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Soon-to-turn 37-year-old Washington Nationals' outfielder Jayson Werth had a big game at the plate in Citi Field last night, going 2 for 2 with three walks in five plate appearances.
Werth walked in each of his first two PAs, singled, doubled and then took his third free pass of the night in the eighth. His three walks matched his total from his previous 86 plate appearances.
Was it more of an issue with Mets' pitchers or a sign that Werth's seeing it better? New York's pitchers did walk a total of 11 batters on the night, and they hit two batters as well.
"Give 13 free passes out and 11 hits, or eight hits and that's a lot of baserunners, you're not going to win any games with that," Mets' skipper Terry Collins told reporters after the game.
"I haven't seen that out of our pitching staff since I've been here," Collins added. "Nobody could find the strike zone and behind in the counts and 200 and some-odd pitches, that's just... that's not us."
Nationals' skipper Dusty Baker talked afterwards about Werth's night at the plate and the decision to send a defensive replacement in for him late in the game.
"He had an excellent game," Baker said. "He was on base all five times. And also [Anthony] Rendon had a good game too, drove in a couple real key runs for us. So, Jayson gets on base that makes it easier for the guys after him.
"That's part of his job, and part of his job is to score some runs and drive in some runs.
"We took him out because he hadn't been on base that much in... I don't know... a long time, so we took him out to try to preserve his legs for tomorrow."
Werth is back in the lineup for the third game of three with the Mets in NYC:
#Nats vs #Mets 3 of 3: Revere CF, Werth LF, Harper RF, Murphy 2B, Zimmerman 1B, Rendon 3B, Ramos C, Espinosa SS, Strasburg P
— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) May 19, 2016