Source: www.masnsports.com --- Thursday, December 28, 2017
As we count down the final days of 2017, we're counting down the most significant stories of the year for the Nationals. Some are positive. Some are negative. All helped define this Baseball season in Washington. We'll reveal two per day through New Year's Eve, beginning right now with ... NO. 8: THE BULLPEN MAKEOVER The Nationals cruised through the first half of the 2017 season. They took over first place in the National League East Division on April 18 and never gave it back. They carried a 9 1/2-game lead into the All-Star break in mid-July, with no reason to believe they would so much as let anybody else even come within sniffing distance of them the rest of the way. And yet the first half of the season felt like a nightly exercise in torture for the Nationals and their fans, all because of the one flaw of their roster: the back end of their bullpen. After watching Mark Melancon depart for the Giants, then Kenley Jansen, Aroldis Chapman and Greg Holland all sign elsewhere over the winter, the Nats decided to go into the 2017 season with no experienced closer. On the final day of spring training, then-manager Dusty Baker announced Blake Treinen would pitch the ninth inning, with Shawn Kelley and Koda Glover holding the primary setup roles. What transpired over the next three months was a horror show the likes of which hadn't been viewed in these parts since the local ballclub routinely lost 100 games a year. Treinen lasted o ...
from Baseball http://ift.tt/2CjgkVo
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