The History of Nats in the All-Star Game

While not necessarily falling at the zenith of the season, this week marks the traditional midway point of the MLB regular season; the All-Star Break. It includes the time-honored tradition of the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game, the T-Mobile Home Run Derby, all culminating in the 87^th MLB All-Star Game presented by MasterCard. During this four-day-long excruciating hiatus without any meaningful baseball (but this one counts!) the 89.5% of MLB players who aren’t All-Stars take this time to go on vacation while the rest head to San Diego for this “showcase”.

The MLB All-Star Game presented by MasterCard isn’t always the most well-played or enjoyable game due to the fact that there is a pitching change or multiple fielding changes per half inning, plus players going from position to position while the announcers natter on about god knows what but it sure isn’t the game and then Berman shows up and starts sounding like a duck and all of a sudden it’s the 8^th inning and someone good comes in the game but there is a special guest in the booth and they start talking about some initiative and no one knows that is going on and I don’t know what is happening and… I lost my train of thought. Anyway, that’s how home field advantage in the World Series gets settled.

So, another one of these time honored traditions (Soul Pose MLB All-Star Yoga?) is that each team gets at least one player sent to the “showcase”; i.e. even the worst team gets to cheer for their one guy – to the game, not The Color Run MLB All-Star 5K Presented by Nike. Unfortunately, during the first half a decade-plus of the Nationals’ existence, before the fan base really took root aided by a few high-profile stars, they were often on the short end of the stick in terms of number of representatives sent to the Midsummer Classic. When I began writing this piece I wanted to take the time to look into some of the performances of Nationals representatives in the All-Star Game until I realized that their contributions have been, how do you say, minuscule at best.

Let’s give it the old college try anyway:

Best National All-Star Game Hitting Performance:

2007 – Dmitri Young – 1 for 1, 1B, R.

Young came in as a pinch hitter for Trevor Hoffman, hitting a ground ball single to second that should’ve been ruled an error. He ended up scoring on an Alfonso Soriano homer. Fun Fact: Soriano is the only other Nationals player to get a hit in an All-Star Game. Yes, you read that right, the Nationals have only 2 hits in 11 All-Star Games.

Worst National All-Star Game Hitting Performance:

2015 – Bryce Harper – 0 for 3, 2 K.

No notes needed. It was not a good show by the unanimous MVP. Strikeouts were both of the swinging variety against David Price and Zach Britton.

Best National All-Star Game Pitching Performance:

2012 – Gio Gonzalez – 1 IP, 3 BF, 1 K.

Coming on in the 3^rd in relief of Matt Cain (who started the game) (no I’m not kidding, that was just 4 years ago), Gio struck out Mike Napoli swinging and then got Curtis Granderson and Derek Jeter to fly out and ground out, respectively.

Worst National All-Star Game Pitching Performance:

2005 – Livan Hernandez – 1IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB.

It was a typical Livan messy inning where he got out of self-created trouble with his cunning and guile. The inning went as follows: popout against Teixeira, walk to Varitek, ground-rule double by Roberts, RBI single by Ichiro, flyout by ARod, pickoff of Ichiro at 1B. The first player to appear in an All-Star Game wearing a Nationals uniform had the worst performance.

Tags: Bryce Harper, Dmitri Young, Gio Gonzalez, Livan Hernandez, Nationals, Nats, Washington Nationals