The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

The Nats lost this game by the final score of 3-1 as the Nats offense could not figure out Matt Cain, and Gio Gonzalez was victimized by the defense behind him who made two errors leading to two runs on Gio’s ledger (one earned run).

The Nationals had their chances to tie the game or for a big inning, but Anthony Rendon made two baserunning gaffes on 2nd base as he held twice as he was deked once and stayed at 2nd base on a clear single, and then was thrown out at 3rd on a bloop that fell into leftfield. The second gaffe was really compounded because if Rendon was on 3rd base he would have scored on the Heisey bloop into leftfield. Continue reading →

The big news today was the pre-game trade of Felipe Rivero and Taylor Hearn for the Pirates’ closer Mark Melancon.

Both Dusty Baker and Mike Rizzo spoke to Jonathan Papelbon before the Melancon trade was made.  “[Papelbon] wants to win, you know,” Baker said. “That’s all he talked about— winning.”

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The Nationals won 4-1 in this game against the Giants with a 7 inning gem from Max Scherzer, but history was made with a triple play with bases loaded in the 8th inning as Dusty Baker did a triple-switch bringing in Sammy Solis to pitch, Ryan Zimmerman for 1st base and Danny Espinosa for shortstop, and on Solis’ 2nd pitch, Brandon Crawford hit a low liner to Zimmerman who caught it near his shoe tops, stepped on 1st and threw to 3rd base to complete the triple play. “What a triple-double switch by Dusty,” Ryan Zimmerman said about Dusty bringing him in as well as Espinosa and Solis into the game at the same time.

We have always referred to Ryan Mattheus‘ appearance in the Nats first ever playoff game in 2012 as the greatest relief appearance in Nationals history where he came in relief with bases loaded and no outs and threw 2 pitches for 3 outs. Mattheus induced a 6-3 groundout then got the doubleplay ball. Solis had the most efficient relief appearance in Nats history with 3 outs on 1 ball in play.

Scherzer dropped his ERA to 2.85 in this game while improving to 11-6 for his W/L record.

The offense was powered by speed, and this time it was Wilson Ramos who scored the Nats first run from second base on a Jayson Werth single to tie the game at 1-1. The Nats tacked on 3 more runs to make that final score of 4-1.

The game recap video can be seen here.

This is a compilation video of the triple play from the Nationals and Giants TV and radio feeds. The Denard Span clips are “must see” and only needed “Where is he going, what was he doing” in a Charlie Slowes’ type of rendition of Nook Logan‘s infamous TOOTBLAN.

Here is a great Podcast of Trea Turner‘s ESPN 980 interview:

Tanner Roark went 7 strong innings of 1 run baseball as the Nats won in a drama filled 9th inning. The Nats worked Cueto hard, and he ran his pitch count up to 101 pitches in the 5th inning and was pulled after the 5th inning.

The Nats took a 4-1 lead into the 9th inning, and to the surprise of many, Dusty Baker once again went to Jonathan Papelbon for the 9th inning. Papelbon’s fastball was 88mph to 91 and Dusty allowed him to put two men on base as the tying runner stepped into the batter’s box. Baker inserted Oliver Perez to get the lefties and with an error on a groundball it was bases loaded with a 4-2 score. Perez struck out Denard Span to make it 2 outs, and Baker inserted Shawn Kelley to face Angel Pagan and he struck him out to end the game.

The offense was good against Cueto as the Nationals got 3 consecutive singles with 2 outs and RISP as Espinosa, Roark and Trea Turner all singled in runs. The 4th run came in the 6th inning on a Bryce Harper double to score Trea Turner.

Papelbon averaged 90.2 mph tonight to where his velo keeps dropping signaling arm fatigue. One day’s rest was not enough.