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Martinez said he preferred to have reliever Daniel Hudson face Will Smith, despite the potential for disaster. It was a classic “go with your gut,” old-school baseball thought, the kind the analytically inclined tend to hate and baseball purists tend to love. “There was really not much to think about. Muncy hit a ball 400 feet against [Doolittle in the seventh]. We didn’t want that to happen,” Martinez told reporters after the game. “He’s a fastball hitter, we know that, Hudson throws fastballs, so I liked the other matchup [against Smith].”
But then Hudson walked Smith, too, unintentionally this time, loading the bases and giving Nats fans a collective panic attack. It’s definitely not conventional to blatantly put your team in a position to lose a critical playoff game. That’s the polite way to say it. But Martinez’s decision ultimately worked out, though the drama continued until Hudson struck out Corey Seager on a nasty slider to end the game, giving the Nats a 4-2 win and tying the series 1-1. That’s the honest way to say it.
So, ultimately, Martinez’s decision was both a good one and a bad one. Good because it worked out, bad because it was flawed thinking — and flawed thinking isn’t likely to play out in the positive over the long haul. Baseball can be weird, brutal, forgiving and punishing. Martinez got away with a poor process in Game 3, but he might not be so lucky next time. Had Smith cleared the bases with a double or walked it off with a homer, the decision would’ve no doubt gone down as one of the all-time worst in postseason history. One could argue that it should go down that way anyway — the logic behind “process over results.” But the outcome guarantees it will now become only a footnote that gets attention for a day or so. Nationals fans will see it as genius, while others will see it as colossally boneheaded. Regardless, the Nationals now go home for Game 3 with the series tied and, perhaps, with a psychological advantage. That’s a result any team will take.
