Washington Nationals Make Carlos Zambrano Look Good Again, Chicago Cubs 5-4.
by Patrick Reddington on Aug 24, 2010 11:26 PM EDT
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5. soriANO!! - It was 2006 all over again when Alfonso Soriano destroyed a hanging slider from John Lannan in the Cubs' second to put Chicago up 3-0 early a night after an 8-1 game one win in Nats Park. The Nationals' outfielder-for-a-year hits his third HR in Nationals Park to go along with the 24 the then-30-year-old outfielder hit in RFK Stadium when he spent a season as the Nats' left fielder. During tonight's game the announcement was made that one of two players the Nationals drafted with the picks the Nats received in return for letting Soriano walk will return to the hill when Jordan Zimmermann makes his first major league start in over a year in Thursday's game against St. Louis. Quick Historical Recap:
"Alfonso Soriano's departure as a free agent after playing the '06 season out in DC, gave the Nats two pick in the '07 Draft, which combined with the picks they'd received from Jose Guillen's free agent departure brought the Nats four draft picks in the first two rounds of the '07 Draft that they used to select LHP's Ross Detwiler (with their 1st Round pick) and Josh Smoker with the "sandwich" pick between the 1st and 2nd Round, OF Michael Burgess with the "Guillen-sandwich pick", and RHP Jordan Zimmermann with the second compensatory pick for Soriano."
4. E: 98 - A half-inning after Ryan Zimmerman drives in a run with a single to center off Carlos Zambrano to make it 3-1 Chicago, an E costs Nats' lefty John Lannan, who gives up a two-run blast to right on a first-pitch slider he leaves up for Cubs' center fielder Tyler Colvin's 19th HR of 2010 after Alberto Gonzalez's errant throw to first pulls Adam Dunn of the bag on an Alfonso Soriano grounder that should've been the second out of the Cubs' fourth. 5-1 Cubs after four. Lannan's out after 5.0 IP, having allowed 7 hits, 5 runs, 4 earned on 2 HR's. 83 pitches, 51 for strikes for Lannan.
3 A. 11 In A Row: Michael Morse's one-out single to center in the seventh ends a streak of a eleven-straight outs for Cubs' right-hander Carlos Zambrano stretching back Zim's RBI single in the third. The troubled Cubs' starter goes 7.1 IP, his longest outing of the season, and the first time the 29-year-old 10-year vet has pitched into the eighth inning since last September 25th's 3-0 Cubs' win over the Giants. Zambrano throws 108 pitches, 68 for strikes and allows 5 hits, 1 ER and 1 BB while striking out 8 and getting 9 groundouts and 6 flyouts...
3 B. Collin Balester: He's probably just up for one more day, but for once Collin Balester used his chance to make a good impression. The 24-year-old right-hander entered tonight's game in the eighth, got a groundout from Starlin Castro with a 1-1 curve and got both Xavier Nady and Aramis Ramirez swinging to end a quick 1-2-3 inning. Balester starts Nady 3-0 and strikes him out with a full-count fastball in the seventh pitch of the at bat. Aramis Ramirez only lasts four pitches before Balester puts him away with a 1-2 curve that makes the Cubs' third baseman look bad.
2. One Shot: Down 5-1 after seven and a half innings, the Nats finally chase Carlos Zambrano when he gives up a one-out single to Nyjer Morgan. Cubs' left-hander Sean Marshall comes on and gets a groundout from Kennedy before issuing back-to-back two-out walks to Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn to bring the tying run to the plate in the person of Nationals' left fielder Roger Bernadina, who's 0 for 3 with 2 K's...So Nats' Skipper Jim Riggleman goes to the bench and tells Ian Desmond to pick up a bat. The Nats' 24-year-old infielder has been out for two games with an injured thumb, but he's available to hit. The Cubs lift Marshall for closer Carlos Marmol who gets Desmond with three pitches, the third an 0-2 slider outside that gets Desmond punched out by the first base ump when he can't hold his swing.
1. Second Chance: Marmol's a little wild, to put it mildly. The Nats decide not to chase in the ninth, with Michael Morse walking in front of Alberto Gonzaez, who singles, and Wllie Harris, who walks to load'em up for Adam Kennedy. Kennedy lines a 3-run double to right and when Ryan Zimmerman steps to the plate, he represents the winning run. Zim gets five-straight sliders from Marmol and then gets the fastball he wants, which he lines to right and into Kosuke Fukudome's glove to end the Nats' second-loss-in-a-row to Chicago.
• Doghouse's Post Game WPA Graph:"Game 126: Wake me for the end."
- Oops x 2: John Lannan (-25.8%) goes 5 innings and fans 3, walking none, with two pitches he probably wants back: a three-run HR in the 2nd (-17.7%) and a 2-run shot in the 4th (-13.6%).
- Early rally-killer: Adam Dunn (-5.4%) hits into the inning-ending GDP in the first with runners on the corners (-11.1%)
- Late rally: Adam Kennedy (+4.9%) has a bases-clearing double to bring the Nats within one in the bottom of the 9th (+10.0%).
- Rally FAIL: Ryan Zimmerman (-0.9%) flies out to end the game (-15.0%).
- Unlikely WPA batting leader: John Lannan (+6.2%) is 0-0 with a sac bunt ROE.
- Likely WPA batting trailer: Nyjer Morgan (-13.9%) is 1-5 with 5 LOB, and possibly the awesomest defensive-indifference I've seen all season (jogging to third when the shift was on against Dunn--as the pitcher stepped off and watched him).
Nationals now 53-73.
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1 each:
1 Desi, 1 Wriggle, 1 WIllie.
grizzy has taken the lead!
Rob
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." -- Red Smith
Ick
um, please visit my soccer (football) blog. it's interesting, I promise. por favor? (filbertway.com)
Sunshine will come to Nats Park, I promise. (visit por favor? my website)
Haha
i was being sarcastic
um, please visit my soccer (football) blog. it's interesting, I promise. por favor? (filbertway.com)
Sunshine will come to Nats Park, I promise. (visit por favor? my website)
and I have climbed into fifth place! I’m feeling good about a top 10 finish.
Has it been made official that Zimnn is pitching Thursday? CAN’T WAIT! It’s like Strasmas all over again!
No crow for me thanks, Brandon Jones cut.
by Andrew Davidson on Aug 25, 2010 1:01 AM EDT up reply actions
What's sad to me...
…is that the difference in this game was 1 run, perhaps the unearned run given up on Lannan’s second HR. Lannan certainly gets the blame by starting off pitching behind and not getting away with it tonight. So many things have to go right for him to win: he has to get ahead, he has to not walk people, he has to have curve ball command to get out lefties, he has to get the grounders, he can’t have bad luck, and he has to have great defense.
Too many of those things were missing tonight. Along with the offense. Things could get real ugly if we don’t possess a stopper in the rotation and lack of offense puts more pressure on the team.
On the other hand, I believe in Balester’s stuff. That was a great inning of work, and I hope he can be a homegrown option in the bullpen next year. Shoot, he can’t cause more early season fail than Bruney did. That unearned run was big, though and helped allow Zambrano to settle in.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
More critical than the unearned run fail
Was the persistent failures to close the deal on offense. Weak, flailing hacks with RISP were the order of the day. Dunn hitting into a DP in the first on the first pitch he saw when Zambrano was on the ropes after the error. Morgan flailing pathetically in the 9th before Kennedy’s double – Morgan hacked at three straight pitches, each worse than the one before it, on a pitcher that had already walked two batters in the inning to load the bases. Bad breaks I can take (Zimmerman hit the ball hard, but right at the right fielder). DUMB baseball is hard to take.
Morgan's at bat was godawful.
I was screaming at him from the grandstands before his at bat. “Don’t swing! He’s wild!” Nyjer’s a lefty who is supposed to focus on getting on base so that the game is all but guaranteed to get to Zimmerman. Take at least one strike from the wild pitcher and then just work on fouling enough pitches off to dare him to walk you. When Willie Harris got behind 3-0, I knew there was no way Marmol can manage three straight strikes.
Dunn’s job with this weak lineup is to try to get hits that lead to runs. He’s slumping when Willingham’s out and that makes him look even worse when nobody drives him in after he manages to get walks. No problem with Dunn being aggressive. We need power more than walks.
The offense is what it is. We’ve been debating guys like Morgan, Bernadina and Morse for awhile now. I expect them to struggle now that they are pressing and now that we are getting into the dog days. We saw how we miss good Desmond in the lineup tonight as well. (Doubt Riggleman intended for him to face Marmol, and he probably thought Marmol wouldn’t be brought in early in a 5-1 game.)
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
by souldrummer on Aug 24, 2010 11:58 PM EDT up reply actions
Dunn hitting into a DP hurt
because of the result, not because of the effort. He had a good pitch to hit, and he hit it hard but to the wrong place. These things happen.
Rob
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." -- Red Smith
Agreed
It was just the run of RISP fail that the team’s been on that was getting to me.
Now, Desmond’s and Morgan’s at bats were very hard to take – Desmond getting punched out on a checked swing (I couldn’t tell how good the call was, but checked swings haven’t been good to us this year) and Morgan just looking lost and awful – yikes, those were bad.
Desmond's AB definitely had that "rookie aroma".
Too anxious, too aggressive. Just the sort of thing a slider-pitcher can thrive upon.
Nyjer’s AB was worse, but Adam Kennedy’s AB was a real shot in the arm (and has merited very little attention on this site for some reason!)
Rob
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." -- Red Smith
[points to AK's bullet under the WPA graph]
"And everybody lived happily ever after. Except the Phillies and the Mets. The End." --Sasskuash
Friend of Dukes and Desmond #3
One bullet for such a big hit
equals very little attention. I’m not talking about your writeup, I’m talking about the pervasive “Why can’t the Nationals ever deliver big hits?” attitude we see so much of these days.
Rob
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." -- Red Smith
I really think Riggles got fooled there.
I think that he thought with a 5-1 lead Quade wouldn’t trust Marmol with four outs and control or that if he got Marmol any positive outcome from Desmond could have sealed the game. I’m wondering what kind of advice Desmond got from the bench on facing Marmol, though. Do you think they just let him be himself or if he got some “take from this guy if you see him he’s wild!” before the game or the at bat?
Certainly a rookie at bat and I don’t blame Desmond for that. I’m not sure he was expected to be put in that situation and Marmol’s nasty on any righty if he’s putting the ball over the plate.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
Now, what kind of an attitude is that, “these things happen”???
They only happen because the whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen they just say “these things happen”, and that’s why these things happen.
The Nats are riding the Strasburg railroad to your town.
huh?
These things happen because these things happen. Not every mistake pitch becomes a hit; not every perfect pitch becomes an out. As SD would say, good process can sometimes lead to bad results. More often than not it won’t, but you cannot claim that a batter hitting a pitch in his zone, and hitting it hard, has done anything wrong. The odds are that the results will be good, but that does not mean in any sense that the result will always be good. Far from it. The best batting averages even on line drives are in the 2/3 range. Hit the ball hard, the defense will sometimes make an out. On the other hand, sometimes you hit the ball weakly into a defensive hole and you get a hit. It’s magnificent and aggravating at the same time, this game baseball.
Rob
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." -- Red Smith
Ryan Howard ejected
At the end of the 14th inning with the Philthies having used all their position players, Ryan Howard was ejected by 1B umpire for being unhappy with a called strike 3, leaving the Philthies without a first baseman.
Roy Oswalt played LF, moving Raul Ibanez to 1B.
I love it!
The Nats are riding the Strasburg railroad to your town.
That game's in the 16th...
4-2 Houston now…
NatsTown: Where we hope for "next year" every year...
by Nationalpastime9 on Aug 25, 2010 12:14 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
That would be truly beautiful for Philly to fall short in that one.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
by souldrummer on Aug 25, 2010 12:37 AM EDT up reply actions
What does 125M buy you?
On this particular night, 0-7, 5K, and an ejection.
Yes folks, on this night Ryan Howard managed the rare platinum sombrero.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
by souldrummer on Aug 25, 2010 12:46 AM EDT up reply actions
I believe that 5K, 0-5 is called "The Horn".
BTW, Platinum Sombrero = LOL
Screech's Godson
UMD Class of 2014! GO TERPS!!!
I'd like to take credit for that...
…but I believe I read that in a Sickels thread.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
Another for the Top 5
I’m virtually certain that Ms Doghouse made the Jumbotron between innings :-)
I'm going to be at the game on Friday - anyone have a clue/guess who will be pitching?
It’s hard to be upbeat about going to see the Nats play the Reds but I’m hoping to have it become one of the Zuckerman anti-five.
Yes, the Cardinals and thanks for the correction. It's late and they both use the color red and both teams are better than us.
I was thinking Olsen as well but it’s hard to tell these days who will be in a line up and who won’t. I believe it’s Zito for the Cardinals since he pitched last Sunday. Both teams show TBD on MLB.
Was watching a Little League WS game the other day
The game that Canada got shelled by Chinese-Taipei. Anyway, one of the announcers made a comment about Chien Ming-Wang not being a favourite player of many Chinese-Taipei players anymore. The CT team was heading to DC to get a chance to meet Wang regardless, and the announcer said if Ming-Wang can rebound, it will be a heck of a steal for the Nats in 2011. Is he under contract for 2011? I didn’t think he was.
No crow for me thanks, Brandon Jones cut.
by Andrew Davidson on Aug 25, 2010 1:04 AM EDT reply actions
That would be a tough call for them to offer arbitration IMHO.
He hasn’t thrown a pitch all year. Do we want to throw more money at him? They should decline to offer him arbitration and hope that he shows loyalty by agreeing to a reasonable minor league deal. If not, good luck finding another team to gamble that your shoulder can heal.
On a desperate search for Sunshine at Nats Park. In Rizzo and Ramos we trust.
I agree...tough call on Wang.
It sucks that it looks like he won’t even throw a pitch. At least he cost less than Marquis.
Completely Pitiful..............
Why can’t this team move runners along?
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