Rookie September call-up Steve Lombardozzi’s hit in the top of the 7th inning — his first hit of the season — scored Brian Bixler and led the Nationals to a 3-2 win against the Mets in New York. Lombardozzi, who started the game at second base for Danny Espinosa, was 0-15 before his clutch single. The Mets had tied the score in the bottom of the 6th, driving starter Ross Dewiler from the game.
The Lombardozzi single brought the Nationals to 68 wins on the season, and drew them to within two games of the third place Mets. While Lombardozzi was energized by his hit, Ross Detwiler was the big news of the game for the Nationals. The lefty breezed through the Mets line-up for 5.2 innings before losing the strike zone and walking two. The Mets then capitalized, with a single from David Wright and a double from Angel Pagan.
Detwiler’s outing brought his ERA to 3.76 for the year, and put him in line in the competition for a spot on the Nationals’ starting rotation for 2012. Speaking of Detwiler’s outing following the game, Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson said that Detwiler “just lost it” in the sixth inning, but that he didn’t know why. “It just happened,” Johnson said. “I would have liked to get him the win.”
Leading 3-2, the Nationals’ bullpen came through again, with Todd Coffey, Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen shutting down the Madoffs the rest of the way. Johnson praised the bullpen after the win, adding that he was pleased that “we were able to rest” Clippard over the previous two days. “He was fresh and we needed that,” Johnson said. Coffey got the win, Clippard registered his 33rd hold, and Storen notched his 35th save.
It wasn’t so long ago (the Nationals were playing out in Los Angeles, to be specific) that we wrote about walk-off grand slam home runs. They’re really, really unusual — a walk-off grand slam that results in a single run victory has happened (by our count) just 25 times in major league history. A two out walk-off grand slam is even more unusual. And, as we noted in our previous post, an inside the park walk-off grand slam home run has happened just once.
Which makes last night’s walk-off grand slam off the bat of Brian Bogusevic in Houston (albeit, on a 2-2 and not a 3-2 count, but wouldn’t that be something) even more special. The fact that thousands more watched it live than normally would have (during an MLB “live look-in”) is stunning.
The GWRBI (GS) came off the arm of Chicago reliever Carlos Marmol and sent the fans in Houston into ecstasy, and it was a bomb: Bogusevic scorched the ball to dead center and it hit above the yellow home run line in Minute Maid Park. A shot. The grand slam gave the Astros a 6-5 victory.
That’s five walk-offs in a single night in baseball, equaling the season record of five set back in late May. Still . . . still, the Houston walk-off was the most uplifting (so to speak) and jaw-dropping. Oh, and Bogusevic’s walk-off grand slam was hit by a pinch hitter . . .
One day after playing one of their best games of the year, the Washington Nationals committed three errors and John Lannan walked five — and the Nationals went on to lose to the Philadelphia Phillies, 11-3. Lannan lasted only three innings, as Philadelphia starter Roy Oswalt scattered six hits in seven innings, holding Washington to just three earned runs. The Nationals were never in it.
The Phillies’ victory was sparked by a five run third inning in which an Ian Desmond error and walks to Hunter Pence, Carlos Ruiz (intentionally) and pitcher Oswalt (unintentionally) gave the Phillies a lead they would never relinquish. The Phillies tacked on three runs in the eighth (two singles and a sacrifice fly), while reliever Michael Stutes held the Nationals scoreless.
Lannan’s poor showing put him at 8-8, but his struggles were matched by a solid relief effort from Collin Balester, who pitched three innings of one hit ball, complemented by three strikes outs. Balester’s relief effort lowered his ERA to 4.12, and helped reinforce his role as a long option out of the bullpen. Balester’s solid outing was offset by that of Henry Rodriguez, who continued to struggle with his control.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: It hasn’t exactly been a free-fall, but the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants have got to be concerned. The McCoveys have struggled in August, going 4-8 (and 11-14 in their last 25) in trying to retain a hold on the lead in the N.L. West. They haven’t been able to do it, and now trail the Diamondbacks by two games on the left coast.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way: slugger Carlos Beltran was brought in from the New York Madoffs to give the Giants a needed shot of offense for their playoff run — but the only shot the Giants’ have been getting is the cortisone shot Beltran has needed to ease the pain in his strained right hand. The slugger was sidelined again last night as the Giants faced the Marlins in Florida.
Alfredo Aceves has made a name for himself in Boston. While he’s not nearly so celebrated as Jonathan Papelbon, the Red Sox long reliever has provided a steady diet of scoreless innings and wins-in-relief. Aceves is now 8-1 on the season, which makes him 22-2 over the four years that he’s been in the majors. That’s Elroy Face territory, the Pittsburgh Pirates reliever who made it into the baseball record books on the strength of an 18-1 record in 1959.
Like Face, Aceves is known around baseball as a “vulture,” an endearing term reserved for those relief pitchers who turn “holds” into victories — or worse, who blow leads and then benefit when their team scores enough to give them the win. Pittsburgh’s Roy Face was the ultimate vulture. He was so unsteady that in 1959 — the year he notched eighteen wins — he gained four of them off of blown saves. The record so infuriated baseball writer Jerome Holtzman that he came up with the “saves” (and “blown saves”) stat to keep guys like Face from getting too much credit.
Current baseball writer Tom Singer tells us that Sandy Koufax should be credited with inventing the concept of a baseball “vulture” in the midst of the 1966 season, when Dodgers’ reliever Phil Regan posted a 14-1 record — all in relief. Regan got a win in relief after Koufax struck out sixteen Phillies in eleven innings, then did it again the next time Koufax left in the middle of a 1-1 match-up. “Man,” Koufax told Regan, “you’re a real vulture.”
But while Regan might have been baseball’s “real” vulture, Elroy Face was its “ultimate” vulture. While Holtzman adjudged Face as a pitcher who fed off the agony of others (and profited by it), it’s hard to argue with his numbers. Face was the first reliever to ever save twenty games more than once and held the record for games pitched until 1986. Face didn’t invent the forkball (that honor goes to Yankee reliever Joe Page), but he was the first pitcher to use it effectively. It was the “cutter” of its time.
Washington and the Rockies rapped out 33 hits in scoring 22 runs on Saturday — but the Heltons were just too powerful and downed the Nationals, 15-7. This was a poor outing for Livan Hernandez (now 6-11 on the year) who gave up nine hits and seven runs in just 3.2 innings.
The big bats of Colorado showed up in force: Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki were a combined 5-8, while normally light hitting catcher Chris Iannetta was 4-5. The Nationals bullpen was also ineffective. Tom Gorzelanny, Todd Coffey, Sean Burnett and Henry Rodriguez gave up a combined ten hits in 4.2 innings of work.
The Nationals fought back in the top of the sixth, scoring four runs to bring the game to within three, at 10-7. It was the only strong point of the Washington showing. “I was really pleased with the team,” skipper Davey Johnson said, after the loss. “We battled back and scored a bunch of runs with two outs, and that was a good sign. Stuff like that happens here.”
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Cincinnati Reds were swept by the Mets at the end of July, but then took three of three from the Giants — a sure sign the team was still in the thick of the N.L. Central race. But since then the Redlegs have tanked. They dropped two of three from the Astros and have now dropped two in a row to the Cubs . . .
They look awful. Yesterday in Chicago (which has a seven game winning streak, though no one knows exactly why), Dusty Baker’s boys were eaten by Carlos Zambrano, who gave up six hits in six innings and homered off Johnny Cueto in the second inning. Zambrano (whose homer was a straight-away-to-center shot), is now 9-6 . . . Cueto couldn’t make it out of the fourth . . .
It’s quite possible that finally — five months into the 2011 baseball season — the Nationals have finally found their leadoff hitter. Batting in the first slot in the line-up last night, centerfield veteran Rick Ankiel blasted two home runs in leading the Nationals to a 5-3 victory over the Braves at Nationals Park. Ankiel’s homers allowed Livan Hernandez (six innings, six hits and three strikeouts) to walk away with his sixth win of the season.
Ankiel’s homers were only his fourth and fifth of the year and came in the first and the fifth inning — both off of usually reliable Braves’ starter Jair Jurrjens, who registered his fourth loss. Ankiel, who has been in and out of the line-up all year (and has struggled at the plate) seems finally to be swinging with authority. “You just look for a pitch to drive. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you make it happen, sometimes you don’t,” Ankiel said after the victory. “Lately, I’ve been making good contact and good things are happening.”
It’s too soon to tell whether Ankiel’s Monday night performance means that he will be an every game feature at the leadoff position, but Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson liked what he saw: “Now he [Ankiel] is [playing] and he has cut down on his strikeouts, his swings are better,” Johnson said. “That comes with playing. In the last couple of years, I don’t think he has played much.”
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: If either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati are to have a chance in the N.L. Central, they’re going to have to beat the teams behind them. Last night they didn’t. Newest Ahoy Derrek Lee celebrated his arrival in Pittsburgh with two home runs, but the Pirates couldn’t beat the no-account Cubs, suffering their fourth loss in a row by a 5-3 score. Catch ‘em while you can; they’re fading, and fast . . .
This is exactly what the Washington Nationals needed: Jason Marquis pitched eight beautiful innings and the Nats scored three in the ninth to down the Houston Astros, at Minute Maid Park, 5-2. Marquis threw 102 pitches, 69 of them for strikes, as his patented sinker baffled Houston hitters. The win put the Nationals back at .500 — and in third place in the N.L. East.
The Nationals stayed in the game against Houston’s tough young pitcher, Jordan Lyles, by featuring the long ball. Michael Morse hit a soaring shot onto the glass screen in left field in the 5th inning, and Ryan Zimmerman put one into the right field seats in the seventh inning. The Zimmerman homer tied the game. But the 9th inning was key, as the Nationals scored three on singles by Bernadina, Zimmerman and Morse and a Laynce Nix bounder to the right side.
Nationals’ manager Davey Johnson was more than pleased with the Marquis outing, as it not only provided the win, but allowed the team to rest their overused relievers. “I was able to get ahead early,” Marquis said in reflecting on his outing. “I got some quick outs. They were being aggressive. I’ve been feeling pretty good all year. I had a good sinker-slider combo tonight.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: There are three things that just aren’t gonna happen, no matter how much we talk about them: the apocalypse, the rapture, and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Until this year, we might have added a fourth — the Pittsburgh Pirates winning the N.L. Central. And yet, there they are, atop the scrum that includes semi-powerhouse Milwaukee, perennial favorite St. Louis, and last year’s winner, the Cincinnati Reds.
