Why closers should pitch in tie games on the road

Last year, out of 30 writers who voted on the award, 18 of them believed that Matt Williams was the best manager in the National League. If they didn't believe he was the best manager, they at least believed he did the best job that season. Williams won the Manager of the Year award in his first season, giving him as many as Bruce Bochy, who hasn't won the award in 18 years. It was a fine start for the rookie, a fine start.

This year, Williams is a future ex-manager, the skipper of baseball's most disappointing team. The Nationals aren't just the most disappointing team in baseball; they take second and third place in the rankings. When a team wins 96 games, a manager's strategic foibles and quirks are easy to overlook. When a team loses in the first round (in part because of a strategic foible and quirk) and then plays their way out of the division title that was supposed to be theirs by fiat the next season, the manager becomes the focus of attention. And people are so very, very attentive right now to what Williams is doing and not doing.

To set the scene: It's the bottom of the ninth in St. Louis, and the Nationals and Cardinals are tied. Instead of bringing in expensive, shiny new closer Jonathan Papelbon, Williams went with Casey Janssen, who allowed four runs the day before on 26 pitches and struck out just five of the 47 batters he faced in August. Janssen got two quick outs, then gave up a double, walk, and homer for the loss, his second straight.

Or, to dumb it down, the Nationals were tied in the ninth inning twice in the series, and their best reliever didn't appear.

I know, I know, big deal. This is something almost every manager does. Will Leitch reminded Cardinals fans not to get too haughty, sharing a tweet from last October.

Matheny, when asked about not using closer T. Rosenthal in 9th: "We can't bring him in, in a tie-game situation. We're on the road."

— Bernie Miklasz (@miklasz) October 17, 2014

The quote came after the Cardinals lost the NLCS, when manager Mike Matheny used Michael Wacha, who was coming off a serious injury and hadn't pitched in almost a month, over closer Trevor Rosenthal. Why? Well ...

"We can't bring him in, in a tie-game situation. We're on the road."

"We can't shake this beer. It's carbonated and it will get everywhere once it's opened."

"I should not throw this cat off this tall building, for he cannot fly."

"We can't bring him in, in a tie-game situation. We're on the road."

Like it's so obvious, so self-evident. You can read the exasperation in the quotes and imagine the manager making a perfectly sixth-grade you're-so-stupid face at the reporter. And to be fair, in my younger years, I agreed with the strategy. Because if the team takes a lead on the road, who's going to close it out, the long reliever? The left-handed specialist? Nah, man, the closer needs to be there to protect the lead. That's why Abner Doubleday invented the position while waiting for the second game of the Bull Run doubleheader.

For years, I figured it didn't make a difference if the closer came in to keep the game tied. Or, at least, I didn't think about it much. Then I had an epiphany, and I apologize if this has been written dozens of times before. I felt pretty clever about it at the time, at least. Here goes:

In a tie game on the road, the closer isn't trying to save a win. He's trying to save a chance that the other team will screw up in the later innings.

It's game theory. The argument in support of Williams goes something like this: If Papelbon pitched a scoreless ninth, Janssen was going to come into the 10th anyway, so there really isn't a difference. If anything, it just got it over with quicker. Perhaps that's true, that Janssen was doomed to allow a big honking home run at the worst time. But what's important in that scenario is what we'll never know. What happened in the top of the 10th?

That's not the point, see, if the closer came into the tie game, he wouldn't ... look ... don't lawyer me, son.

What did the Cardinals do in the top of the 10th? Did they walk a bunch of guys? Did they make two errors and a balk? Did Trevor Rosenthal groove a fastball? Did he groove several? Did he allow two bloops and a blast? Did the umpires blow a call that New York refused to overturn?

If you don't like the "other team will screw up" construction, make it all about the Nationals. Did they have a great sequence of at-bats? Did they string hits together and work the count? Did they go up by five runs in the top of the 10th?

We'll never know, because Papelbon didn't have a chance for the save. Not the rulebook save, but the metaphorical save for allowing the top of the 10th to happen. I'll bet dogs, wild dogs, came onto the field and distracted the Cardinals, leading to the Nationals batting around. The Nationals would have had a five-run lead that even Janssen couldn't have blown. Or maybe nothing happened, and the Cardinals won in the 10th off Janssen anyway. We'll never know.

Things can happen in an extra half-inning of baseball. Beautiful, wondrous things. And the goal of a manager in a tied ninth inning on the road is to see another extra half-inning of baseball. On July 31, the Mets walked off against the Nationals in 12 innings. Papelbon never pitched. On July 10, the Orioles walked off, and then-closer Drew Storen didn't appear in the game, ceding the metaphorical save to Tanner Roark. And on and on and on.

It's not like using the closer in all of these games would have put the Nationals up by three games in the NL East by now. It could have picked up an extra win, though. Even if Matt Williams won't have any use for that win by the end of the season, it could be the difference between first and second place for another manager.

Now, with some bullpens, it doesn't matter quite as much. The Giants' closer is Santiago Casilla, who may not be as good as Sergio Romo, who may not be as good as Hunter Strickland, unless they're all tied. You can almost use the argument that the tiebreaker might be the benefits of using the closer in a familiar, comfortable situation.

But when it comes to the Dodgers and Kenley Jansen, who is clearly the best reliever on the team (without a close runner-up), not using him in a tie game on the road is the same thing as saying, "Nah, that's okay. Improving the odds of the game continuing isn't as important as the closer getting a save opportunity that may or may not ever exist, even if it comes in a three-run game." Yet, that's what Don Mattingly does, without fail.

It might cost the Dodgers in the postseason. It might cost the Cardinals in the postseason. It won't cost the Nationals in the postseason, though. Injuries, disappointing performances and Matt Williams have seen to that. The difference between the Nationals making the postseason and missing it entirely probably isn't what Williams does with his closer on the road. In the middle of a monumentally frustrating season, though, it sure is easy to pick on.

Losing when you can make sense of why is tough enough. Losing in a nonsensical way stings even more, and the Nationals have been pretty good at that this year.