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Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series
The remarkable story of the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals told by the Washington Post writer who followed the team most closely.
By May 2019, the Washington Nationals—owners of baseball’s oldest roster—had one of the worst records in the majors and just a 1.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros, the team with the best regular-season record, to claim the franchise’s first championship—they won all four games in Houston, making them the first club to ever win four road games in a World Series.
“You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg told Washington Post beat writer Jesse Dougherty after the team advanced to the World Series. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.” Dougherty followed the Nationals more closely than any other writer in America, and in Buzz Saw he recounts the dramatic year in vivid detail, taking readers inside the dugout, the clubhouse, the front office, and ultimately the championship parade.
Yet he does something more than provide a riveting retelling of the he makes the case that while there is indisputable value to Moneyball -style metrics, baseball isn’t just a numbers game. Intangibles like team chemistry, veteran experience, and childlike joy are equally essential to winning. Certainly, no team seemed to have more fun than the Nationals, who adopted the kids’ song “Baby Shark” as their anthem and regularly broke into dugout dance parties. Buzz Saw is just as lively and rollicking—a fitting tribute to one of the most exciting, inspiring teams to ever take the field.
By May 2019, the Washington Nationals—owners of baseball’s oldest roster—had one of the worst records in the majors and just a 1.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros, the team with the best regular-season record, to claim the franchise’s first championship—they won all four games in Houston, making them the first club to ever win four road games in a World Series.
“You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg told Washington Post beat writer Jesse Dougherty after the team advanced to the World Series. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.” Dougherty followed the Nationals more closely than any other writer in America, and in Buzz Saw he recounts the dramatic year in vivid detail, taking readers inside the dugout, the clubhouse, the front office, and ultimately the championship parade.
Yet he does something more than provide a riveting retelling of the he makes the case that while there is indisputable value to Moneyball -style metrics, baseball isn’t just a numbers game. Intangibles like team chemistry, veteran experience, and childlike joy are equally essential to winning. Certainly, no team seemed to have more fun than the Nationals, who adopted the kids’ song “Baby Shark” as their anthem and regularly broke into dugout dance parties. Buzz Saw is just as lively and rollicking—a fitting tribute to one of the most exciting, inspiring teams to ever take the field.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 24, 2020
94 people are currently reading
269 people want to read
About the author
Jesse Dougherty
1 book41 followersI am the author of Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series, released in March of 2020. I otherwise cover baseball for the Washington Post, where I've worked since 2017, and am always thinking of my next book to put on this here site.
My home library is a too-healthy mix of fiction and contemporary non-fiction (plus a long shelf dedicated to nostalgia/A Series of Unfortunate Events). Also being a sportswriter by trade, I have a good bit of sports books, some favorites being Friday Night Lights, The Last Shot and Jonathan Eig's biography of Muhammad Ali. When it comes to novels, I've more recently enjoyed Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman and anything Kevin Wilson. As for non-fiction, Hua Hsu's memoir, Stay True, was probably my overall favorite book of 2022.
My home library is a too-healthy mix of fiction and contemporary non-fiction (plus a long shelf dedicated to nostalgia/A Series of Unfortunate Events). Also being a sportswriter by trade, I have a good bit of sports books, some favorites being Friday Night Lights, The Last Shot and Jonathan Eig's biography of Muhammad Ali. When it comes to novels, I've more recently enjoyed Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman and anything Kevin Wilson. As for non-fiction, Hua Hsu's memoir, Stay True, was probably my overall favorite book of 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
March 11, 2020
Brilliant blend of the season as it unfolded with back stories prior unknown/untold before this book. The back and forth is captivating and recreated the emotional roller coaster of the season better than I had even hoped for. This is a page turner for Nationals fans as well as anyone who loves baseball or a good human interest happy ending story. Moved to tears with moments of laugh out loud hilarity. Jesse nails this from start to finish.
May 16, 2020
What do you do when major league baseball is on hold due to the Covid virus? This lively account of the Washington National's improbable winning the 2019 World Series helps a lot. We learn personal things about the different players. I personally feel like the players shouldn't take the field again until they can be safe. Anyway, I liked reading this sports book.
March 29, 2020
Obviously biased as both a Nationals fan and Syracuse grad, but I truly feel Jesse has written a phenomenal account of the Nationals bizarre, incredible season. Great backstories of both the players and front office staff, interwoven wonderfully with the drama of the baseball season. Captures all the emotion felt by Nationals fans in 2019 - a great read.
April 5, 2020
3.75 stars. While I obviously love the subject matter, being rushed to print meant it was poorly edited. Still, a fun read!
November 1, 2020
It felt appropriate to celebrate the first anniversary of the Nats World Series win by reading the book detailing their unforgettable 2019 season and postseason. Thank you, Jesse Dougherty, for allowing me to relive the most nerve wracking, amazing, and unforgettable baseball experience this fan has ever been lucky enough to live through first-hand. The 2019 Nats were pure magic, healing the heartbreak of the postseasons past. Your book is a beautiful way to remember those breathtaking moments.
(P.S. I am aware of the editing errors and all that, but that did not take away from my enjoyment of the book one whit. After all, bumpy roads lead to beautiful places. And this is a beautiful place ... holding memories that will last a lifetime.)
(P.S. I am aware of the editing errors and all that, but that did not take away from my enjoyment of the book one whit. After all, bumpy roads lead to beautiful places. And this is a beautiful place ... holding memories that will last a lifetime.)
May 9, 2020
Audio version of this book was so-so. It was a profile of the 2019 championship season for the Washington Nationals. Good profiles are in the book on manager Dave Martinez and World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg. However, it felt incomplete- it felt like a lot more could be told about the team. Given how soon this was published after the Nationals won the World Series, that seems to be the case. The narration was okay, but slow. I listened at 1.25 setting just to hear him talk at more "normal" pace that I am used to with audiobooks. But overall it was worth a listen
July 11, 2021
Yeah I’m biased but this book was really a must read for any Nationals fan. I found myself smiling as I read through the accounts of the 2019 season and really enjoyed the extra interviews included.
April 2, 2020
I absolutely adored this book. It was the perfect blend of reveling in the joy of our win mixed with little stories I didn’t know before. The book had a few typos in it which really bugged me so wish it had been more closely edited (hey, I can help with that!) but otherwise it was flawless. A complete joy! Highly recommend.
August 22, 2020
Following the tradition of David Halberstam's classic baseball novels: 'Summer of '49' and 'October 1964', Dougherty recalls the unforgettable 2019 season, playoffs and World Series as the unlikely Washington Nationals overcame a 19-31 record on May 24th to win their first World Series title. Buzz Saw mirrors the formula of Tom Verduchi's 'The Cubs Way' as Dougherty deftly runs the race alongside the Nats during their turbulent season, profiling players' histories and providing compelling storylines, anecdotal details and a well researched understanding of a miraculous 2019 baseball campaign.
Apparently, Buzz Saw was rushed to market and as a result, I found about a dozen typos (The Cardinals scored 10 first running-runs, he meant inning), and miscalculated dates and stats (Bryce Harper debuted in 2012 in one paragraph and 2011 in the next). Considering how talented Dougherty is with the pen, romanticizing the sport with a rich vocabulary and conveying a high level of suspense and drama unique to Major League Baseball, I wish his novel would have landed on a editor's desk a few more times but that aside, it's a terrific read for those who revere baseball as I do.
Apparently, Buzz Saw was rushed to market and as a result, I found about a dozen typos (The Cardinals scored 10 first running-runs, he meant inning), and miscalculated dates and stats (Bryce Harper debuted in 2012 in one paragraph and 2011 in the next). Considering how talented Dougherty is with the pen, romanticizing the sport with a rich vocabulary and conveying a high level of suspense and drama unique to Major League Baseball, I wish his novel would have landed on a editor's desk a few more times but that aside, it's a terrific read for those who revere baseball as I do.
March 28, 2020
This is a wonderful book about the Washington Nationals’ improbably, almost impossible World Series win in 2019. If you’re a Nats fan like myself, this is a must read. It takes you behind the scenes of some of the most iconic moments of the season and really peels back the curtain on everything in an insightful and entertaining way - while also succinctly running through the short but explosive history of this team. Especially in these troubling times without baseball, letting myself get immersed in this account and reliving those amazing moments from the playoffs and beyond was a real pleasure.
April 30, 2020
What a well done review of the season. It was really engaging with lots of inside information about the players and how they were handling the ups and downs of the games. I don't often enjoy "sports" books, but this one really drew me in and filled the spot in my heart that is missing baseball right now.
October 10, 2020
So good. I loved the way this wove together all our high points and low points and the personal stories of the players; it really touched on everything that made our 2019 miracle season special. Being in the middle of a pandemic and stressful times and really missing going to baseball games, all the memories this book covered hit me hard. :(
May 30, 2020
Great chronological story of the National’s 2019 Championship Season. It begins at the end, the 2019 Winter Meetings, and looks back at the season. One of the things I love about the book are the backstories of the different players, Rizzo and Davy. Great reading for Nats fans and non-fans who love a great underdog story.
April 1, 2020
Must read for Nats fans
Great read. Relive the ups and downs of the Nationals championship year with stories, not just about the games themselves, but the fascinating cast of characters that incredibly came together in just the right way at just the right time to win it all.
Great read. Relive the ups and downs of the Nationals championship year with stories, not just about the games themselves, but the fascinating cast of characters that incredibly came together in just the right way at just the right time to win it all.
August 16, 2020
Go Nats!! May have shed a tear revisiting the WS win!!
October 18, 2020
Best book I have read in my life
August 6, 2021
What a joy to revisit this season. My favorite October ever.
Doughtery does a really good job here. Reminded me of David Halberstam and Jacqui MacMullan the way he tells stories.
Doughtery does a really good job here. Reminded me of David Halberstam and Jacqui MacMullan the way he tells stories.
December 15, 2021
Obviously
Read
February 26, 2025Nothing better than following a story you lived and loved, but now with even greater access. Reflecting on 2019, the run seems as improbable as it did in April of that season. God damn it the nats are fun
April 6, 2025
This book is definitely only for Nats fans. Reading it brings back all the nostalgia from the 2019 season. Absolutely loved it.
April 3, 2020
I follow the team closely and there were many stories here I hadn’t heard. Jesse writing style makes it read like a novel.
July 2, 2020
Excellent. Must read for any Washington Nationals fan
May 9, 2020
A fun, all too quick, romp through the Nationals 2019 season. The 2019 season was something special and Buzz Saw does a good job of capturing the ups and downs, the big moments, the personalities, and the amazing October run. A must-read for Nationals fans and, given the great comeback from 19-31 and the many quirky stories along the way (dugout dances, Baby Shark, broken noses, etc), it is worth the time of any baseball fan. I particularly enjoyed the more in-depth peaks into the behind the scenes stories of some of the players, coaches, and front office staff. Jesse should consider a future book focused on these background stories. I expect I will reread Buzz Saw many times over the years in order to relive this glorious season.
March 30, 2020
Nice review of a wonderful season. I like how he interspersed player background stories with events as they unfolded.
August 27, 2022
the nostalgia 😭😭😭
December 31, 2022
Although I am a baseball fan and the Washington Nationals are my team, I still didn't expect to love this book as much as I did. I'm glad that I waited to read it three years after the team's amazing triumph, because the distance gave the reminiscing even greater resonance, especially in the wake of COVID robbing the team and its fans the post-Championship celebration season they were owed, not to mention the added heartbreak of ownership decisions that have since decimated the team, making another championship run impossible to contemplate for years to come. The book is beautifully structured, following the team through the year, with lots of insights only a hometown reporter could access. Plus, each chapter focused on individual players, their histories and personalities. The Nationals' World Series win defied all the odds, over and over again, and the underdog story is always a great sports story, which makes it a good read for most sports lovers. It made me smile--and it made me cry at the end, literally, as I so wanted to share it with my deceased mother, who imbued her own love of sports, especially baseball, in me. She would have loved it.
August 2, 2021
I remember all the frustrations, injuries, blown saves, home run dances and comeback wins. I still couldn’t put this down. It’s a fantastic story and Jesse tells it very well. Many tears were shed.
April 4, 2020
There are various ways to assess this book. Jesse Dougherty was the main Washington Post reporter covering the Washington Nationals during the 2019 season and jumped in to write this book after the World Series concluded in late November - he didn't have much time to complete a book of more than 300 pages. So the main praise is for his having completed a book that reads as well as it does.
The book follows a chronological approach after a prologue Books covering a winning season for a major league sports team have the same problem - everyone knows how it came out, so the book needs to explain in an interesting way how that happened, usually with illustrative stories about the players and others as well as some (but not too much) team and player history. And of course enough but not too much play-by-play narrative about the pivotal moments of key games. Given what a rush the author must have been in, I think he did a remarkable job of all that in a balanced way.
The book is 302 pages long with 25 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. At 146 pages, chapter 13, the book moves on from the regular season and the second half of the book is about the playoffs, at which point the books shifts to describing each game in some detail. For an invested Nats fan as I think of myself this was enjoyable to read, reliving those moments, but I'm not sure how interesting this summary approach for will be for readers a few years from now.
The author picks several of the Nats players to focus on more than others, providing more of their life story - probably the most detailed is the description of Howie Kendrick. He also sets up his description of the NLCS games with the Cardinals with a relatively long narrative about one of the Nationals "advance scouts" and his discoveries about how to pitch to the Cardinals batters. It was the kind of sidebar story that many books like this have more of - one could easily imagine a version of this book with more of that running to hundreds of pages more.
Some Nats fans may have favorite players who contributed heavily to the team's success over the entire season but who are not much featured or described in this book, other than in passing. You eventually realize Dougherty is going to keep returning to describing his usual-suspects players and not expand his coverage.
In books like this there are occasional interesting nuggets - Dougherty's description of the clubhouse relationships between the Latin players and the rest of the team is one of those. I felt that even though I'm sure I have read most of what Dougherty produced in the Washington Post during the season that there was plenty of new material here.
The book is a celebration of the Nationals and this season. I'm not sure how this will age as a description of the season and the Nationals for an audience that isn't made up of Nats fans.
One curious aspect is that the book was produced in such a rush that there are numerous not-enough-proofing errors. In a metaphor, a bulldozer is described as having "no breaks" rather than "no brakes" - that sort of thing. Several sentences in a row ended with the word "in" that I believe were supposed to end with a year, that is, "in 2012." I probably noticed a dozen of these, which really says something about the rush to produce this book by the baseball season opening day.
The book ends with a nine page epilogue. I think providing a good ending for a book like this without some passage of time is difficult. I think the epilogue could have been left out and the book would have been better, but it wouldn't have cracked 300 pages.
Essential for a Nats fan to read.
The book follows a chronological approach after a prologue Books covering a winning season for a major league sports team have the same problem - everyone knows how it came out, so the book needs to explain in an interesting way how that happened, usually with illustrative stories about the players and others as well as some (but not too much) team and player history. And of course enough but not too much play-by-play narrative about the pivotal moments of key games. Given what a rush the author must have been in, I think he did a remarkable job of all that in a balanced way.
The book is 302 pages long with 25 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. At 146 pages, chapter 13, the book moves on from the regular season and the second half of the book is about the playoffs, at which point the books shifts to describing each game in some detail. For an invested Nats fan as I think of myself this was enjoyable to read, reliving those moments, but I'm not sure how interesting this summary approach for will be for readers a few years from now.
The author picks several of the Nats players to focus on more than others, providing more of their life story - probably the most detailed is the description of Howie Kendrick. He also sets up his description of the NLCS games with the Cardinals with a relatively long narrative about one of the Nationals "advance scouts" and his discoveries about how to pitch to the Cardinals batters. It was the kind of sidebar story that many books like this have more of - one could easily imagine a version of this book with more of that running to hundreds of pages more.
Some Nats fans may have favorite players who contributed heavily to the team's success over the entire season but who are not much featured or described in this book, other than in passing. You eventually realize Dougherty is going to keep returning to describing his usual-suspects players and not expand his coverage.
In books like this there are occasional interesting nuggets - Dougherty's description of the clubhouse relationships between the Latin players and the rest of the team is one of those. I felt that even though I'm sure I have read most of what Dougherty produced in the Washington Post during the season that there was plenty of new material here.
The book is a celebration of the Nationals and this season. I'm not sure how this will age as a description of the season and the Nationals for an audience that isn't made up of Nats fans.
One curious aspect is that the book was produced in such a rush that there are numerous not-enough-proofing errors. In a metaphor, a bulldozer is described as having "no breaks" rather than "no brakes" - that sort of thing. Several sentences in a row ended with the word "in" that I believe were supposed to end with a year, that is, "in 2012." I probably noticed a dozen of these, which really says something about the rush to produce this book by the baseball season opening day.
The book ends with a nine page epilogue. I think providing a good ending for a book like this without some passage of time is difficult. I think the epilogue could have been left out and the book would have been better, but it wouldn't have cracked 300 pages.
Essential for a Nats fan to read.
April 27, 2020
These days, when a team wins baseball’s Fall Classic, it’s a given that there will be a book or two about the accomplishment. In some cases, the local newspaper will pore over its archives and photos to produce a “quickie” publication, hoping to seize the moment when giddy fans will lay out their bucks for a nice keepsake.
Then there are books like BUZZ SAW that are more thoughtful and analytic.
More than a “buzz saw,” this is a story of a jigsaw, painstakingly putting puzzle pieces together, experimenting here, tinkering there, until the Washington Nationals saw themselves looking back at the rest of the National League after winning a wild card berth and advancing through the playoff rounds in thrilling fashion to make it to the World Series.
There are a couple of reasons for that. One is the success of Michael Lewis’ classic MONEYBALL, published in 2003. Here was a new and controversial way of thinking brought forth by Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, which turned traditional baseball on its head. No longer could a ball club go by the “gut feelings” of the scouting staff in assembling their rosters. Now statistics were the rage in calculating and projecting the potential value of the players.
This became a business model not only for teams to follow, but for authors as well. MONEYBALL begat THE EXTRA 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, by Jonah Keri (2011), which begat BIG DATA BASEBALL: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik (2015), which begat THE ONLY RULE IS IT HAS TO WORK: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team, by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller (2016), et al.
Jesse Dougherty, a beat writer for the Washington Post, is the latest to follow this path as he examines how the Nationals put together their unlikely story. Mired with a poor record early in the 2019 season due mostly to a leaky bullpen, manager Dave Martinez and GM Mike Rizzo scraped together a baseball band of brothers who slowly but surely fought back from the depths of despair to beat the favored Houston Astros in unprecedented fashion: neither team won any of the games played on its home field.
However, despite the proliferation of the MONEYBALL model, Martinez and Rizzo have been around long enough to know that there are intangibles. Ace pitcher Max Scherzer calls August the “month of hate” because by the time the dog days of summer roll around, you’ve been around your teammates perhaps a bit too long. Nerves fray, and things that were minor annoyances in April have the potential to boil over and ruin a team. You need a few colorful characters who can keep the squad loose during tense times.
A beat writer is confined by the “real estate” allotted to him or her by the geography of a physical newspaper (a little less so on a website). They can only give the reader so much --- the nuts and bolts of what happened during a game, maybe a feature on a player or a story about some decision by the front office.
A book like this --- one that follows a (usually successful) team’s exploits over the course of a year --- doesn’t need much in the way of recapitulation; fans know what happens. It’s the way the story is told that makes the time spent reading worth it or not. In this case, Dougherty makes very good use of the expanded space of a book by filling in the details that escape daily reporting. That makes BUZZ SAW a worthwhile read in a stadium of baseball reading.
Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
Then there are books like BUZZ SAW that are more thoughtful and analytic.
More than a “buzz saw,” this is a story of a jigsaw, painstakingly putting puzzle pieces together, experimenting here, tinkering there, until the Washington Nationals saw themselves looking back at the rest of the National League after winning a wild card berth and advancing through the playoff rounds in thrilling fashion to make it to the World Series.
There are a couple of reasons for that. One is the success of Michael Lewis’ classic MONEYBALL, published in 2003. Here was a new and controversial way of thinking brought forth by Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, which turned traditional baseball on its head. No longer could a ball club go by the “gut feelings” of the scouting staff in assembling their rosters. Now statistics were the rage in calculating and projecting the potential value of the players.
This became a business model not only for teams to follow, but for authors as well. MONEYBALL begat THE EXTRA 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, by Jonah Keri (2011), which begat BIG DATA BASEBALL: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik (2015), which begat THE ONLY RULE IS IT HAS TO WORK: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team, by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller (2016), et al.
Jesse Dougherty, a beat writer for the Washington Post, is the latest to follow this path as he examines how the Nationals put together their unlikely story. Mired with a poor record early in the 2019 season due mostly to a leaky bullpen, manager Dave Martinez and GM Mike Rizzo scraped together a baseball band of brothers who slowly but surely fought back from the depths of despair to beat the favored Houston Astros in unprecedented fashion: neither team won any of the games played on its home field.
However, despite the proliferation of the MONEYBALL model, Martinez and Rizzo have been around long enough to know that there are intangibles. Ace pitcher Max Scherzer calls August the “month of hate” because by the time the dog days of summer roll around, you’ve been around your teammates perhaps a bit too long. Nerves fray, and things that were minor annoyances in April have the potential to boil over and ruin a team. You need a few colorful characters who can keep the squad loose during tense times.
A beat writer is confined by the “real estate” allotted to him or her by the geography of a physical newspaper (a little less so on a website). They can only give the reader so much --- the nuts and bolts of what happened during a game, maybe a feature on a player or a story about some decision by the front office.
A book like this --- one that follows a (usually successful) team’s exploits over the course of a year --- doesn’t need much in the way of recapitulation; fans know what happens. It’s the way the story is told that makes the time spent reading worth it or not. In this case, Dougherty makes very good use of the expanded space of a book by filling in the details that escape daily reporting. That makes BUZZ SAW a worthwhile read in a stadium of baseball reading.
Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
June 5, 2024
“You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” said starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg after the Nats swept the Cardinals in the NLCS. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.”
I had just moved to D.C. when four months later the Nats won the World Series. It immediately was followed by a 60-day pandemic-shortened season, and then management selling off most of its talent. So I only got a glimpse of the team at the height of its powers.
Fortunately, this book is the answer to all my questions since then — notably, who is Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasberg, and why does the team shop keep selling their jerseys if they’re not active players: Answer — which is one of the driving themes of this book — they had phenomenal seasons in 2019, amd were major contributors to the WS team, never to touch that pinnacle of talent again.
In many ways, Buzz Saw is your typical sports story: It starts with an odd cast of characters (the oldest team in MLB) and focusing on the “little things” aka fundamentals to compete with other, sexier franchises. It has dips and turns, and a hole to climb out of when the Nats started 19-31 (who doesn’t love an underdog story?), mostly because the old team was marred by injury after injury and a terrible bullpen.
The guiding force, which suits the narrative, is the steady hand of manager Dave Martinez and the shrewd moves by GM Mike Rizzo who leaned on “quality on a budget, reliability, some moxie, and some experience.”
The book then takes us player by player, chapter by chapter through different parts of the team and necessary background on some of the most iconic players on this team: the veteran and injury-ridden Ryan Zimmerman, the slugger and media-shy Anthony Rendon, the cocky young bat Juan Soto, the first-draft pick flamethrower Stephen Strasburg, the underdog and small-sized Howie Kendrick, and Geraldo Parra, who injected the Baby Shark energy into the ballclub when they needed it most.
Then for its second half, the book unfolds the drama of the playoffs, of four elimination games, of a team comfortable with trailing, and of the improbable bouts with fate that all aligned to give the Nats the title. Dougherty walks us through each series, inning by inning, stopping a while for certain plate appearances or pitching matchups, and giving us that sports-movie energy that defined the season.
By relying on a healthy mix of new school analytics and the old school eye test and traditional scouting, the Nats created a team with just the right moxy for just the right time to make a legitimate title run. With some creative and innovative management, notably relying on only 6–7 pitchers in the playoffs, the Nats avoided their shaky bullpen and won the games they had to win and stayed in the games they were within striking distance.
“Take one block out and the whole thing falls down. But keep them together, weather a 19-31 start, let the weight wobble, just enough to steady itself, and you get… well, you get this.”
I had just moved to D.C. when four months later the Nats won the World Series. It immediately was followed by a 60-day pandemic-shortened season, and then management selling off most of its talent. So I only got a glimpse of the team at the height of its powers.
Fortunately, this book is the answer to all my questions since then — notably, who is Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasberg, and why does the team shop keep selling their jerseys if they’re not active players: Answer — which is one of the driving themes of this book — they had phenomenal seasons in 2019, amd were major contributors to the WS team, never to touch that pinnacle of talent again.
In many ways, Buzz Saw is your typical sports story: It starts with an odd cast of characters (the oldest team in MLB) and focusing on the “little things” aka fundamentals to compete with other, sexier franchises. It has dips and turns, and a hole to climb out of when the Nats started 19-31 (who doesn’t love an underdog story?), mostly because the old team was marred by injury after injury and a terrible bullpen.
The guiding force, which suits the narrative, is the steady hand of manager Dave Martinez and the shrewd moves by GM Mike Rizzo who leaned on “quality on a budget, reliability, some moxie, and some experience.”
The book then takes us player by player, chapter by chapter through different parts of the team and necessary background on some of the most iconic players on this team: the veteran and injury-ridden Ryan Zimmerman, the slugger and media-shy Anthony Rendon, the cocky young bat Juan Soto, the first-draft pick flamethrower Stephen Strasburg, the underdog and small-sized Howie Kendrick, and Geraldo Parra, who injected the Baby Shark energy into the ballclub when they needed it most.
Then for its second half, the book unfolds the drama of the playoffs, of four elimination games, of a team comfortable with trailing, and of the improbable bouts with fate that all aligned to give the Nats the title. Dougherty walks us through each series, inning by inning, stopping a while for certain plate appearances or pitching matchups, and giving us that sports-movie energy that defined the season.
By relying on a healthy mix of new school analytics and the old school eye test and traditional scouting, the Nats created a team with just the right moxy for just the right time to make a legitimate title run. With some creative and innovative management, notably relying on only 6–7 pitchers in the playoffs, the Nats avoided their shaky bullpen and won the games they had to win and stayed in the games they were within striking distance.
“Take one block out and the whole thing falls down. But keep them together, weather a 19-31 start, let the weight wobble, just enough to steady itself, and you get… well, you get this.”
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