For all the conjecture and angst among Nationals fans at the moment, this much is inarguable: A Washington team with Jonathan Papelbon in the bullpen is better than the Washington team that took the field in Miami on Tuesday night, clinging to a lead in the National League East while the New York Mets made improvements both in their lineup and in their own bullpen.
That’s what should matter more than anything else, feelings and emotions and psyches included. Drew Storen, of course, is the aggrieved party here, the likeable and effective closer who has spent this season doing absolutely nothing wrong. But the Nationals’ deal for Papelbon on Tuesday means they have added the piece that the fan base clamored for and the club most needed, a lockdown reliever who better equips the bullpen not only for now, but for October.
That he’ll likely pitch the ninth inning, rather than the eighth — why should that matter?
Of course it does, and how Storen handles the addition of Papelbon will be a key element in how this works out. “Everybody in the bullpen wants to be the closer,” Storen told me last year. “Who doesn’t want to be?” It’s how baseball has worked over the past generation. They didn’t play “Enter Sandman” for the Yankees’ setup guy. They played it for Mariano Rivera. That’s the order of the world.
But we also know that such thinking is being tweaked, if not completely overhauled. Whenever someone spoke of the Nationals’ bullpen to this point in the season, he or she would bring up the Kansas City Royals circa October 2014 — not by way of similarities, but by the stark differences. The chic thing to think, to say: A dominant bullpen leads to wins in playoff series, and the Nationals have won, to this point, zero (0) playoff series.
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