Where do you begin as this was a pitcher’s duel in a 2-1 game. Ryan Zimmerman with the game-winning RBI to support Jacob Turner who pitched 4 shutout innings in relief. Gio Gonzalez labored through 5 innings giving up only 1 run but gave up 7 walks on 105 pitches with only 58 strikes while averaging 21 pitches per inning. Gio’s 5th inning ended with bases loaded, and it was a high stress 5 innings.
The Nationals were no-hit into the 3rd inning when Michael Taylor was first ball swinging and hit a low liner to leftfield and Yasmany Tomas lost the ball in the lights as Taylor scampered around the bases for a gift wrapped triple and scored on a Gio Gonzalez groundout. You take the gifts the game gives you.
The Diamondbacks starter Robbie Ray was cruising through the first 5 batters of the game and struck them all out. The one thing we know about Ray is that he will over-throw for 3 innings and then became hittable. The Nats didn’t capitalize until the 6th inning when D’Backs manager had a choice with 2 outs and Bryce Harper on 1st. He could have walked Ryan Zimmerman and gone lefty-lefty on Daniel Murphy, but he pitched to Zim and got torched as the Z-man smashed a liner to the wall for the game winning run to score Harper from 1st base. Daniel Murphy hit a weak liner for the final out of the 6th inning. When you pitch to the reigning NL Player of the Month, you are playing with fire and Luvello got burned.
A very nice Washington Nationals win, and Gio Gonzalez and Jacob Turner combined for 8 2/3 straight scoreless innings since the only Diamondbacks run scored on a home run from the second batter of the game.
