The sun was shining early on the Nationals and Jeremy Hellickson as he shut the Padres down for 6 innings with no Padres reaching base. Travis Jankowski broke up the perfect game in the 7th inning, and the Nats cruised the rest of the way for a 4-to-0 shutout. Matt Adams delivered the clutch RBI double to open up the scoring and some add-on runs from his friends made it a nice efficient evening. Add to that a clutch ROOGY out for Ryan Madson and the Nats cruise to their 9th win in 10 games and move ahead of the NY Mets in the standings with this win.
“He was throwing strikes,” Dave Martinez said about Hellickson. “Everything was working. Today, he was outstanding. He was ‘on’ today.”
In this game, Hellickson earned his first win officially going 6 2/3 innings of 2-hit baseball while striking out 8 batters and allowing no walks. Hellickson also helped himself with the bat as he stroked an RBI double to make the score 3-to-0 at the time. Ryan Zimmerman, Howie Kendrick, and Pedro Severino each had 2-hits in the game. One of the best at-bats came from Andrew Stevenson in a bases loaded pinch-hit at-bat, and Stevo worked the pitcher for 11-pitches and hit a sacrifice fly for the final run of the game which was delayed by two video challenges by the Padres. The slide at home by Ryan Zimmerman was confirmed as safe as well as Zimmerman did not leave 3rd base too early on the tag-up.
All in all, it was a solid game in all departments for the Nationals as they clinch this series before the series finale tomorrow.
