The Nats finished 2nd in the Power Ranking and were the team that I believed were best positioned to win the World Series. The San Francisco Giants killed that possibility by dumping Washington in four games in one of the National League Division Series.
But the postseason performance of Harper, limited to those four games as it was, may indeed have been that launching pad. Harper launched a few himself, blasting 3 homeruns. He also scored 4 runs and knocked in 4. He hit .294, registering a .368 on-base percentage, an .882 slugging percentage, and had an OPS of 1.251 as well.
Harper began his assault on Giants pitching in the bottom of the 7th inning of Game 1 with the Nats trailing 3-0. Against reliever Hunter Strickland, Harper led off and absolutely crushed a titanic shot into the right field upper deck at Nationals Park to get the Nats on the board.
Harper, who appears to thrive under pressure in dramatic situations, sensed the importance of getting the Nats crowd back into the game: "Get some runs on the board, get this crowd back into it. Getting them going was very exciting." It wouldn't ultimately be enough, as San Fran held on to win 3-2, going up 1-0 in the series.
Game 2 would prove to be historic, the longest postseason game by time in MLB history, tied for the longest by innings.
