Washington Nationals season ends on bogus replay review

The Washington Nationals have had to endure heartbreak after heartbreak each time they’ve made the postseason, and last night with hope on the bases, replay screwed up everything.

I’m not a Washington Nationals fan. I’m not a Chicago Cubs fan. Frankly, I don’t necessarily care for any of the teams in the playoffs this year. So when I sit down after work, all I’m hoping to see is a good game, which Thursday’s Game 5 matchup did in fact provide.

However, with the Nats recent playoff history of devastating losses and the Cubs just getting their ring, I was pulling for Washington last night. I am an A’s fan, which means I’m a Sean Doolittle fan. He’s a great guy and hard to root against. Jon Lester on the other hand (see: 2014 Wild Card game) is an extremely easy antagonist to pick out.

So last night, after boneheaded defensive plays reminiscent of the Indians play in the field the night before, the Nationals looked doomed once again. But I kept watching because there was still plenty of game left and the Cubs were running out of pitchers.

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By the time that Wade Davis entered the game with the score at 9-7 with two down in the bottom on the seventh, there was a sense that at some point Davis, their last reliable option, would falter. As they mentioned on the broadcast, he had never had a save of more than three outs and his manager, Joe Maddon, was asking him to get seven.

It’s the bottom of the eighth and one run is already in, making it 9-8. Michael Taylor is on second, and Jose Lobaton is on first. Outside of a double play grounder from the pinch-hitter, Davis has been on the ropes, walking two and allowing two singles in the inning. A base hit here could tie the game up and send this game (approaching five hours) to crazy town.

Instead, catcher Willson Contreras snap-throws to first and Lobaton is initially called safe by the first base umpire. Maddon, being the troublemaker that he is, challenges the play and it gets reversed because for a split second when you use two cameras, infrared military technology and squint until your face hurts, the runner was off the base by a millimeter while the tag was being applied.

Inning over. Effectively, season over.

Baseball has its flaws, and its flaws are a part of the beauty of the game. Getting the technically right answer on a tag play like this kind of diminished the product, which up until this point, was one of the better postseason games of the decade. Instead, Nats fans and baseball fans alike left feeling a little cheated and thinking about what could have been because of something that should not have been.

This isn’t what we, the baseball fans, want from instant replay. Fair or foul? Sure. Was the runner safe on a keep-the-tag-on-the-runner-forever-and-hope-for-the-best-play? Not so much. This isn’t how anyone wants to see a team eliminated from the playoffs. At best, the Nationals were robbed of an opportunity to change the history of their franchise. At worst, it could look like the league was pulling for a Cubs-Dodgers NLCS.

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Some on social media were calling for this type of replay to be forbidden by next season, but actually legislating this play could be difficult in written form. It’s easy when you think tag play where the defender just keeps his glove on the runner, but there are other instances where that is actually ok. Like when a player goes for a triple and over-slides the base by a foot. Keeping the tag on should result in an out there. It’s these minute distances during a slide that need to be removed from the game.

As is the case so often for the Washington Nationals, any rule change will be too little, too late.

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