What a night for Trea Turner who drove in a run and manufactured two more runs on a night where he was a home run away from hitting for his second cycle of the season. Unfortunately Trea’s offensive heroics were not enough to save this game as Gio Gonzalez was touched for 5-runs over 6 innings while walking 3 batters including the Brewers’ starting pitcher to lead-off an inning.
Gonzalez was vying for a Cy Young award and the last 2 outings he wasn’t crisp in his process. Gio faced the Mets over the weekend who were playing with few regulars and Gio gave up only 2-runs but he was missing spots in that appearance also. If you go back to the start before that, Gio threw 121 pitches in that outing. Tonight he threw 115 pitches and only 65 for strikes.
The Nationals only managed 7 hits tonight as the Brewers had some innovative defensive shifts especially straight up the middle that shutdown Adam Lind and Matt Wieters. Besides Turner’s 3 hits, Michael Taylor had 2 hits, and Zimmerman and Rendon had one apiece for the rest of the offense.
“It’s great having Trea back,” Dusty Baker said. “He makes things happen. He’s an impact player. We are slowly but surely getting all of our guys back and into shape. We certainly welcome them back.”
The Nationals didn’t lose any ground in the standings with this loss because the Marlins lost lowering the Magic # to 15. The concern about this game goes to Gio Gonzalez and hoping this game was just an outlier on his great season.
