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 . . .
There’s not a game that goes by without the Nationals partisans of Section 1-2-9 talking at length about the Nationals — why they win, why they lose, and what pieces they need to put in place to become champions. Yesterday’s heroic 5-4 win over the Chicago Cubs proved the exception: there were enough Cubs fans in the crowd (subdued, to be sure — at least in comparison to past years), to turn the section’s attention to the North Side Drama Queens. And their prodigious problems.
“They’re awful,” a Cub’s fan (inhabiting a seat usually reserved for a Nats’ regular) said. “They brought this kid [Casey Coleman] up at the last minute because we’re out of pitching.” The Cubbie rooter spent the game shaking his head. “They’ll find a way to lose,” he said in the 7th inning — after the Nationals tied the game. “You watch.” His words were prophetic.
The Cubs not only gave up the lead in the 7th, they worked diligently to lose the game in extra innings. The talisman of Cubbiedom came in the 10th inning, when Cubs’ reliever Marcos Mateo injured his elbow while pitching to Jayson Werth. After Livan Hernandez sacrificed Werth to second, Cubs skipper Mike Quade stalked to the mound and called in closer Carlos Marmol — who was not expected to pitch.
Jayson Werth’s wily steal of third in the 10th inning on Monday — and his subsequent trot home on a Carlos Marmol wild pitch — gave the Nationals a nail-biting 5-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs. And for the first time in a long time the veteran Werth heard cheers from the hometown fans.
“Cheer me, boo me, whatever,” Werth said following the daring win. “I’m still going to go out there and play my game.” That may be, but Werth would undoubtedly prefer to hear cheers than catcalls — which were increasing in intensity over the last several games at the ballpark.
For a time it looked as if the up-and-down Independence Day game would go against the Nationals, as they entered the 7th inning one down to the otherwise listless Cubs. But a host of Cubs’ relievers, including the usually steady Kerry Wood, found a way to walk in a run and tie the game.
Drew Storen and Henry Rodriguez kept the Nationals even until Werth’s heroics in the 10th. Werth led off the inning with a savvy walk, then was sacrificed to second by pinch-hitter Livan Hernandez. The Cubs brought in Marmol, their usually lights-out closer. But Marmol appeared unprepared for this sudden bullpen call, and Werth stole third.
The unexpected play sparked Nationals fans — and rattled Marmol, who bounced one in the dirt in front of a scrambling Geovany Soto, as Werth trotted home. Werth admitted that his theft of third was a gamble. “I just felt like it was time to make something happen. It’s a funny game. You steal third and score the winning run. If he inside-moved me (for a pickoff attempt) right there, I’m probably the goat.”
Adam Kennedy’s bases clearing double in the ninth inning wasn’t enough to bring the Nats back from a 5-1 deficit, as the Chicago Cubs, behind the strong pitching of starter Carlos Zambrano, stymied a Nationals’ rally to win at Nationals Park on Tuesday night, 5-4. Kennedy’s clutch hit preceded a long drive off the bat of Ryan Zimmerman to account for the third out and end the game. Zimmerman’s long fly (on an outside corner fastball from Cubs reliever Carlos Marmol) brought the crowd to their feet, with visions of another Zimmerman miracle, but right fielder Kosuke Fukudome reached up at the last moment to snag the headed-for-the wall game tying drive. “I thought it had a shot to get over Fukudome’s head. It was a good at-bat against a tough pitcher,” Zimmerman said after the almost-but-not-quite hit. “He is not an easy guy to get hits off of. He [Marmol] strikes out everyone pretty much. It was a good job to battle back and have a chance to win.” The loss brought the Nationals to twenty games under .500 — their worst record of the year.
Scott Olsen’s seven inning gem against the Dodgers has Nats fans (and the Washington Post) oohing and ahhing about the team’s new attitude. “Instead of saying ‘Get ‘em tomorrow,’ the Nats have finally assembled a tougher, more irritable group that actually does it,” Post columnist and leading baseball pundit Thomas Boswell writes. Boswell goes on to note: “It’s not just the Nats’ record that is different this spring. The Nats themselves are. They’re starting to resemble the first gritty crew that brought baseball back to D.C. after a 33 year wait.” Tougher? More irritable? Gritty? My first reaction was to scoff: forget irritable and gritty — we need front line guys who can throw strikes. Please, please, please Tom (I know you’re the best, or close to it), but you know (and I know, and it’s no secret) that a rotation of Lannan, Stammen, Olsen and Hernandez are not going to get it done.
But in studying yesterday’s box score, I began to question by own cynicism. The difference in the Nats 1-0 win yesterday (a beautifully pitched game, if ever there was one) from any of their wins last year was obvious. For right there, in the middle of the line-up, were two players the Nats needed, but didn’t have, in the ’09 campaign. When Mike Rizzo signed Ivan Rodriguez and Adam Kennedy in the offseason, he not only filled two special needs, he added two gamers to the clubhouse — players who not only know how to win, but want to. While Rodriguez and Kennedy went a combined 0-6 yesterday, their role on the team has been indispensible, providing much needed leadership to a crew of talented, but young, players. Mike Rizzo added a caveat: “We’re a long ways from where we want to be.” Yeah, true. But you’re also a long ways from where you were.
The difference between the ’09 and 2010 Nats becomes more obvious when you go through the line-up of the Chicago Cubs, whom the Nats face in Chicago starting tonight. The North Side Drama Queens are a team of head cases and disasters-waiting-to-happen: Alfonso Soriano’s penchant to drop flies in left field is damn near agonizing, the perpetually petulant Carlos Zambrano has been demoted to the bullpen, the perennially injured Aramis Ramirez is a fracture away from putting the Cubs in the cellar and Kosuke Fukudome is overpaid and (undoubtedly) on the trading block. I know, I know — the Cubs just swept the Brewers and can hit the hell out of the ball. But the name of this game is pitching, and the Cubs don’t have it. Forget the starters (or don’t — if you really believe that Carlos Silva is the answer), and focus on the bullpen. The line-up of Berg, Grabow, Gray, Russell and Marmol is a patched together crew of rookies and semi-veterans (like Marmol) who have yet to prove they can hit the strike zone. Put another way, we would be justified in saying that the Cubs bullpen collapsed in the first two weeks of the season, but we’d be wrong. It had nothing to collapse from.
Cubs fans are on a death watch. Nats 320 has an outstanding interview with Cubs blogger Joe Aeillo of View From The Bleachers, and while Joe sounds positive enough, you can almost hear the ‘Oh-God-wadda-we-gonna-do’ tension in his voice. Joe talks about Uncle Lou’s bullpen problems and notes that Zambrano has been “the weak link” in the rotation so far this year, but the icing comes when Nats 320 asks about Soriano. “I’ll give you $20 right now, straight cash homie, if you convince the Nationals to take him back,” Joe says. That’s a deal we can pass up: we’ll keep Willingham. Soriano, the bullpen — they’re all problems. But the real problem facing the Cubs is down the road in St. Louis. The Cubs don’t have anyone who matches up with Chris Carpenter, Brad Penny or Adam Wainwright. I can’t stand Penny (he should just rob a 7-Eleven and get it out of his system), but the former Dodger bad boy is pitching brilliantly — with three wins and a 0.94 ERA. That’s a record that Zambrano can only dream about.
The Cubs haven’t had a team since Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were five outs away from the World Series. Remember? Prior was a USC power pitcher with Cy Young stuff and Woods struck out 20 in his rookie season. And then . . . and then, in the 8th inning of Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS a little pop foul that should have been caught did them in. It was their last shot. Neither Prior nor Wood have been the same since; Prior became a surgeon’s dream and is now out of baseball and Wood is in Cleveland, dealing with a cranky back. Looking at Prior (a shoulder, an achilles tendon, a hamstring, another shoulder), you can understand why Mike Rizzo wants Stephen Strasburg in the minors — and why he insists that any member of the Washington club have a winning attitude. Put another way, the problem with Cubs comes down to this: Carlos Zambrano throws the ball in the mid-90s and is capable of a 20-win Cy Young season. But wouldn’t you rather have Livan Hernandez?
