The Giants take a 2-0 lead over the Nationals in the NLDS on a Brandon Belt home run which untied the longest extra-inning game in postseason history, but there was so much more to this game than one swing.
In previewing the Giants-Nationals series, our Grant Brisbee wrote, "Jordan Zimmermann could be the most underrated pitcher in baseball , though that might not be the case after his dominant no-hitter on the last day of the regular season." In a just universe, Zimmermann or his opposing starter, Tim Hudson, might have come away from the game with their Q score heightened, legends burnished. Instead, as the game went on and on, becoming one of the longest in postseason history (both by time and innings), their great starts receded into the background, superceded by the intense, marathon nature of the contest, and finally a big blow struck by Brandon Belt off of Tanner Roark.
In the end, what will be remembered about this game, if it is remembered, the Division Series round seeming to be something like a disposable, diet-cola version of the real postseason (the more postseason elements there are, the further away each element is from the championship, the less likely it is to stand out), will be the performances of two Giants: First, there was swingman Yusmeiro Petit, until Saturday night's exigencies forced him into Game 2 the likely Game 4 starter, who had the best start of his career in relief, pitching six innings of scoreless, one-hit baseball. Then, in the top of the 18th inning, with the game having become the lengthiest in terms of time and equaled the longest postseason game in terms of innings, Belt hit a moonshot off of Roark that untied the game and propelled the Giants to a 2-0 series lead.
This was something of a redemption story for Belt, who had struggled throughout the season with fractured bones and a concussion. And so Petit and Belt were the deserving heroes, and if you want a third there was rookie Hunter Strickland, who picked up the save in the bottom of the 18th a day after giving up a couple of big home runs to the Nationals. But there were other deserving heroes, among them Zimmermann for the Nationals and Hudson for the Giants, who preceded them.
It seems fair to say that Mr. Brisbee was right and that Zimmermann does not have the highest media profile, but it is equally true that anonymity does not correlate with quality. Zimmerman has been in the Nationals rotation for four seasons (it might have been more like six seasons, but he had an enforced time out for Tommy John surgery) and in that time he's been one of the better pitchers in baseball, putting up a 3.00 ERA (128 ERA+) in 122 starts. Given a minimum of 650 innings, Zimmermann's adjusted ERA is the seventh-best in baseball in that span. It's about even with Justin Verlander's, albeit in fewer innings. His rate of 1.7 walks per nine innings trails only Cliff Lee (1.4), Bartolo Colon, and Dan Haren (the latter two each 1.6).
On a WAR basis he ranks 12th. That might not seem like a big deal, but six of the 11 guys ahead of him have Cy Young Awards on the mantles. None of this is to say that Zimmermann should be ranked with among the greats of the game, the future Hall of Famers, but he's somewhere on the next tier down.
If you look at the postseason career pitching records, in among the residents of Cooperstown (and those that will soon be joining them) such as Mariano Rivera, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Whitey Ford, and Carl Hubbell are many more Zimmermann types. The career postseason ERA leaders include Harry Brecheen, Sherry Smith, Monte Pearson, and Blue Moon Odom (30-inning minimum). Juan Guzman has the fourth-best October winning percentage of all time, tied with Fernando Valenzuela and Bruce Kison. Single-season leaders include Mike Boddicker and Duster Mails.
No one with the slightest of egos wants to be a cult figure. It doesn't do you any good to be a Vincent Van Gogh and have your work be universally celebrated at some point after the worms have already dined on your flesh, or make the Hall of Fame after you've gone to meet your ancestors. During his lifetime, just to mention one of the pitchers cited above, Pearson was probably more famous for his many injuries (and for talking about them) than he was for his 1933 ERA title or 4-0 record and 1.01 ERA in four World Series. After his lifetime, well, perhaps his grandchildren think about him sometimes, if they're still around. The rest of us watch a lot of reality television and probably don't think about him, or Jordan Zimmermann, much at all.
That might even be true if you're a dedicated Nationals fan, what with Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, and Doug Fister lurking about. There is nothing wrong with that, nor with devoting a greater percentage of your brain to "American Idol" or reruns of "The Big Bang Theory" than you might to wondering about who the 12th-best pitcher in baseball over a given four-year period might be. It just happens that sometimes some large proportion of the best artists, the best of what they do in any given field, get deselected by the capricious Gods of Popularity, who settle on Justin Bieber instead.
Jordan Zimmermann: But that was hours ago (Rob Carr).
At the risk of pedantically preaching, according to ancient Sumerian myth, the Gods of Popularity cower before the God of Curiosity. When the GOP offers you a Bieber or a "Dating Naked" or some such, join the Church of Curiosity and search out a Zimmermann. This is the express route to being a carnivorous wolf of culture instead of a complacent bovine grazer.
The greatest, most painful thing about Zimmermann and Game 2 of the NLDS -- and this is less so for Tim Hudson, who has been around a long time and has been the subject of a whole book or two -- is that it bears out that fame is not based on quality, but contingency. Zimmerman pitched 8.2 shutout innings and allowed just three singles. He issued his first walk of the night (to the ubiquitous Joe Panik), and rookie manager Matt Williams opted to hook him and go to his reborn closer (and past postseason turkey) Drew Storen. One Pablo Sandoval double and a play-at-the-plate review later the game was tied 1-1 and Zimmermann's start, and thereby Zimmermann himself, became a footnote to the game's eventual outcome. Had Williams stuck with his starter and he had retired Sandoval or Storen had gotten his man, Zimmermann would have been the story. Instead, he goes back into the pile somewhere behind the Kardashians.
Tim Hudson: Endless Highway (H. Darr Beiser-USA TODAY Sports).
A word about Tim Hudson, one of the GOP in a different sense (Grand Old Pitchers). He started the season on a great run, something heartwarming to see after his 2013 with the Braves ended on a note of ankle-shattering carnage at first base. After his 13th start on June 12 he was 7-2 with a 1.81 ERA. It couldn't last, and it didn't. His ERA in his remaining 18 starts was 5.13, his record 2-11; batters his .308 and slugged .470 against him. Gimpy and apparently exhausted in September, he gave up 23 runs in 21.2 innings. He didn't look like a Game 2 starter, he looked like a guy who should be happy to watch the postseason from the bench and then proceed directly from there either to a well-respected retirement (year to go on his contract or not) and/or a highly-regarded surgeon.
Bruce Bochy, a manager who is probably going to the Hall of Fame someday, thought differently. That he was required to think differently because the Giants don't exactly have a pile of quality starting pitching and Madison Bumgarner had been spent on the Wild Card game, but history will forget that part when and if it gets around to canonizing him. What it will recall is that the pitcher he tabbed for the second game rose from his deathbed to pitch 7.1 innings of masterful one-run baseball, scattering seven hits, walking none, and striking out eight. Regardless of if the Giants move on to the next round or not, Hudson may never pitch so well again. It was heartwarming to see the 214 game-winner, kicking around the majors since the last century, rise to the occasion one more time.
What followed was an extra-inning battle, a kind of playoff-within-the-playoff game to settle the thing, but with a parade of lesser lights taking center stage, including Craig Stammen of the Nationals, who gave his team three scoreless innings. After even Rafael Soriano had pitched -- Soriano had not only lost the closer's job to Storen at the end of the season but seemed to be either quietly injured or deeply ensconsed in Matt Williams' doghouse -- the Nats turned to Roark, a fine starter who had been pushed to the bullpen because Washington has a starting rotation good enough that they could donate a No. 2-type hurler to another club and not miss much.
What followed was a historic blast, one blow that erased all that came before it. It was a great baseball moment, but it was oh so unfair to so many players in this game, on both the winning and losing sides. This game was a novel, not microfiction, and it's characters deserve to be remembered in all their multifarious glory.