Game 5 of the National League Division Series will be remembered as the night the Los Angeles Dodgers called on closer Kenley Jansen in the seventh inning, and ace Clayton Kershaw to convert the save. But for Jayson Werth and the Washington Nationals, a fateful decision in the sixth inning may linger.
After Julio Urias worked around a two-out walk in the fifth inning, he was back on the mound in the sixth with the Dodgers still trailing by a run. Werth drew a leadoff walk and he remained at first base as Urias retired the next two batters.
Ryan Zimmerman then roped a double down the left-field line that Andrew Toles managed to track down before the ball rolled to the wall. Werth rounded second base, and at the instruction of Nationals third base coach Bob Henley, continued toward home plate.
Toles threw a strike to cutoff man Corey Seager, who paused for a moment, seemingly surprised to see Werth still running, and calmly relayed the ball to the plate for the final out of the inning.
“I don’t know, you’re just running. Obviously the ball didn’t get down in the corner,” Werth told reporters after the game, as seen on MLB Network.
“Coming into third and see Bobby waving his hand, you don’t know what’s going to happen in that situation. You have to make them make two good throws. We’ve been aggressive on that play ever since I’ve been here. You live and die by those moments sometimes. If Seager doesn’t make a good throw or ball kicks away, we score. Tough play.”
The most notable factor on the play was Toles’ ability to cut the ball off. After that was the fact that Werth didn’t have his typical secondary lead off first base. Urias ended the sixth by picking off Harper, which presumably led to Werth erring on the side of caution.
“Well, [Henley’s] aggressive and there’s two outs,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said after his club was eliminated. “And with the hitters we had coming up after, he feels terrible about that because it didn’t work. But Toles got to the ball very quickly, got rid of it, and you know, did what he was supposed to do, hit the cut-off man.
“But you know, that wasn’t what lost the game, really. We had some chances with runners on third, less than two outs. That was kind of the story of the year. We didn’t get them home. It’s tough to take, a tough loss. You know, we got some improvements to make, and hopefully we’ll be back in this same position next year.”
The Dodgers went on to tie the game in the seventh inning behind Joc Pederson’s leadoff home run. It knocked Max Scherzer out of the game, and the Nationals’ bullpen wilted. Los Angeles jumped out to a 4-1 lead and hung on for a one-run victory.
