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There is an old saying that even a bad day at the ballpark is a good day. If that's not an old saying, it should be.
On Sunday the finale in the four-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals was rained out leaving the Nats a 1-2 series loser against one of the best teams in baseball, but the Nats went two straight days without a loss for only the second time this season.
In the series opener on Thursday night, the Nats were in a 4-4 tie going into the top of the ninth. They lost the game 9-4. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago the Nationals' management essentially fired the bullpen and brought in a new crop of relief pitchers. Didn't matter. The new guys can't keep the opposition in check, either.
More about Thursday's game later.
On Friday night the Nats lost in workman-like fashion, even though their new favorite player named Zimmermann, Jordan, was pitching. Z-2 (as differentiated from third baseman Zimmerman, Ryan) had won his first two major league starts. Like most 22-year-olds (and the occasional 62-year-old) he has trouble keeping his concentration. After throwing 8-straight strikes to start the game, Zimmermann lost concentration against Albert Pujols, a lapse which translated into Pujols' launching a ball landing on the centerfield plaza after one bounce in the stands - One nothing.
The Cards went on to win 6-2 in a game which had all of the drama of a voice vote to approve the Journal on the floor of the U.S. House.
On Saturday afternoon the Nationals sent out a rookie pitcher named Shairon Martis. Martis, like Zimmermann, was 2-0 coming into the game (in four starts) but had a pretty ugly earned run average of 6.20. Not only that, but Martis had almost as many walks (11) as strikeouts (13).
NOTE: A pitcher's earned run average (ERA) is the number of runs allowed per nine-innings. You take the number of earned runs, divide by the number of innings pitched, and multiply by nine. That either gives you a pitcher's ERA or the temperature in Celsius.
Young pitchers with stats like this tend not to maintain their undefeated record for very long. But this young pitcher will maintain it for at least one more game as he went the full nine innings for a 6-1 complete game win - six strikeouts and no walks. See how this works? This game is so easy!
Maybe it's the softening of the edges of memory, but I seem to remember following the Yankees as a kid when a complete game didn't generate a headline. When Whitey Ford, went out to the mound he was expected to pitch nine innings. When he didn't, someone had to come in and do his job for him.
Now Major League teams have specialists who come in to pitch in innings 5,6 or 7; but a different guy comes in to pitch in the 8th and still another guy - the closer - comes in to pitch the ninth.
In 1955 Whitey Ford started 33 games for the Yankees, completed 18 and had an 18-7 record. In EACH of the last two years of his career, Sandy Koufax started 41 games for the Dodgers and finished 27 of them. Since 2005, Washington Nationals pitchers have had a total of eight complete games.
Thursday night's game was strange in many ways not the least of which being the Nationals starter, Daniel Cabrera, pitched six innings during which he threw four wild pitches, walked five and allowed three runs on four hits. There were also hit batsmen, passed balls (an error by the catcher on a pitch) and an error on the catcher on a throw.
The Major League record for wild pitches by one pitcher in a single game is six which is held by three different National League pitchers. One of those three is Bill Gullickson when he pitched for the Montreal Expos which the Nationals used to be, so I started rooting for Cabrera to fire at the screen behind home plate. At one point he had thrown 80 pitches - the limit is about 100 - and I complained he would have to throw two wild pitches out of the next 20. "Don't bet against it," one of the writers in the press box murmered.
Cabrera ended with four WPs which is the new Nationals record, but the franchise record is safe with Gullickson.
So, the Nats end the week 6-17 and in last place in the National League East - with the worst record in baseball, but they're fun to watch, it's easy to get to the stadium, and - because attendance is down dramatically from a year ago - you can walk up to the ticket booth and get a seat anywhere from $5 up to $300 - depending upon whom, if anyone, you're trying to impress.
-- Rich Galen
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