Washington Nationals’ bench coach Randy Knorr comments on last-inning decisions of Davey Johnson-MLB
Following the epic loss against St. Louis Cardinals in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, scores of questions have been hurled at the decisions taken by Davey Johnson in the last inning of the match.
Johnson has shown confidence in his moves and has termed them the best under the given circumstances, regardless of the criticism.
Interestingly, the possible successor of Johnson as manager and their current bench coach Randy Knorr has discussed the possibilities if Pete Kozma was awarded the walk in the game.
In the last match, when the conversations began in the team in the ninth inning regarding whether they should walk Kozma or not, Johnson decided to keep him at the plate as opposed to removing him from there.
Some of the team members felt that removal of Kozma from the plate through the walk will help them avoid the hit that he was capable of striking at this stage of the match. By the time Kozma drove in for two runs and stole victory from the Nationals, it
became increasingly painful for the team to realise the cost of not walking him.
Actually Johnson did not want to take the risk of loading the bases, especially when his reliever Drew Storen was under pressure. The Nationals were just one strike away from winning the match and allowing walk may have affected their momentum. Unfortunately,
the strategy did not work and Kozma lived up to the fears of some of the Nationals’ team members.
Knorr has expressed his disappointment about how Kozma brought despair in the whole clubhouse by striking for two runs in the last inning.
“The only thing I kick myself about was, we had a chance to walk Kozma to get Cruz up to hit to get Motte out of the game at a tie ballgame before Kozma got the two-out hit to drive in two runs,” Knorr said. “I kind of looked back at him and said, ‘What
do you want to do here?’ I think the whole dugout was so shocked that they scored the two runs, anyway. Because we thought we had a good chance of winning.”
Nationals will be learning from their experience in the playoffs and will be looking to use it in the upcoming seasons.
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