Friday, July 8, 2011

Worst Game Ever?

I've been fortunate to make it to a bunch of Nats games over the past 6.5 seasons. I've seen my fair share of walk-offs and wild wins and I've seen my fair share of horrible and embarrassing losses.

Last night I had the mis-fortune of being at Nats Park for the stunning and record-breaking loss. You see, I had family in town from Philly (yea, Phillies phans), and they wanted to see Nats Park and experience the atmosphere. And it should be noted that they were more than impressed with the park. Anyway, moving on...

I'm a stats guy. I need to quantify everything I'm seeing in baseball - I'm not sure if it's cause I'm curious or if I just need to know why. I could sit here and tell you that the Nats had a 99.6% chance to win the game as of the 6th inning. I could tell you again how much I hate sacrifice bunts at any point in the ball game, let alone the 9th inning with a good hitter. And I could question why we would pinch hit a 79.6% Contact hitter (Desmond) with a 76.3% Contact hitter (Stairs) with a runner on 3rd - speed not withstanding. Or maybe some numbers about Sean Burnett's struggles against lefties and, well, everyone else. I could question hitting Stairs before Nix (or just using Stairs at all).

But I'm not going to do that.

While I was driving home in stunned silence, not listening to postgame like I normally do, I was thinking about whether this was the worst game I have ever seen in person; and man do I have some doozies on my record.

The Contenders:
Last Night - Up 8 runs in the 6th inning, losing in regulation to a team that was 18 games under .500.

April 18, 2010 - The Marquis Game. Jason Marquis fails to record an out while giving up 7 runs - raising his ERA at the time to 20.52.

April 5, 2010 - Opening Day vs. the Phillies. Not only does Obama shun the home team by rocking a White Sox hat, the Phillies, led by Halladay, destroy John Lannan and the Nationals 11-1 in front of 20,000 Phillies fans.

My tendency is to think that last night's game was the worst game I have ever seen. The Marquis game was over before the first out was recorded. The Opening Day game was Lannan against Halladay - and the game was pretty much over before the first pitch. But last night... We were up 8-0... Sigh.

Well, CapBallers, which do you think is the worst game I have ever seen?

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