Nationals need to start small

— -- SAN FRANCISCO -- The math doesn't look real attractive for the winningest team in the National League right now. Fortunately, the Washington Nationals don't need any math professors at Georgetown to stop by and explain that to them. 

When you're down two games to none, have the next two games on the road in picturesque San Francisco and have an entertaining date coming up Monday with one of the best pitchers in baseball, there's only one approach to life that makes any sense at a time like this:

Play hooky from math class. What else?

"That's the thing. It just takes one inning," said Nationals closer Drew Storen on Sunday, on the eve of Game 3 of the National League Division Series at AT&T Park, Madison Bumgarner versus Doug Fister, nothing much riding on it except a whole season. "It takes one little thing. And that's the fun thing about playoff baseball. It just takes one little swing of momentum, and then you build off that. So that's the idea. You start small."

And that's where the Nationals find themselves in this series: Starting small. Thinking small. Much as they still believe in reaching for the sky, even now, they seem to have gotten the memo that you can't build a skyscraper without building the first floor first.

So their mission now, their only mission, is to find a way to beat Bumgarner in Game 3 -- and then try to win another game the next day. And then see what happens back in D.C. in Game 5.

Start small. Think small. That's a way better plan than researching how rare it is for any team to win a series after digging the kind of ditch the Nationals have dug. Trust us.

That research isn't their job. It's our job. So here's what you have to know -- but they'd rather not:

• From 1995 through 2013, there were 76 best-of-five division series. In 44 of those, a team lost the first two games. Only five of those teams came back to win the series.

• Just 14 of those teams lost the first two games at home, though, as the Nationals did. And only two of those 14 then got their mojo working on the road and scrambled back to win the next three games. One was the 2001 Yankees (against Oakland). The other? The 2012 Giants (against Cincinnati).

• But baseball didn't just start playing best-of-five series in 1995. From 1969 through 1984, the league championship series was also best-of-five. So counting all best-of-five series in baseball history, 26 teams have lost Games 1 and 2 at home, as the Nationals did. Only those 2001 Yankees and 2012 Giants won those series. And just two other teams -- the 2010 Rays (against the Red Sox) and 1981 Brewers (against the Yankees) even forced a Game 5.

• And, finally, in National League postseason history, there's this: The Nationals are the 14th team ever to lose the first two games of a best-of-five postseason series at home. The only one of the previous 13 teams to win the series was (yep) the 2012 Giants.

Which means there's a valuable history lesson here, but not merely for the Nationals. These Giants are well aware of what can happen in October when a series looks all but over -- because it happened to them. And just two years ago.

So no one has to lecture the Giants about how quickly things can change this time of year. Their memory banks remind them all the time.

"I keep saying it, over and over again," said Buster Posey. "A lot of these guys in here were on the flip side of this two years ago. So hopefully, we use that as a learning lesson for ourselves. We know that to pull this out, we've got to keep it going."

Nevertheless, we haven't heard any of them asking to trade places with the Nationals, a team still reeling from the shock of what happened to them in Game 2, when what looked, for 8 2/3 innings, like a classic Jordan Zimmermann October masterpiece turned into the kind of loss that any team would have a tough time forgetting.

So for this team, the pain of that 18-inning nightmare, and the difficult 5½-hour flight through the empty black sky that followed it, hasn't totally worn off. But wallowing in it isn't going to help this outfit beat Bumgarner on Monday. So it tells us something that nearly everyone on the Nationals' roster showed up at AT&T Park on Sunday for an "optional" workout, and spent the afternoon pushing the reset button.

"Basically, we've just got to do what we did during the regular season -- just keep on going," said shortstop Ian Desmond. "I mean, there's nothing you can do about [Saturday]. And there's nothing you can do about it the next day. So you've just got to worry about winning, one day at a time, and about being consistent."

That word, consistent, is actually a word that describes this team perfectly. The Nationals have played 85 games since June 28. Only once, in all that time, have they lost three games in a row. So they have that to hang on to. And also this:

Over the past four seasons, they've faced Bumgarner six times. They're 5-1 in those games, including a 2-1 win against him this year on June 10, at AT&T Park, when he was outdueled by -- you guessed it -- Doug Fister.

Fister and Bumgarner also met in this park in an even more memorable setting -- Game 2 of the 2012 World Series, back when Fister was a Tiger. He threw six innings of four-hit, one-run baseball. But Bumgarner trumped him with a seven-inning two-hitter, in what turned into a pivotal 2-0 win for the Giants.

So Fister has been here, done this and done it well. And he's ready for the madness of AT&T Park, he said Sunday.

"When it comes time to get up on the mound and play in front of whatever it is -- 45,000-50,000 people -- I tend to take a second, step off the mound, look around, soak it in and then let it go and get back to business."

Which, when you get right down to it, is exactly what the winningest team in the National League needs to do, as it finds itself at the bottom of 0-2 Canyon.

Start small. Think small. And see how long it can keep playing.