearance of the week. Sounds like he's injured, or headed to the DL. Blame the loss on injury and the Nats offense not executing the fundamentals to give the team a mere single run in 12 innings.
Yet tonight you bring in that same righty...after you leave in your starter just long enough to give up the lead against a batter who has hit 6 homers in as many games, and who homered off that same starter a couple innings prior, after your starter nearly gave up a second homer the previous inning to Yoenis Cespedes. A blistering hot lefty who actually has trouble against righties, and you have a solid control righty available who is unlikely to give up homers, so worst case scenario you match up with Thornton a few batters later or bring in Storen for 4 or 5 outs, "runners stranded" be damned. Why didn't he go to Janssen? Why was he not gone to the previous night if he's apparently healthy enough to come in tonight? Even if he was unavailable last night but he was available tonight, why didn't you go to him tonight?
I don't get it, I just don't get it. I had seen Matt's bullpen mismanagement last year, like when he left Roark in vs the Orioles in I believe the 7th inning only to give up the lead, when it was clear Roark was not going to get through. Apparently Matt never heard "better a batter early than a batter late." I chalked it up to rookie mistakes or trying to coax too much from his starters. Then you have Game 4 of the NLDS last year, where he went to Barrett instead of say, Clippard. Then you have all of the games lost this year due to Blake Treinen being the "8th inning guy" for about 3 weeks. And then you have the past two games. If this club should be so lucky as to win the division I have no idea what will happen in the playoffs. I just don't get it.
Pray this team plays its brains out and sheer talent can bail out Williams' poor decision making into a WS win. If they should blow it again due to his mismanagement, the freak with him. Until then, put me firmly in the "Fire Matt Williams" camp, or, at least the "Matt Williams is freaking stupid" camp, since firing him at this point or at the end of the year would probably be disastrous for the club's continuity.
