The Nationals lost 3-to-2 to the Braves, and it just was not a well played game by the 1st place Nats. Four hits with no walks by the offense and a costly pick-off gave the Nationals a net of just 2 baserunners since one of the Nationals hits was a home run by Ryan Zimmerman. The Braves starting pitcher R.A. Dickey baffled the Nats tonight and Tyler Flowers worked his magic framing up pitches to frustrate the Nationals all night long.
On top of that, the Nationals had 2 errors and a few balls were not defensed well. The net-net for Tanner Roark was 3 earned runs given up over 7 innings. Once again Roark gave up a first inning run but he wasn’t helped by his defense.
The highlight of the game was Ryan Zimmerman’s 34th home run of the season which was a career high and Zim is now 2 home runs away from equaling his home run production of the previous three years combined. Ryan is 7 RBIs from matching his season high in RBIs at 110 which Zim set in his rookie season of 2006.
Dusty Baker was asked after the game about the 10 minute delay in the 8th inning caused by botched substitutions, and while his answer in his post-game media session didn’t really explain it, maybe the Braves TV booth summed it up well — “What a mess”, and then Dusty’s explanation of Jayson Werth‘s slump was almost equally bizarre.
“Tonight doesn’t really count. The knuckleball doesn’t count…,” Baker said. “We’re trying to get Jayson’s endurance up and get his legs right. [Jayson Werth] will be fine, just as long as he keeps getting at-bats and he feels well.”
Maybe not as bizarre and more to the point of being mind boggling, the Nationals leave Atlanta with a season’s record against the Braves with 10 wins against 9 losses. That’s a .526 winning percentage for the Nats in this season series against a team they should have dominated to a greater extent.
The Nats will fly out of Atlanta tonight for a weekend series in New York and get tucked into their beds in NYC after 3 AM. Why not sleep in tonight in Atlanta and get a good night’s sleep and fly around noon to New York as the airport is up the road from CitiField.
