Samuel Chamberlain – We Love DC http://www.welovedc.com Your Life Beyond The Capitol Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:00:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9.9 A Shutout Win, And A Glimpse Of The Future? http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/25/a-shutout-win-and-a-glimpse-of-the-future/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/25/a-shutout-win-and-a-glimpse-of-the-future/#comments Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:17:07 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=75951 Photo courtesy of
‘Win!’
courtesy of ‘oddlittlebird.’

On a warm Sunday afternoon on the final weekend of September, the Washington Nationals shut out a division opponent in a game with major playoff implications. The starting pitcher, a high draft pick and source of occasional frustration, pitched six shutout innings; Washington’s best offensive player smashed a two-run home run to break the game open in the late innings; and the team’s sterling bullpen pitched three perfect innings to secure the win.

OK, so the only team who had their playoff chances affected was the hapless Atlanta Braves, for whom the 3-0 loss was their 15th of the month of September. Atlanta’s lackluster performance, combined with the St. Louis Cardinals’ 3-2 win over the Chicago Cubs, cut the Braves’ lead in the National League wild card race down to a single game with three still to play.

Photo courtesy of
‘I’ll take two’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

But in every other respect, Sunday afternoon’s triumph in front of 37,638 festive fans — most of whom stood for the final out and some of whom stayed long after the team had left the field — represented what baseball in Washington could become if (and it’s admittedly a big if), the team continues to improve as planned. But more on that later. Here’s what you need to know for now: The Nationals will depart for their final three games of the season against the Florida Marlins with a record of 78-80 (they’ll play 161 games instead of 162 because the September 7 rainout against Los Angeles will not be made up). The franchise has not finished .500 since 2005, and if Washington manages to take all three games in Florida, the Nationals/Expos franchise will finish above .500 for the first time since 2003 (83-79).

Ross Detwiler, the aforementioned high draft pick (6th overall in 2007) turned in his third straight strong performance to close the season, pitching six shutout innings and only allowing four hits and two walks while striking out four. His only hiccup came in the third inning, when he allowed a single to David Ross and a walk to Jack Wilson before walking the opposing pitcher, Mike Minor, on four straight pitches despite Minor’s best efforts to sacrifice himself with a bunt. Relying on his sinker to get himself out of trouble, Detwiler went to a 3-0 count on Michael Bourn before finally throwing a strike. Bourn flied out to left fielder Michael Morse in foul territory. The next batter, Martin Prado, lifted a shallow fly ball to Jonny Gomes in right field before Chipper Jones grounded into a 5-4 forceout to end the inning.

Early on, the Nationals didn’t fare much better than the Braves when it came to driving runners in, as they left five runners on base over the first three innings. But Wilson Ramos made that disappointment go away in the bottom of the fourth inning as he roped a solo home run into the flower beds in front of the left-field seats. It was Ramos’ 15th of the season and capped a fine first full season in Washington. But as a signature moment, it paled in comparison to what came in the bottom of the seventh.

With the score still 1-0 after the Braves had failed to tie the game in the top of the fifth despite having runners on second and third with one out (Bourn and Prado the culprits again at the plate, lining out to second and flying out to right), Morse came to the plate with two outs and Ryan Zimmerman on first base after a single to left. Atlanta reliever Cristhian Martinez tried to sneak a high fastball past Morse on the outer half of the plate. It was a mistake, and Morse did what he’s done to most mistakes this season: he crushed it into the seats. It was 3-0, and that was more than enough for the Nationals bullpen, as Henry Rodriguez (who struck out the side in the seventh), Tyler Clippard, and Drew Storen took care of their innings in order.

What 2012 holds for the Nationals is far from certain. They will still be playing in a very tough division with some very young pieces (Ian Desmond’s progress or lack thereof will be particularly interesting to watch in his third full season, while Danny Espinosa will look to build on a strong rookie season), not to mention a young front two in their rotation (Strasburg and Zimmermann). It is very much an open question whether Jayson Werth can build on his relatively strong second half of this season, as is whether Michael Morse can match  his production from this year.

But never mind that for now. On Sunday, the sun was out and the Nationals walked off the field winners, and indisputably a better team than the one the walked off the field for the last time in 2010. That should be good enough to keep you warm for the winter.

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Strasburg Stumbles, Nats Bumped Off By Braves http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/24/strasburg-stumbles-nats-bumped-off-by-braves/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/24/strasburg-stumbles-nats-bumped-off-by-braves/#comments Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:24:44 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=75922 Photo courtesy of
‘IMG_8416’

courtesy of ‘NDwas’
Now that Stephen Strasburg has made a full recovery from Tommy John surgery, all that’s left for fans of the Washington Nationals to hope for is that his starts in 2012 go a lot better than his start on Friday night, when Strasburg’s disastrous first inning turned out to be the difference in a 7-4 loss to the playoff-chasing Atlanta Braves (89-68).

The start was officially delayed by 14 minutes while the field was given extra time to recover from the day-long rains that soaked the District. Whether it was this minor disruption of routine or the generally damp and humid conditions that affected Strasburg is not clear. However, he had trouble locating the strike zone in a 38-pitch first inning, and when either his four-seam or two-seam fastball did find the zone, it was carted all over the Nationals Park outfield.

After Strasburg struck out Michael Bourn on a changeup to lead off the game, Martin Prado lined a single off the glove of Danny Espinosa. Chipper Jones followed by pulling a two-seam fastball into right field on a full count, sending Prado to third. Dan Uggla fisted another four-seam fastball into center field to score Prado, the game’s first run. After Brian McCann swung through a 97-mile-an-hour fastball, Freddie Freeman doubled Atlanta’s advantage by singling to right before Jack Wilson pulled a ground ball that should have gone straight into Ryan Zimmerman’s glove and ended the inning. However, the ball took a fat hop, nicked the heel of Zimmerman’s glove, and bounced to left field as Uggla crossed the plate to make it 3-0. Strasburg managed to retire Jason Heyward to end the inning, but the out came in the form of a 395-foot fly ball that drove Rick Ankiel to the warning track in dead center field and nearly ended the competitive portion of the game right then and there.

Strasburg retired 9 of the next 10 batters and exited after the 4th inning with the Nationals trailing 3-1 thanks to an RBI single by Wilson Ramos in the second inning. However, Washington’s middle relief let them down. In particular, Collin Balester, who relieved Strasburg, made his predecessor’s performance seem masterful. Davey Johnson, trying to prolong his team’s five-game winning streak, pulled Balester after three batters and brought in Atahualpa Severino, who allowed both of his inherited runners to score on a double by Uggla, who came around himself on an RBI double by McCann.

Photo courtesy of
‘_MG_3966’
courtesy of ‘dbking’
To their credit, the Nats (76-80) chipped away at their 6-1 deficit, knocking Hudson (who was also struggling with the humidity) out of the game with two runs in the sixth before Jayson Werth cut the deficit to 6-4 with a long solo home run to left field in the bottom of the eighth. The home run was Werth’s 20th as a National and ensured that 2011 would be the fourth straight year that Werth would hit at least 20 home runs in a season, a small measure of statistical pride in what has generally been a nightmare season.

But whatever positive momentum they had left the Nationals in the top of the ninth, when Washington perpetrated one of the shoddiest, most inexcusable defensive plays ever seen by a team of professionals. It came with one out, Bourn on second, Jones at the plate and Henry Rodriguez on the mound. Jones tapped a ground ball back to the hill. Rodriguez gloved it and immediately sprinted toward second, where Bourn appeared trapped off the bag. When the baserunner feinted toward second base, Rodriguez tossed the ball to shortstop Ian Desmond. Bourn broke for third and Desmond threw the ball to Zimmerman, who dropped it.

Bourn gratefully scampered back to second, only to find himself face-to-face with Jones, who had kept running while all this was going on. Jones retreated back toward first base, no doubt in the vague hope that what followed would actually happen. Having retrieved the ball, Zimmerman raced halfway across the diamond before throwing the ball to Chris Marrero, who tossed the ball to Espinosa, who finally ran down Jones and tagged him for the second out. Meanwhile, the catcher Ramos had gone to back up the play at third, while Rodriguez squatted on his haunches in the infield and was as much a part of the action as any spectator (which is to say, not at all).

With home plate unguarded, Bourn raced home for the Braves’ seventh run. The many Atlanta fans in the park erupted, the Nationals fans groaned in resigned anger, and Rodriguez, whose decision to shirk the simple out at first started the whole mess, was left with his head in his hands. It was a fitting end to a real mess of an evening.

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Neutered Nats Flop Against Fish, Lose 3-0 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/17/neutered-nats-flop-against-fish-lose-3-0/ Sat, 17 Sep 2011 04:13:18 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=75547 Friday night was never going to be easy for the Washington Nationals. A letdown of some kind had to be expected after an emphatic four-game road sweep of the New York Mets earlier this week, and the red flags waved even more frantically when Davey Johnson announced that he was giving both Michael Morse and Jayson Werth a day off. (And he meant it; Alex Cora was first off the bench to pinch-hit.) And that was before anyone bothered to check the statistics and note that Florida had had the Indian sign over Washington this season, with an 8-4 head-to-head record entering this three-game weekend series, the next-to-last of the season between these two clubs.

But no one expected the Nats to go down as meekly as they did in the 3-0 loss. Javier Vazquez, a pitcher who has generally been mediocre to below-average since being traded by the Montreal Expos to the New York Yankees prior to the 2004 season (exceptional outliers in 2007 and 2009 notwithstanding), recorded his first complete game since September 25, 2009 (when his Braves defeated, yes, the Nationals), and he needed only 104 pitches to do it. True to form, there was nothing particularly special about what Vazquez was doing. He threw his fastball for strikes, got ahead in the count, and took advantage of a Nationals lineup that seemed completely uninterested in working the count. Of the 30 batters that Vazquez faced, 17 either took a first-pitch strike or swung at the first pitch.

The Nationals were compliant in their own demise as well, making two foolish mistakes on the basepaths. The first came in the second inning with the score still 1-0. After Rick Ankiel had singled to center with one out, Espinosa flicked a ball into left-center field. The ball was cut off quickly by center fielder Bryan Petersen, but Ankiel was still able to advance to third. However, Espinosa either underestimated Petersen’s arm or thought it was the right time to take the double play out of the equation. Regardless of his reasoning, he was easily cut down at second base for the second out of the inning. Chris Marrero flied out to right field to end the once-promising inning.

The other, less forgivable lapse came in the seventh inning, with the score 3-0 but Vazquez wobbling for the first time all night. Ryan Zimmerman and Laynce Nix singled to lead off the inning before Ankiel (fooled by a curveball) and Espinosa (unable to catch up to a fastball) struck out swinging. Then, with Marrero at the plate in search of a first home run of his term with the Nats, pinch-runner Brian Bixler was picked off of first, despite the fact that second base was already occupied by the less-than-speedy Zimmerman and it was unnecessary for Bixler to take undue risks on the basepaths with the tying run at the plate. The whole sequence summed up the lazy, haphazard approach the Nats offense brought to the ballpark last night.

Lannan wasn’t much better, though he managed to wring six innings and a quality start (in name only) out of his evening. He struggled to locate his fastball and changeup in the early going and gave up six of the eight hits recorded off him in the first three innings. The pitches that weren’t hit were taken outside of the strike zone, and this is what led to Florida’s first run of the game. Gaby Sanchez and Petersen worked one-out walks in the second inning and advanced to third and second on a wild pitch. Sanchez scored on John Buck’s single to center, and if Petersen hadn’t stopped between second and third base to make sure the ball would drop, he would have scored as well. As it was, Lannan got out of the inning with no further damage after Vazquez failed to get a squeeze bunt down and got Buck thrown out at second base and Emilio Bonifacio grounded into an inning-ending force play.

The Marlins added their other two runs in the third inning as Omar Infante and Mike Stanton opened the inning with back-to-back doubles before Stanton came home on Sanchez’s single to center. Again, the damage could have been worse, but Petersen went too far when turning first base after his two-out single and managed to get himself thrown out 7-6-3.

It was, in short, the type of game that was to be expected on a cool Friday night in September when both teams are eliminated from the playoff race (mathematically as well as realistically).  If there’s anything positive to be taken from it, it’s that Saturday’s game shouldn’t be nearly as somnolent. After all, Werth and Morse should be back, and some kid named Strasburg is on the mound.

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Mental Errors Doom Nats In 4-2 Loss To Arizona; In Memoriam Mike Flanagan http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/25/mental-errors-doom-nats-in-a-4-2-loss-to-arizona-in-memorium-mike-flanagan/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 05:07:19 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=74770 Photo courtesy of
‘Desmond touches ’em all’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Any Washington Nationals fan who bothered to sit through the entirety of Wednesday night’s 4-2 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks would probably have felt a nasty shock of recognition. For one night, the Nationals of April and May re-emerged and reminded the 17,881 in attendance that there was a time when the team was in the bottom half of the National League table in every major offensive statistical category. They allowed 24-year-old Lynchburg native Daniel Hudson to come within one out of a complete-game shutout before back-to-back solo home runs by Laynce Nix and Jonny Gomes forced Hudson to yield to J.J. Putz, who forced Wilson Ramos to lift a foul popout to Lyle Overbay to end the game.

The Nationals weren’t helped by the absence of Jayson Werth from the lineup due to a mild groin strain, but more often than not, Washington was its own worst enemy. The pattern of self-destruction started in the first inning when Ian Desmond led off with a single to right field but was caught trying to steal second as the back end of a strike-‘im out, throw ‘im out double play. In the second inning, Michael Morse and Danny Espinosa led off the inning with singles before Hudson retired Nix, Gomes, and Ramos on one, two, and three pitches respectively. And with the exception of a one-out single by Desmond in the third inning, that was it as far as the Nationals offensive attack went until Nix dropped a double down the right field line with two outs in the seventh inning. In the interim, Hudson retired 17 of the 18 batters he faced, including 13 straight between Desmond’s single and Nix’s double.

No starting pitcher deserves that lack of support and Livan Hernandez certainly didn’t after he pitched seven innings and allowed two earned runs on four hits to go with no walks and six strikeouts. But Hernandez also didn’t deserve the bobble by Gomes that killed any chance that Justin Upton might be thrown out at home on Chris Young’s two-out double in the 4th that made the score 1-0. (Arizona added a second run later in the inning on an Overbay single). Hernandez didn’t deserve to have Davey Johnson “balk” and send him back out for the 8th (a mistake Johnson later took responsibility for). Hernandez didn’t deserve to have Nix airmail the cutoff man trying to nail Ryan Roberts at third, which allowed Gerardo Parra to get to second base with nobody out in the inning. One intentional walk later and Hernandez was getting a standing ovation on his way to the dugout, where he watched Henry Rodriguez surrender a two-run single to Miguel Montero that drove in what turned out to be the winning runs.

No, Hernandez didn’t deserve all that. But as a wise man once said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”

A Few Words About Mike Flanagan

Photo courtesy of
‘Mike Flanagan and Rick Dempsey’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

During the 8th inning of Wednesday night’s game, word circulated around the Nationals Park press box via Twitter that former Orioles pitcher Mike Flanagan was found dead on his Maryland property at the age of 59. I’ll leave it to others who actually have memories of him wearing the familiar orange and black to describe the experience of watching him pitch. I want to talk about the legacy he had already left behind.

Mike Flanagan (who was born three months and eight days after my own father) and I were born 36 years apart, but we came from the same place. Manchester, New Hampshire (pop. 110,000, give or take a few hundred) is technically the largest city in the Granite State, but in a lot of ways it functions like a small town. Flanagan’s sister Kathy is my mother’s hairdresser. By the time I reached adolescence and became aware of my town’s history, sporting and otherwise, Flanagan had long since retired. But signs of his greatness weren’t hard to find. Hanging above Manchester Memorial High School’s trophy case, which was full of game balls and other relics, was a plaque with Flanagan’s name and picture. It sat alongside Memorial’s other great athletes (including Steve Balboni, who made it to the major leagues a few years later after the crafty lefty), and I glanced at it every time I made my way to the school’s gym to broadcast a high school basketball game (something I always did with great trepidation as a student of Memorial’s great rival, Central High School). Outside ancient Gill Stadium, until recently the home football and baseball ground for all three of Manchester’s public high schools (as well as parochial Trinity High School), the names of the city’s greatest athletes were carved into wooden posts and placed all around the stadium’s perimeter in a sort of Ring of Honor. Among the most prominent of those names was, of course, Mike Flanagan.

All-Stars, Cy Young winners, and World Series champions aren’t supposed to come from a place like Manchester. The cold New England climate with its short, wet springs are more conducive to high school hockey, basketball, and cross-country than baseball. So even though Flanagan spent much of his career pitching for the hated Baltimore Orioles back when they (not the Yankees or the Red Sox) were the kings of the AL East and run by the Earl (Weaver, that is) of Baltimore), anyone who cared about sports in Manchester was conscious that the best professional athlete ever to set foot on its playing fields turned out to be an All-Star, a Cy Young winner, and a World Series champion. Not bad for a small town in a cold climate, and we who knew it were proud of him. We still are.

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Detwiler And Werth Lead Nats Over Snakes, 4-1 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/22/detwiler-and-werth-lead-nats-over-snakes-4-1/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/22/detwiler-and-werth-lead-nats-over-snakes-4-1/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:58:53 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=74603 Photo courtesy of
‘Curly W’
courtesy of ‘BrianMKA’

After the emotional Sturm und Drang that was this past weekend’s three-game series against the Phillies, the Washington Nationals needed a nice, quiet game that wouldn’t overly tax the bullpen. Luckily, they got just that kind of performance from Ross Detwiler, who allowed just one run on six hits over 6.2 innings as the Nationals defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-1 Monday night at Nationals Park.

On a night when most of the focus of the Washington brass and media was on Stephen Strasburg’s third rehab start with Class-A Hagerstown (for the record, Strasburg went three innings and allowed one earned run on two hits, walked one and struck out six while throwing 60 pitches in front of Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo and principal owner Mark Lerner), the 25-year-old Detwiler continued to build on his impressive year, pitching into the seventh inning as a starter for the first time since June 20, 2009.

How much of Detwiler’s improvement is genuine progress and how much is a product of mere year-to-year statistical variance is hard to gauge. His strikeouts per nine innings ratio has jumped to 6.61, up from 5.16 in 2010, though he only managed just three strikeouts Monday night after fanning seven in his previous start against Cincinnati. Detwiler’s also been getting more ground balls with his more effective sinker. 48.9 percent of all balls in play against him have been grounders this season, up from an even 43% in 2010. As a result, both Detwiler’s Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and expected Fielding Independant Pitching (xFIP) have dropped by more than a run from 2010 (the FIP has fallen from 5.64 to 4.54, while his xFIP has fallen from 4.97 to 3.96).

But there’s no denying that the left-hander has gotten very lucky when it comes to stranding runners on base. Entering Monday night, Detwiler’s left on base percentage was an unsustainable 86.6 percent. Remarkably, he managed to bolster that number on Monday night, as Arizona stranded five of their seven runners while he was in the game. Indeed, the most crucial moment of Detwiler’s outing came in the top of sixth inning, when he allowed a single to Justin Upton and walked Chris Young to load the bases with two outs and Washington on top 4-0.  Henry Rodriguez was warming up in the Washington bullpen, and on another night, Nationals manager Davey Johnson might have pulled the trigger on a pitching change. But this time, he only visited the mound to have a word with Detwiler, and his faith was rewarded when Detwiler induced Paul Goldschmidt to ground into an inning-ending force play.

Along with Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann, the development of Detwiler will be fascinating to watch. The good news is that the Nationals and their fans will have plenty of time to make a determination. Detwiler has one more full season before being eligible for arbitration, and he won’t be a full-fledged free-agent until after the 2015 campaign.

On the other side of the coin, the Nationals offense didn’t make Arizona starter Joe Saunders work particularly hard (he had only thrown 90 pitches when he made way for a pinch-hitter after six innings), but the Nationals didn’t to have particular trouble hitting certain of his pitches. As it turned out, Saunders’ two-seam fastball was particularly ineffective, and it was responsible for all of Washington’s runs. In the bottom of the second, Jonny Gomes dropped a two-seamer into right field to drive in Jayson Werth for the first run of the game. Two innings later, after a Ryan Zimmerman infield single and a walk by Michael Morse, Werth hit another Saunders two-seamer quite a bit farther. The ball sailed into the front row of the right-field seats for a three-run home run that turned a 1-0 lead into a 4-0 cushion and capped off a fine night at the plate for Werth (2-for-4 with his other hit a pulled double into the left field corner in the second). The well-paid right fielder is very quietly having a fine second half to the season, with a .358 on-base percentage and a .778 OPS in 137 plate appearances since the All-Star Break entering Monday night’s game. While those numbers still don’t measure up to his outstanding statistics in Philadelphia, Nats fans can now expect, rather than hope, that Werth has got his feet under him in the nation’s capital.

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King Richard: Ankiel’s Slam Helps Nats Over Braves, 9-3 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/03/king-richard-helps-nats-slam-braves-9-3/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/03/king-richard-helps-nats-slam-braves-9-3/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 04:13:54 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=73915 Photo courtesy of
‘HR!’
courtesy of ‘oddlittlebird.’

A night after hitting two solo home runs in a series opening 5-3 win over the Atlanta Braves, Rick Ankiel struck an even bigger blow. His grand slam in the bottom of the fourth inning turned a 3-2 deficit into a 6-3 lead, and the Washington Nationals went on to beat Atlanta 9-3 in front of 24,326 fans at Nationals Park Tuesday night.

The grand slam was Ankiel’s only hit of the night (he finished 1-for-5), but it was the perfect capstone to a torrid homestand for the veteran pitcher-turned-center fielder. Ankiel entered Tuesday’s game with a .421 on-base percentage in 19 plate appearances during the homestand, while his two Monday night home runs goosed his slugging percentage up to .750. In the short term, Ankiel’s hot streak has been a timely contribution to Washington’s firepower while others have struggled. Most notably, Danny Espinosa has fallen off sharply from the giddy heights of, say, mid-July. The rookie second baseman’s one-out double in the bottom of the third was his first extra-base hit since July 17 (which also, coincidentally, came against the Braves). Between the next day’s 0-for-4 performance against the Houston Astros and the start of Tuesday night’s game, Espinosa –who went 2-for-5 on Tuesday night– had reached base just nine times in 57 plate appearances on four singles, four walks, and once taking first after being hit by a pitch. That worked out to  a .161 on-base percentage, while striking out 17 times.

Jayson Werth, who also went 2-for-5 Tuesday night  has been hot as well (.440 on-base percentage and 1.011 OPS on the homestand entering the game), and it was he who scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the second inning. Werth, showing the same aggressive baserunning that’s marked his game all season, led off the inning with a single to right and took off for second with Michael Morse at the plate. Morse struck out on a full count, but David Ross’ throw sailed into center field and Werth took third base before scoring on Ian Desmond’s sacrifice fly.

That lead only lasted until the top of the third inning, when John Lannan struggled for the only significant period in his 6.2 innings. Facing the bottom third of the Atlanta order, Lannan gave up singles to Ross and Jose Constanza. After Ross was retired on a failed sacrifice by starter Derek Lowe, Michael Bourn tied the game with a double down the right field line. Lowe himself came across when the next batter, Martin Prado, grounded out to Espinosa. The Braves increased their lead to 3-1 in the top of the fourth when Alex Gonzalez singled with one out, went to second on a single by Brooks Conrad, advanced to third on a deep fly ball by Ross, and scored when Constanzo drove a single over the leaping Ryan Zimmerman and into left field.

But in the fourth, it all fell apart for Lowe, who has been a consistent disappointment for Atlanta since signing a four-year, $60 million contract with the Braves after the 2008 season. On Tuesday night, his sinker wasn’t as effective as it should have been, and the Nats finally got the measure of him. After Jonny Gomes walked with one out, Desmond pulled a sinker into left field for a single. Wilson Ramos fouled off a changeup before lining a sinker the other way to load the bases. Lannan then chopped a ground ball to first baseman Freddie Freeman, whose throw home to force Gomes was much too high and forced Ross to come well in front of the plate to make the catch. Gomes finished the job by taking out Ross’ legs with his own. It was a violent, but legal, play by Gomes and it cut the margin to 3-2. Then Ankiel watched two cutters miss high and outside before driving a sinker into the storage area behind the center field wall. It happens that quickly sometimes.

Lowe made it out of the fourth without further damage to his ERA, but he only lasted two batters into the fifth. Left with no choice but to hope that his sinker would suddenly sink, Lowe kept throwing it, and the Nationals kept hitting. Specifically, Gomes lead off the fifth by tripling down the left field line and Desmond treated another thigh-high sinker with the contempt it deserved, lining it into the first row of the left field seats to make it 8-3.

Michael Morse rounded off the home run derby in style with a long home run into the first row of the right center field balcony off Christhian Martinez to provide the final margin of victory in the bottom of the sixth. But the story once again was Ankiel, who, while he is not likely to be back with the club in 2012, has given the club some very fine service in center field (a below-average bat, perhaps, but his defense has not been close to the disaster many feared it would be). On a team that is simultaneously building toward the future and struggling to put its offense together, performances like Ankiel’s on this homestand are so often the difference between winning and losing, progress and frustration.

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Ankiel’s Solo Shots Lead The Nats Over The Braves http://www.welovedc.com/2011/08/02/ankiels-solo-shots-lead-the-nats-over-the-braves/ Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:14:24 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=73839 Photo courtesy of
‘Teddy Didn’t Win…’
courtesy of ‘Tony DeFilippo’

Since Rick Ankiel returned from the purgatory that his pitching career had become and made his debut as an outfielder in August of 2007, he has hit 56 home runs. Prior to Monday night’s 5-3 Washington Nationals win over the Atlanta Braves, Ankiel had hit two home runs in a game on four occasions. Facing right-hander Jair Jurrjens, Ankiel took his career home run total to an even 60, hitting two solo shots into the right field seats as the Nats notched their third win in a row against a division opponent.

Ankiel’s first home run, a solo cannon shot into the right-center field seats to lead off the bottom of the first inning, was impressive enough. But it paled in comparison to his second homer, another solo job that was blasted into the second deck down the right field line. As anyone who makes a habit of watching games at Nationals Park can tell you, those seats aren’t reached cheaply.

The pitching match-up certainly didn’t favor the home side. Jurrjens, a 25-year-old from Curacao, had not lost a start since June 14, and is surely on the watch list for the National League Cy Young Award. By contrast, Livan Hernandez had not won a start since June 26, and hadn’t even made it past the 4th inning in two of his previous three appearances. In the first inning, the Cuban looked to be continuing his poor run of form. After giving up a lead-off single to Michael Bourn on the second pitch of the game, Martin Prado turned on a curveball that missed the left field foul pole by, at most, a foot. The next pitch was scalded to Ryan Zimmerman, who snagged the line drive on the back hand and threw to first in plenty of time to double off Bourn, who was left standing at second wondering how on earth the ball hadn’t gone for extra bases.

The themes of danger and escape recurred throughout Hernandez’s six-inning, six-hit, one-run outing. In the third, he gave up a one-out single to Jose Constanza, who was promptly thrown out trying to steal second by Wilson Ramos. In the next inning, Hernandez allowed back-to-back one-out singles by Freddie Freeman and Dan Uggla before hitting  Jason Heyward on  the leg with a pitch to load the bases. The next batter, David Ross, grounded into a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning.

Hernandez helped his own cause considerably on two occasions. In the second inning, Hernandez gave his team a lead that they never relinquished when his two-out single to right field scored Jayson Werth to put Washington on top 2-1. But his most spectacular moment came in the fifth. After a lead-off single by Alex Gonzalez, Jurrjens (batting in the 8th spot) dropped a very well-placed bunt in front of the plate. Springing off the mound with alacrity, Hernandez spun and fired a bullet to the covering Desmond at second to start the 1-6-3 twin killing, the third double play turned by the Nats on the evening.

The only mistake Hernandez made was in the second inning, when he left a sinking fastball up in the zone for Uggla to catapult into the right-center field bleachers to tie the game 1-1. But even in this, Hernandez could commiserate with closer Drew Storen, who gave up Uggla’s second home run of the night with one out in the ninth inning. That made the score 5-3, and when Heyward followed with a single to right, nerves were jangling in the crowd of 19,940. But Storen managed to blow a full-count fastball by Ross and induce Gonzalez to ground into a 5-4 force-out to end the game.

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Nats Come Up Just Short Against Marlins http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/28/nats-come-up-just-short-against-marlins/ Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:17:33 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=73719 Photo courtesy of
‘Nats Park’
courtesy of ‘oddlittlebird.’

At least on Wednesday night, the Washington Nationals had the decency to make it interesting. Before losing 7-5 to the Florida Marlins and dropping further into the basement of the National League East, Washington managed to piece together four hits and a walk to score four runs in the bottom of the ninth. The last of those hits — a two-run single by Michael Morse — scored two runs and brought Laynce Nix, who had already hit a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth to make the score 3-1 Florida at the time. Nix came within a foot of tying the game, lifting a Leo Nunez change-up very high in the air and very far into left field. But the ball had been hit a little too close to the end of Nix’s bat, the ball settled into Mike Stanton’s glove instead of in the Nationals bullpen, and Washington had officially lost eight of their last eleven games dating back to the All-Star Break.

However tempting, Nationals fans shouldn’t use the desperate rally in the ninth inning to let the team off the hook for what was, for the most part, another disappointing performance, particularly from the offense. Time after time, the Nationals allowed Javier Vazquez, he of the 5.35 ERA and the 73 ERA+ entering the evening to squirm out of trouble. In the first inning, the Nationals had men on first and third with two out. Nix bounced to shortstop for a force out. In the second inning, Washington had men on first and second with none out. Jesus Flores struck out swinging, and after Livan Hernandez sacrificed to advance the runners to second and third, Jerry Hairston popped out to first baseman Greg Dobbs. With the exception of Nix’s home run, the Nationals didn’t get a runner past second base again until the seventh. With Washington trailing 4-1, pinch-hitter Roger Bernadina walked to lead off the inning, and Hairston reached when Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez kicked around a perfect double-play ball. Then Alex Cora came to the plate, and this time the Nats were not so lucky. He grounded into a perfectly turned 5-4-3 double play with Bernadina advancing to third, and the tease was complete when Ryan Zimmerman lifted a fly ball into deep right field that was grabbed by a leaping Mike Stanton. The more cosmically-minded of the Nationals fan base would suggest that Davey Johnson got exactly what he deserved for batting Cora (.286 on-base percentage in 134 plate appearances) second in the lineup in the first place.

Jayson Werth (Agonistes) never got off the bench Wednesday, which was perfectly fine. The night’s events served to frustrate the 21,974 enough. In addition to the offensive dearth, there were other moments to make Nationals fans shake their head and sigh. There was, for example, the moment in the second inning when Hernandez made Stanton look foolish swinging and missing a 65 mile-per-hour curveball to bring the count to 1-2. The next pitch was an 86 mile-per-hour sinker that did not sink and which Stanton slammed into the right-center field bleachers to make the score 1-0 Florida. There was also Hernandez, appearing to pitch out of a bases-loaded one-out situation in the fourth when he got Mike Cameron looking at another curveball, this time on a 3-2 count. The next batter, John Buck, pulled a hanging slider into left field for a two-run single to make the score 3-0. Then there was Cameron, only recently salvaged from Boston’s scrap heap, hitting two home runs, the second a two-run shot to left field that made the score 7-1 and turned out to provide the winning margin.

This is life for the Washington Nationals at the start of the second half of the season, where everything, it seems, has to go right and where nothing actually is.

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Nats Fall To Fish As Zimmermann Can’t Right The Ship http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/27/nats-fall-to-fish-as-zimmermann-cant-right-the-ship/ Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:00:32 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=73674 Photo courtesy of
‘not too happy’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

The Washington Nationals are last in the National League East for the first time since June 14. They descended to this low point after losing 11-2 to the Florida Marlins Tuesday night in front of 24,650 on a relatively pleasant night (in meteorological terms, anyway) at Nationals Park. The loss is the seventh the Nats have suffered in their ten games since the All-Star break and this particular performance should choke out whatever life was left in any hope that Washington could make a surprise run up the National League Wild Card standings. It is true that the Nationals only have the sixth-worst record in the National League and are still only four games under .500 (49-53 after Tuesday night), but if their recent run of form is any guide, the relatively fertile period of mid-June has turned out to be a mirage and the club is regressing dangerously.

The tone for the evening was set by starter Jordan Zimmermann, who gave up a triple to the second batter of the game, Omar Infante. The Florida second baseman went on to score on an RBI groundout by Greg Dobbs, the first of five runs that Dobbs would drive in over the course of the evening. Zimmermann has been very, very good throughout this season for the Nationals, but he was off tonight, particularly in the first five innings. He was leaving far too many of his pitches up in the strike zone, and the Marlins treated his offerings with the contempt they deserved, banging out seven hits in the first five innings, with four going for extra bases. Even more disconcerting were the two hit batsmen on Zimmermann’s record, as many as he’d hit all season entering Tuesday night. Arguably the biggest moment in the game came with two out in the third inning, when Zimmermann hit Hanley Ramirez with an 0-1 fastball with the score already 2-0 in Florida’s favor after Zimmermann had coaxed a 4-6-3 double play out of Dobbs, with Emilio Bonifacio crossing the plate in the process. Two pitches to Logan Morrison later, the Nationals were behind 4-0 and Morrison was circling the bases after depositing his 16th home run of the season into the Nationals bullpen.

In fairness to Zimmermann, he has now pitched 126.2 innings this season, by far the most in his major league career, and with his much-noted 160-inning limit fast-approaching, it would not be in the least surprising to either see more outings like this one or to see him handled much more gently and with a much shorter leash.

The Nationals offense, true to usual form, was about as exciting to watch as molasses. They recorded 12 outs before Laynce Nix cracked the club’s first hit since the first inning of Sunday’s 3-1 loss to the Dodgers, turning on a low and inside fastball and looping it into the right-field bullpen to make the score 5-1. The only time the Nationals came close to stirring the crowd’s collective pulse came in the bottom of the sixth inning, when Ryan Zimmerman singled off the glove of the diving Ramirez and was chased home by a Michael Morse double. That brought up Jayson Werth, who had struck out on three pitches in the second and weakly waved at a pitch a foot off the plate to get out in the fourth. This time, he made solid contact with the ball, but it went straight into the glove of Ramirez and the threat died when Nix was caught looking.

The final flourish on the evening was the performance of Henry Rodriguez, who started the top of the ninth inning with the Nationals trailing 6-2 and allowed the following: a home run, a walk, a single, a walk to load the bases, a two-run single to make it 9-2 Florida, an RBI groundout to make the score 10-2, and a walk to Morrison after having him behind in the count 0-2. That broke the patience of Nationals manager Davey Johnson, who power-walked to the mound to bring in Ryan Mattheus and told reporters after the game that he was nearing his “boiling point.” Based on his team’s performance Tuesday night, it’s hard not to empathize with him.

Nats Get Gomes For Two Prospects

Moments before the start of Tuesday night’s game, the Nationals announced that they had acquired outfielder Jonny Gomes and cash considerations from the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for minor league outfielder Bill Rinehart and minor league pitcher Chris Manno. Gomes, who was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2001 and broke into the big leagues two years later, is hitting .211 with a .336 on-base percentage and a .735 OPS. The 30-year-old Gomes is only under contract through the end of this season, and is owed $1.75 million in salary, some of which will be picked up by Cincinnati, according to Adam Kilgore. Gomes will report to Washington in time for Wednesday’s game against Florida.

Gomes is expected to platoon with Laynce Nix in left field and get starts against left-handed pitchers. Gomes has a .976 OPS against lefties this season. The fact that Washington’s bench needed boosting was dramatically illustrated in the seventh inning of Tuesday night’s game when the first batter Davey Johnson pulled off the bench was the light-hitting Alex Cora (.288 on-base percentae, .561 slugging percentage). A corresponding roster move will be made by the Nationals on Wednesday when Gomes arrives. The logical move would seem to be to DFA 43-year-old Matt Stairs, who has an on-base percentage of .257 in 74 plate appearances this season.

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Nats Break Even, Beat Rockies 2-0 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/10/nats-break-even-beat-rockies-2-0/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/10/nats-break-even-beat-rockies-2-0/#comments Sun, 10 Jul 2011 22:32:31 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=72742 Photo courtesy of
‘First Pitch: Rockies v. Nationals — Nationals Park (DC) July 10, 2011’
courtesy of ‘Ron Cogswell’

In the long-term plans of the Washington Nationals, Jordan Zimmermann will be a No. 2 guy, a complementary left hook to the right-hand lead represented by a healthy Stephen Strasburg. But with Strasburg on the shelf until at least September, Zimmermann became the de facto No. 1 starter entering the 2011 season despite the fact that he would be pitching under a 160-inning limit.

After a very strong 6.1-inning performance in Sunday afternoon’s 2-0 win over the Colorado Rockies, which sent the Nationals into the All-Star Break with a record of 46-46 and halted a particularly morale-sapping three-game losing streak, Zimmermann has pitched 115 of his allotted 160 innings. He extended his streak of pitching six innings or more in his starts to 13 and dropped his ERA from 2.82 to 2.66. He was, in short, exactly the man the Nats needed. His slider and curveball were particularly effective on this day, exploding down and away from Colorado’s right-handed hitters and, more often than not, finding the outside corner of home plate umpire Brian Knight’s strike zone.

Zimmermann’s (and Washington’s) win didn’t come easily, as the Nationals offense continued to struggle. This time, it was Jhoulys Chacin who caused the trouble as he retired the first 11 Nationals he faced before giving up a two-out single to Ryan Zimmerman in the bottom of the fourth inning. That was Washington’s last hit before Ian Desmond led off the bottom of the sixth with a laser that deflected off the glove of third baseman Ian Stewart and reached shortstop Troy Tulowitzki far to late for Colorado’s All-Star to do anything about it. Zimmermann, proving himself doubly indispensible, laid down a beautiful sacrifice bunt and Roger Bernadina did the rest, driving in the only run the Nats would need with a shattered-bat single to right field. Rick Ankiel, who had entered the game in the eight inning as a defensive replacement, provided the icing in the bottom of that inning with a solo home run into the first row of the right field seats off left-hander Matt Reynolds. It was Ankiel’s first home run off a left-handed pitcher since 2008.

Other members of the Nats were not so lucky. Jayson Werth, for one, went 0-for-3 at the plate to drop his average to .215 entering the All-Star Break. The big-money right fielder was greeted with applause by most of the 21,186 at Nationals Park when he was announced for his first at-bat in the bottom of the second inning. The fans held their collective tongues when Werth flied out to center field and left field in his first two at-bats (both times on first-pitch swings), but could restrain themselves no longer when he lifted a meager foul pop-up in the bottom of the seventh inning with Michael Morse standing on second base after a one-out double. At that point, the boos hailed down on Werth all the way back to the dugout.

As the season winds to its conclusion, and as the Nationals (likely) continue to drift around the fringes of the National League wild card race, Werth’s ongoing offensive struggles will continue to be the story, at least until he snaps out of it. But unlike on Saturday night, when Werth grounded into a game-ending double play with the tying run at third base, his struggles were only a footnote to Zimmermann’s great performance. It’s doubtful Werth will take any consolation from this as he prepares for his three days off, but at this point, he’ll take any consolation he can get.

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Rockies Hurt Lannan, Stifle Nats 3-2 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/09/rockies-hurt-lannan-stifle-nats-3-2/ Sat, 09 Jul 2011 04:06:43 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=72705 Photo courtesy of
‘not too happy’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

If Thursday night’s 10-9 loss to the Chicago Cubs was a spectacular defeat for the Washington Nationals, Friday night’s 3-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies was more in keeping with past defeats this season, complete with offensive incompetence and a pinch of bad luck.

In this case, actually, the bad luck was a hammer blow in the form of a baseball off the bat of Ty Wigginton in the top of the fourth inning with Washington on top 1-0. John Lannan had started his outing crisply, and had made it through the first three innings without allowing a single baserunner. After Carlos Gonzalez struck out swinging at a two-seam fastball to lead off the fourth, however, things fell apart quickly for Lannan. Jonathan Herrera lined a four-seam fastball back up the middle for Colorado’s first hit (and base) of the night. Todd Helton pulled a two-seam fastball over the inner half of the plate into right field to put runners on first and second base. And then Wigginton lined another two-seamer straight at Lannan’s skull.

Replays were inconclusive as to whether the ball deflected off Lannan’s glove. What was more definitive was the ball striking Lannan in roughly the place where nose and left cheek come together. As the ball continued into center field and Herrera raced home to tie the game at 1-1, Lannan staggered to his knees for a few seconds before picking himself up and walking to the clubhouse under his own power, holding his cap to his face to staunch any bleeding. The official diagnosis was a nose contusion, and there remains a possibility that Lannan could make his next scheduled start after the All-Star Game.

Despite being allotted as much time as he needed to warm up, Ryan Mattheus seemed rattled by his early appearance in the game. He induced Mark Ellis to ground back to the mound, but double-clutched on the throw to second and only an apparently generous out call from Brian Knight gave the Nationals the second out of the inning. Mattheus was then called for a balk by home plate umpire Bob Davidson, which forced Helton home with the go-ahead run. That in turn was followed by an RBI single for rookie Cole Garner, which made the score 3-1 and was all the scoring Colorado would do or need.

The rest of the night was, for the most part, an exercise in futility by the Nats offense, beginning in the first inning, when they loaded the bases with nobody out against Jason Hammel on a Roger Bernadina double, a walk to Danny Espinosa and an infield single by Ryan Zimmerman. Hammel kept it together, allowing only a sacrifice fly by Michael Morse (which scored Bernadina to give Washington their early lead) before striking out Jayson Werth and inducing Rick Ankiel to pop out to second base. In the rest of his outing, Hammel faced 20 batters, and allowed just four of them to reach base (a walk to Espinosa in the third inning, a solo home run by Wilson Ramos that made the score 3-2 to Colorado, a two-out single to right by Werth in the sixth, and a single to right by Desmond in the bottom of the seventh that precipitated Hammel’s removal).

Hammel’s removal did not turn the tide in Washington’s favor. With newly-recalled Jesus Flores pinch-hitting in the seventh inning against Matt Reynolds, Desmond was picked off and caught trying to steal second. And the offensive ineptitude reached its climax in the 9th inning after a leadoff single by Morse. After Werth struck out flailing wildly at a pitch in the dirt, pinch-runner Brian Bixler, seeing the ball get away briefly from catcher Chris Iannetta decided to try to scamper over to second base. Iannetta recovered the ball in plenty of time to throw out Bixler, and Ankiel’s swinging strikeout ensured that the Nats would drop back to the .500 mark entering the final weekend of the season’s first half.

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Werth’s Hustle Starts Holiday Party as Nats Beat Cubs 5-4 in 10 http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/04/werths-hustle-starts-holiday-party-as-nats-beat-cubs-5-4-in-10/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/04/werths-hustle-starts-holiday-party-as-nats-beat-cubs-5-4-in-10/#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:42:59 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=72467
‘Jayson Werth, where is you’re he

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‘Jayson Werth, where is you’re head at?!?’
courtesy of ‘Tony DeFilippo’

Jayson Werth, the focus of so much agonized discussion among Washington Nationals fans over the last few weeks, didn’t get the big hit in this 4th of July thriller. But he did score the winning run, drove in two more, walked twice, and helped cut down a runner at the plate as the Nationals scrambled back to the .500 mark, defeating the Chicago Cubs 5-4 in 10 innings in front of most of an announced crowd of 32,937 at Nationals Park.

Washington’s winning sequence was classic National League baseball. After Werth worked a walk off losing pitcher Marcos Mateo, he was bunted over to 2nd base by pinch-hitter Livan Hernandez. Hernandez was actually the second pitcher to pinch-hit in the game as Nationals manager Davey Johnson was forced to creatively manage his shortened bench in the absence of Michael Morse (hairline fracture of the forearm). After Mateo was forced to depart with an injury in favor of Carlos Marmol, Werth caught the Cubs infield defense napping and stole third without even drawing a throw. Finally, when Marmol’s 2-2 pitch slipped past Geovany Soto and bounced around the backstop, Werth raced home with the winning run.

It was the perfect end to an up-and-down day for the $126 million man. Werth’s broken-bat single in the bottom of the first drove home Danny Espinosa and made the score 2-0, Washington. But Werth was  also a supporting player in one of the worst defensive plays seen from the Nationals at any point in their history.

In the fourth inning, with two runners on and two outs, Alfonso Soriano lifted what appeared to be an easy fly ball to right-center field. Werth and center fielder Roger Bernadina each advanced to points about five feet apart, then stood and stared at each other as the ball dropped between them. It was so incompetent and stunning that it took on the feel of performance art. By the time the stricken fielders humped the ball back to the infield, both Aramis Ramirez and Marlon Byrd had crossed the plate to give Chicago a 3-2 lead.

The negligence was particularly cruel to Jordan Zimmermann, who saw his string of quality starts (which dated back to April 26) snapped thanks in large part to that play. But the young right-hander would have surely taken the loss without Werth’s intervention in the sixth inning. With the bases loaded and two men out, Zimmermann’s final pitch of the afternoon was lined into right field by Soto. Ramirez scored to give Chicago a two-run lead, but Werth’s throw to the plate arrived in just enough time for Ivan Rodriguez to gather the ball, twist his body around, and swipe tag Carlos Pena for the final out of the inning.

Thus reprieved, the Nats went to work on Chicago’s bullpen, for whom 3.2 innings proved to be too much of a task after Casey Coleman kept Washington off balance for the better part of 5.1 innings. Werth cut Chicago’s lead to 4-3 with an RBI groundout in the sixth, but he had the Nationals Park crowd screaming in frustration in the bottom of the seventh. The Nationals had already tied the game thanks to the generosity of Kerry Wood, who came on in relief of Sean Marshall and proceeded to walk Ryan Zimmerman (pinch-hitting for starting third baseman Alex Cora), hit Espinosa, and walk Laynce Nix with the bases loaded. But Werth couldn’t finish the job, swinging over a curveball to end the inning.  But instead of capping an ultimately frustrating day, Werth’s strikeout served as a prelude to a triumphant sprint home.

Nationals promote Harper to Harrisburg

Prior to the start of Monday afternoon’s game, the Nationals announced that outfielder Bryce Harper, the first overall pick in the 2010 Entry Draft, had been called up to the Harrisburg Senators (AA) of the Eastern League. Harper was expected to make his Harrisburg debut on Monday night against the Erie Seawolves (Detroit Tigers). The 18-year-old Harper played in 72 games for Hagerstown of the low-A South Atlantic League, batting .318 with 14 home runs and 46 runs batted in. He also posted a .423 on-base percentage and a .977 OPS in 305 total plate appearances.

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Nats Back Below .500 as Bucs Blast Marquis http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/03/nats-back-below-500-as-bucs-blast-marquis/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/07/03/nats-back-below-500-as-bucs-blast-marquis/#comments Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:48:58 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=72459
‘Clippard Pitches’
courtesy of ‘MudflapDC’

If, as the old baseball truism goes, the baseball gods have given the Washington Nationals 54 wins, 54 losses, and 54 toss-ups, than Sunday afternoon’s 10-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates unquestionably falls into the second category. Jason Marquis faced just 13 batters and recorded only four outs. Hundreds of fans were still milling around in the centerfield plaza, trying to decide whether to find their seats or find a hot dog, when Neil Walker scampered home on Lyle Overbay’s RBI double to give the Pirates an 8-0 lead and cap off a five-run top of the second inning that, for all intents and purposes, ended the competitive portion of the afternoon’s entertainment.

“I left too many balls in the zone,” a grim-faced Marquis said after the game. “There wasn’t enough late action on my balls.” To his credit, Marquis didn’t make excuses, nor did he hide behind the double play that probably should have been recorded by the very second batter of the game. After allowing Alex Presley to lead off the game with a sliced single to left field, Marquis induced Chase d’Arnaud to tap a ground ball back to the mound. Trying to start the pitcher’s best friend, Marquis rushed his throw and put it at second baseman Danny Espinosa’s feet. It was a difficult play to be sure, but one that Espinosa could have (if not should have) made. Instead, the throw skipped into center field and Presley picked himself up and went to third, later scoring on an RBI single by Nate McCutchen. Walker and Overbay followed with RBI base hits of their own, and the Pirates led 3-0 after half an inning.

“It didn’t have any effect [on me],” Marquis said when asked afterwards about the botched play. “They’ve been doing a good job defensively, they’ve spent the whole year battling, and are trying to make plays.”

“Things like that shouldn’t be able to affect you,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said. “He just didn’t have it today.”

A quick glance at his movement chart confirms Marquis’ diagnosis of his own performance, and suggests that he might have had better results placing the ball on a tee for the Pirates to whack at. By contrast, the Nationals had no such luck against Pirates starter Kevin Correia, who scattered six hits over six innings and kept the Nationals off balance with his two-seam fastball, curveball, and slider. His only mistake, a four-seam fastball that cruised over the heart of the plate, was deposited into the Pittsburgh bullpen by Wilson Ramos. That made the score 8-2 in the bottom of the second inning, and a comeback still seemed somewhat plausible. However, the Nationals couldn’t take advantage of putting their leadoff men on base in the third and fourth innings, and never got closer.

Meanwhile, the intrigue continued off the field, as the struggling Jayson Werth was removed from the game after being hit on the wrist pad in the bottom of the sixth inning. Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post revealed after the game that manager Davey Johnson had asked Werth to get an X-ray taken, a request which Werth refused. It is unclear at this point whether Nationals brass will intervene and make Werth get his wrist checked out. It does seem unlikely that Werth will play in Monday’s holiday matinee against the Chicago Cubs. Mike Morse is also a doubt for Monday, despite the fact that an X-ray came back showing no structural damage on the forearm that was hit by a pitch in Saturday’s double header. “He doesn’t have much mobility [in his forearm],” Johnson said of Morse.

It was a disappointing end to an otherwise creditable series split to start the Nationals’ longest homestand of the season. The Nationals will have a chance to go back to the .500 mark for the third time in this stretch on Monday against the Chicago Cubs, when they will send their best pitcher to the mound against Casey Coleman, a last-minute replacement for the ailing Ryan Dempster.

“I don’t think anybody’s satisfied with where we are,” shortstop Ian Desmond said. “This is our longest homestand of the season, and it’s a good chance for us to put some wins up on the board before the [All-Star] break.”

They won’t get many if their pitching doesn’t perform significantly better than it did on Sunday.

Clippard named to National League All-Star Team

Prior to Sunday afternoon’s game, the Nationals announced that Tyler Clippard had been named to the National League All-Star team, which will play the American League All-Stars on Tuesday, July 12 at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona. Clippard has appeared in 37 games for the Nationals this season, going 1-0 with a 1.96 ERA, a 0.870 WHIP, and a 11.2 strikeout/9 innings ratio.

“Pretty awesome,” Clippard said when asked for his reaction to his selection. “There’s too many guys, especially in the National League — starters, great closers. I’m pitching well, but usually those are the guys that get the nod as far as the all-star game is concerned. I knew there was maybe an outside shot, but I didn’t really take it seriously. That’s probably a good thing, not really thinking about it too much. Now that it’s here and it’s actually happening, it’s pretty awesome.”

In addition to Clippard, Mike Morse is one of five nominees for the final spot on the NL team, which will be voted on by the fans at MLB.com until Thursday, July 7. Morse, who has a .299 batting average, a .349 on-base percentage, and a .887 OPS to go with 15 home runs and 46 RBIs, is joined on the ballot by Andre Ethier of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies, Ian Kennedy of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies.

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What’s next for the Wizards? http://www.welovedc.com/2011/04/16/whats-next-for-the-wizards/ Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:01:13 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=68357
‘Wizards v Jazz – 01.17.11’
courtesy of ‘MudflapDC’

The 2010-11 Washington Wizards season, which ended Wednesday night with a 100-93 loss at Cleveland, will largely be remembered for the sparkling play of rookie point guard John Wall, who averaged 16.4 points and and 8.3 assists per game and would be a shoo-in for Rookie of the Year if it weren’t for the stunning emergence of Blake Griffin. Apart from that, however, most of the positives of this past season could only be seen on paper, rather than on the court.

To wit, in December, General Manager Ernie Grunfeld traded Gilbert Arenas and his horrendous contract to the Orlando Magic for the slightly less odious commitment made to Rashard Lewis. Two months later, with the NBA’s trade deadline approaching, Grunfeld swung a deal with the Atlanta Hawks that brought Mike Bibby and two promising young players to D.C. in the persons of Jordan Crawford and Mo Evans. Grunfeld then became even more fortunate when Bibby became so desperate to play for a contending team (eventually settling in Miami with the Heat) that he passed on all of the $6.2 million the Wizards would have owed him in 2011-12.

Back on the court, the Wizards struggled to a 23-59 record, the fourth-worst in the league, capped by a truly abysmal 3-38 road mark. Back in January, when the Wizards still had yet to notch their first road win, I wrote about their issues for another website and I think the points that I made then can be used to point the way to some of the team’s problems this season and storylines to watch next season. The 2010-11 Wizards were, by and large, a young team that struggled on the defensive end,  allowing their opponents to score 104.7 points per game, 7th-most in the league. To compound matters, Washington was remarkably inefficient on the offensive end. They finished 25th in the NBA in both total field goal percentage (44.3%) and free throw percentage (74.5%), 28th in three-point field goal percentage (33.2%), and perhaps most remarkably, even with the addition of Wall, only one team in the whole NBA averaged fewer assists per game than the Wizards’ 19.4 assists per game (That would be Milwaukee, with 18.8).

So, what do Wizards fans have to look forward to now? Well, for a start, there’s the NBA Draft Lottery, which will be held sometime in May. With the fourth-worst record in the NBA, the Wizards have an 11.9% chance of duplicating the miraculous achievement of 2010 and securing the first overall pick. Those are actually better odds than last year, when the Wizards had a 10.3% chance of landing Wall. The trouble here is that the 2011 draft class is not particularly deep and not, in the initial analysis anyway, full of potentially game-changing players like the bevy of Kentucky Wildcats that were selected in the first round last year. Instead, there are players like Arizona’s Derrick Williams, Duke’s Kyrie Irving, BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, and Kansas’ Morris twins, whose talent at the college level is unquestionable but whose ability to make the leap to the NBA is not. Throw in the usual motley crop of foreign players like Turkey’s Enes Kanter, and I do not envy whoever will be in the Wizards war room on draft night.

A deeper and even more pressing concern is the fact that the NBA, like the NFL, appears to be destined for a prolonged labor battle and a lockout of the players by the owners once the current CBA expires July 1. The last time this happened, prior to the 1998-99 season, each team’s schedule was reduced to 50 games and the season that followed is remembered as one of the most unimpressive in the league’s history. It is still the only time that the NBA has lost games due to a labor dispute, but if reports are true, the league is gearing up for a long battle, scuppering both its highly popular Las Vegas Summer League and its annual summer internship program (Nuts.).

The short-term effect of all this would be the same as what we’re already seeing in the NFL’s collective bargaining dispute. Namely, nothing significant could or would happen until the labor dispute gets resolved, with the possible exception of the NBA Draft, which is scheduled for June 23, a week before the CBA’s expiration date.

When (or if) there is a season next year, the Wizards will have more hard choices to make beyond which player to draft. As of this moment, the only players the Wizards have committed money to for 2011-12 are Wall, Lewis, Crawford, Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee, Kevin Seraphin, and  Trevor Booker. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess as to what the roster will look like. Will the Wizards match another team’s offer sheet to Nick Young, the team’s leading scorer this past season with 17.4 points per game? Grunfeld has said that he hopes to resign the shooting guard, but the emergence of Crawford would seem to make it less of a priority. It seems likely that Grunfeld will be less eager to keep either the injury-prone Josh Howard or the disappointing Yi Jianlian, while the futures of Evans, Hamady N’Diaye, Mustafa Shakur and Othyus Jeffers are all very much up in the air.

So, if you thought that the Wizards’ rebuilding job was close to being done, think again. Most of the big decisions have yet to be made, and much of the heavy lifting is still to come.

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For first time in three years, Wizards win a 3rd straight game http://www.welovedc.com/2011/04/06/for-first-time-in-three-years-wizards-win-a-3rd-straight-game/ Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:35:56 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=67714 Photo courtesy of
‘John Wall | Wizards’
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‘John Wall | Wizards’
courtesy of ‘Danilo.Lewis|Fotography’

Like a lot of things, basketball works in mysterious ways. If Austin Daye’s buzzer-beating three-point shot Tuesday night had done what many thought it was going to do and rattled through the net, Washington’s 107-105 win over the Detroit Pistons would instead have gone down as one of the three most excruciating losses of a largely excruciating season (my top two being the 95-94 home loss to Miami on December 18, the day the Gilbert Arenas trade was officially announced and the Wizards blew a four-point lead with 17 seconds remaining, and the 100-99 home loss to Orlando on November 27 that was settled with a Dwight Howard baby hook).

But Daye’s shot didn’t rattle through the net. Instead, it rattled back out, leaving the Wizards players shaken by just how close a call they’d had. “I’ve never seen [a shot like that],” said John Wall after the game. “I’ve never seen one go all the way in like that before coming out.”

“We’ve lost enough tough ones,” Flip Saunders said ruefully after the game. “We deserve a little bit of luck. That last one was definitely pretty right on.”

It was a very good thing that it did, for obvious reasons. For one thing, it gave the Wizards their first three-game winning streak in almost exactly three years (April 4-9, 2008 to be exact). It also restored the full sheen to what was a brilliant fourth-quarter performance from Wall, who scored 16 points in the final stanza, including eight points from the foul line. Time after time, each Wizards possession followed the following script: Wall would take the ball at the top of the key and quickly square to the basket. If there was one man guarding the rookie, he’d go right past him. If there were two men guarding Wall, he’d split them and get to the basket, either getting an easy layup or getting to the line.

“John made big plays not only for himself but for other people,” Saunders said. “He had a couple of turnovers, we didn’t take care of the basketball well, but on the other hand we had 39 fast-break points.” In a game where the Pistons scored 58 points in the paint to Washington’s 54, outrebounded the Wizards 47-40, and notched 27 second chance points to Washington’s 13, the Wizards needed every single one of them.

Wall’s sublime gifts — like speed, quickness, and court vision — have been listed over and over again, but it is always something thrilling to see them on display in a competitive situation, especially in a fundamentally meaningless game like Tuesday night’s.

To take an example, early in the fourth quarter, immediately after a Detroit basket, Wall glanced back up the floor and noticed that the Pistons were slow getting back on defense. Taking a quick outlet pass, he streaked back down the floor for an easy two, well ahead of any defender. After Tayshaun Prince missed a three-pointer with 17.9 seconds left and the score tied 102-102, Wall took off flying down the court again. This time, he got help from JaVale McGee, who hit Wall with a perfectly timed outlet pass that sent the point guard away for a streaking dunk that put the Wizards up for good with 14.8 seconds to go.

““First we just wanted to come out and play hard, that was the main thing,” said Wall, whose stat line at halftime included a middling six points, two assists, two turnovers, one rebound, and one talking-to from Saunders. “Coach wanted us to re-establish ourselves as a team that plays hard. Second, half he really got on us, especially me and Jordan [Crawford] as rookies, because we weren’t playing hard.”

Andray Blatche, who put forth another solid effort with 26 points and 10 rebounds, appeared to have iced the game after making two free throws to put Washington up 106-102 with 9.3 seconds to play. But Daye knocked down a left-wing three-pointer with 2.9 seconds to play to make the score 106-105. The Pistons promptly fouled Wall, who could only make one of two foul shots (perhaps the only mistake he made in the final twelve minutes), but after Daye’s ill fortune, it didn’t matter.

The Wizards (21-56) will take their three-game winning streak to Indiana to play the Pacers Wednesday night. As they continue to play out the string, a minor debate has stirred as to whether this late-season surge will turn out to be the same sort of fool’s gold that last year’s season-ending improvement turned out to be. Last season, beginning with a 96-91 win over New Orleans last March 31, the Wizards finished the season by winning five of their last nine games. With five games left in this season, the Wizards will have to win out to match last year’s win total, but have already surpassed last year’s home win total of 15. In fairness, few would have anticipated that the Wizards would be so brutal on the road (3-35 entering Wednesday’s game), but that as much as anything else gives it a feel of a wasted season.

When called upon to explain how the team might carry over a strong finish to this season into a (possibly truncated) 2011-12 season, Saunders said, “A lot of guys who were good for us last year, we didn’t bring back [this year],” referring to the likes of Shaun Livingston and James Singleton.
“These guys,” said Saunders, referring to the likes of Blatche and McGee, “will be coming back.”
Based on recent performances, that might actually be cause for optimism on the part of Wizards fans. But for it to mean anything at all, they’ll need many more performances like the one John Wall turned in tonight. Good thing he has it in him.

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Ovechkin’s OT winner sends Caps to the top of the East http://www.welovedc.com/2011/04/03/ovechkins-ot-winner-sends-caps-to-the-top-of-the-east/ http://www.welovedc.com/2011/04/03/ovechkins-ot-winner-sends-caps-to-the-top-of-the-east/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:48:14 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=67441 Photo courtesy of
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‘ovi en fuego…’
courtesy of ‘choofly’

Alexander Ovechkin scored the game-winning goal with 1:41 remaining in overtime to give the Washington Capitals a 5-4 overtime win over the Buffalo Sabres in a weird and wild game Saturday night at the Verizon Center. The win moved the Caps to the top of the Eastern Conference by one point over the idle Philadelphia Flyers, though Philadelphia does have a game in hand.

However thrilling the win was to the 18,398 fans who made up the 100th consecutive sellout crowd for a Capitals home game, Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau was in a less-than-celebratory mood at his postgame press conference.

“I’m concerned with the process of how we played,” Boudreau said, “I thought it was way too close to looking like last year.”

The Capitals appeared to be cruising after two goals against Buffalo backup Jhonas Enroth within the game’s first five minutes. First, Mike Knuble slammed home a rebound of John Carlson’s shot to complete a 2-on-1 breakaway just 37 seconds into the game. Then Alexander Semin gave the Capitals a 2-0 lead with just 4:41 gone as he knocked the puck over the goal line after Nicklas Backstrom’s shot from the slot came off the post, then off the back of Enroth and began trickling toward the net.

But the Capitals gave the lead right back through sloppy defending and goaltending. First Thomas Vanek was left completely alone in front of Michal Neuvirth’s net to redirect a shot past the Czech rookie at 6:30 of the first to make the score 2-1. Then came the most cringeworthy moment of Neuvirth’s evening, as Drew Stafford’s dump attempt from the left point deflected off a body in the high slot, knuckled to the ice, and bounced right between Neuvirth’s pads to tie the score at 2-2 with 10:32 still to play in the opening stanza.

“It was just a weird game,” said Capitals winger Mike Knuble. “It started really weird; five minutes in and it’s 2-2. You have to give them credit, they didn’t shut it down.”

In truth, the oddest thing was what happened after Buffalo’s second goal, when the pace of the game slowed to a relative crawl. The most notable thing to happen was the loss of defenseman’s Tyler Sloan’s services to the Capitals. The Calgary native did not return to the bench for the start of the third period and was described by Boudreau as being “day-to-day” after “[getting] his bell rung.” Boudreau and the Capitals know that they can not afford to lose any more defensemen in the run-up to the postseason. They were already without three of their top six defensemen entering Saturday’s game (Mike Green, Tom Poti and John Erskine) and were forced to cobble together a pairing of Sloan and Sean Collins, who had just been called up from Hershey hours earlier). Luckily, expectations are that Erskine will be available to the club in time for Tuesday night’s game at Toronto, and there remains a distinct possibility that both Green and Poti will be healthy enough to return for Game 1 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series. But between now and then, there is no question that Capitals fans will be watching for whatever limited medical information that the team makes available with a combination of hope and fear.

But if the Capitals defensive depth is lacking at the moment, the drive and determination was there in abundance from the forwards, and it showed in the final period. After Buffalo had taken a 3-2 lead on a pretty goal by Paul Gaustad with 7:25 left in regulation, the Capitals took advantage of a power play opportunity as Knuble deflected a shot by Brooks Laich past Enroth to tie the score at 3-3.

Then came Carlson’s most cringeworthy moment of the night, as he was caught too far up the ice on a penalty kill. In his haste to get back and cover Stafford’s centering pass, the rookie lost an edge and slid right into Neuvirth, knocking the puck into the net in the process. The score became 4-3 Buffalo with just 3:21 left.

But here, Bill McCreary, officiating his final NHL game after 27 years as a referee, intervened to save the Caps, calling a high-sticking penalty on Gaustad with 1:25 to go. With Neuvirth out of the net and the Capitals on a 6-on-4 power play, a shot from Ovechkin rebounded out to the side of the net to Jason Arnott, who was in the right place at the right time to backhand his 400th career goal into a wide open net with 51.3 seconds to go and sent the Verizon Center into hysterics.

“You can say what you want about the quality of the game at times, but it was fun,” Knuble said. “It was a fun one for the players and both teams couldn’t hold each other back. They are going to happen like that every once in a while and it was fun. Of course we would like to tighten up a bit, but I thought it was a fun hockey game.”

When told that his coach probably wouldn’t agree, Knuble responded “He needs to forget about it and move on,” with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Of course, Knuble knows that Boudreau won’t forget about it, not after last year. He also knows that however satisfying it was for Washington’s collective head to hit the pillow Saturday night at the top of the Eastern Conference, the win itself won’t answer any of the questions about the health of the defense, the composure of the goaltenders (though in fairness to Neuvirth, he did respond very well after allowing that dire second goal), and the scoring punch of the forwards. Only time, and playoff pressure, will be able to do that.

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Blatche, Crawford lead Wizards over Cavs http://www.welovedc.com/2011/04/01/blatche-crawford-lead-wizards-over-cavs/ Sat, 02 Apr 2011 03:20:14 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=67411 Photo courtesy of
‘Wizards’
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‘Wizards’
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Andray Blatche tied his career-high point total with 36, and set a new career-high rebounding total with 19 as the Washington Wizards held off the Cleveland Cavaliers 115-107 Friday night at the Verizon Center. Playing without John Wall, who was serving a one-game suspension for throwing a punch at Miami Heat center Zydrunas Ilgauskas Wednesday night, the Wizards (19-56) became the first team in NBA history to have two rookies record triple-doubles in the same season after Jordan Crawford scored 21 points, dished 11 assists, and grabbed 10 rebounds (recording career-highs in the latter two categories). Wall recorded the other triple-double by a first-year player when he had 19 points, 13 assists, and 10 rebounds against Houston November 10.

It would be easier to get excited about Crawford’s and Blatche’s achievements if they hadn’t come against a truly execrable Cleveland (15-60) team featuring Baron Davis, perhaps the biggest waste of NBA talent over the last 15 years (True to form, Davis managed 10 points and 11 assists, but went 2-for-8 from beyond the three-point line and 4-for-12 from the field with a plus/minus of -11). But it also won’t do to be too churlish, as Wizards coach Flip Saunders came roaring into the media room after the game full of praise for his team’s effort.

“We had great individual performances,” Saunders said. “Andray was great tonight — 36 points, 19 rebounds, 16 offensive rebounds, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. That’s a lot of offensive rebounds.”

“Ah, man. He was rebounding all his missed shots,” said Othyus Jeffers, who recorded 13 points and played 33 minutes in his first career NBA start. “He was going for a Moses Malone night.” He was joking. We think.

It was Blatche, playing in just his second consecutive game after missing the previous 10 due to injury, who carried the early load for the Wizards, recording 12 points and eight rebounds on 5-for-12 shooting as Washington held a 29-26 lead after the first 12 minutes. Somewhat unexpectedly (for Blatche has long since established a pattern of falling off after fast starts to games), the 6-foot-11 power forward continued his strong play on the offensive end in the second quarter, scoring 10 more points and grabbing four more rebounds in just 7:28 of second quarter playing time. However, Blatche struggled on the defensive end, at one point failing to rotate and pick up J.J. Hickson while the latter was cutting to the basket. The resulting dunk gave Cleveland a 46-42 lead with 4:18 left in the first half and left Saunders gesticulating wildly in anger on the sidelines. Blatche finished the game, for the record, with a plus/minus of +7.

“It feels good to be back and I’m having fun again,” Blatche said. “When I was out I realized you can’t take anything for granted, so I came back with a lot of energy and I’m just happy to be playing again.”
Crawford took command of proceedings in the third quarter as the Wizards went on a 14-0 spurt to turn a 61-54 deficit into a 68-61 lead. Crawford’s signature play of the night came during this run, as he blocked a shot attempt by Davis, picked up the loose ball, spun away from a defender, streaked down the floor, and dropped the ball off between his legs to Blatche for an easy dunk that made the score 61-60, Cleveland.
“I knew the pass was coming,” Blatche said in the locker room after the game. “I just didn’t know how it was going to get there.”

Crawford, who had been a game-time decision with a bad back, finished off the run himself with a three-point play, but he couldn’t claim a flawless night either, as he launched two long off-balance jump shots midway through the fourth quarter as the Wizards were trying to salt the game away. But he atoned for those particularly errors with a long three-pointer from just to the left of the key to give Washington a 107-99 lead with 1:51 remaining and seal the game.

“The most phenomenal thing about Jordan,” said Saunders, “is that he has the ability to have an average first half and then he comes out and he’s lights out in the second half. I’m talking about making big plays tonight and not just scoring, he had some phenomenal passes to JaVale [McGee] at the rim.”

Seven games remain in the Wizards season after Friday night’s win, and though it would sound hollow to say that the team has finally hit upon a winning formula, there is no doubt that the play of Jeffers, Crawford, and Maurice Evans has made the team watchable, if not necessarily better, as the NBA season turns for home.
“It’s been painful at times,” Saunders admitted Friday night. “But our guys have kept a good attitude day after day and have continued to work hard, and we’re starting to see the results.”

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Without Wall, Wizards fight hard, but lose to the Heat http://www.welovedc.com/2011/03/30/without-wall-wizards-fight-hard-but-lose-to-the-heat/ Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:48:59 +0000 http://www.welovedc.com/?p=67172 Photo courtesy of
‘Wall Ascending the Sky’
courtesy of ‘Mylar Bono’

Defying the odds and most expectations, the Washington Wizards gave the star-studded Miami Heat a run for their money Wednesday night at the Verizon Center, twice cutting their deficit to one point early in the fourth quarter. But ultimately, the 94 total points scored by LeBron James (35 points), Dwyane Wade (33 points), and Chris Bosh (26 points) proved too much to overcome as the Heat (52-23) defeated the Wizards 123-107.

As heartening as the performance was by the Wizards (18-56), it’s hard not to wonder what might have happened if Washington’s star rookie point guard John Wall hadn’t gotten himself thrown out of the game with 8:48 to go in the first half and the Wizards leading 37-36.

The incident began innocuously enough, as Zydrunas Ilgauskas grabbed a loose ball at the top of the key and was defended by Wall. As Ilgauskas turned to face the basket, the Wizards rookie got right into the Lithuanian’s personal space, and Ilgauskas responded by nudging Wall twice with his right elbow. Wall took a futile swipe at the ball as Ilgauskas brought it over his head, an action which left the Miami man’s midsection exposed. As Wall turned to face up to Ilgauskas, television replays showed that the Kentucky alum pursed his lips, picked a spot, and let fly with a right cross to Ilgauskas’ ribs at the same instant that the 7-foot-3 center reached out with his left arm to shove Wall further back.

That exchange was followed by clutching and grabbing from both combatants, a brief sideshow flurry of action between JaVale McGee and Juwan Howard, and the appearance of both Flip Saunders and Erik Spoelstra to corral their two teams. In the end, Wall, Ilgauskas, and Howard made an early exit, a trade that –for all the fight the Wizards showed–still greatly benefitted the Heat.

The rest of the game was tightly called. Jordan Crawford, who took over for Wall at the point guard spot and finished with 39 points, picked up a technical foul for running his mouth after a made basket in the second quarter, while Andray Blatche received the same penalty for protesting a third-quarter foul called on him.

Meanwhile, Wizards fans carried out their usual passion play against James, booing him when his number was called during player introductions, and rarely stopping for the rest of the night. They roared their approval when the King himself was T’d up with 4:12 to go in the fourth quarter after calling for a clear path foul on Maurice Evans (in fairness to LeBron, Evans had gone over James’ back to stop a fast break chance), and they roared even louder when he missed both subsequent foul shots and earned the 18,916 in attendance free chicken sandwiches.

But those would be the only two shots James would miss in the whole final quarter, as he scored 13 points in the final 12 minutes to effectively salt the game away. If there was one maddening sequence that summed up the game’s close-but-not-quite aspect, as well as LeBron’s arrogant, brilliant, and petulant performance, it was this: after James hit a spot-up three-pointer to make the score 101-94 with 5:48 to play, James leapt in front of an attempted pass by Crawford and deflected the ball high into the air. The two players converged, collided, and Crawford went down. No foul was called, and James stayed on his feet and took the ball the rest of the way for a breakaway dunk, hanging on the rim for a good three seconds after his finish. (No technical foul was called here.)

“Sometimes you have what are called 50-50 calls, and I didn’t think we got those calls tonight,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders said matter-of-factly. “It happens, especially with a young team.”

James’ 34th and 35th points of the night, a turnaround spot-up jumper with 53.7 seconds left made the score 118-104, but the result was already a formality.

Ultimately, and this was especially the case without Wall, the Heat had too much quality for the Wizards to overcome. on the night. A further case in point: JaVale McGee brought the crowd to its feet with back-to-back rejections of Bosh and Wade early in the third quarter. Undeterred, Miami attacked McGee a third time, and on this occasion, Bosh got McGee in the air with a simple up-fake, slipped inside, and laid the ball in. Miami just kept pushing and pushing, and ultimately the Wizards couldn’t keep pace.

There were many pious mutterings after the game in the Wizards’ locker room that the game represented a positive step forward for the team.

“I’m proud of the way we competed,” Saunders said.

“I was impressed with everybody’s fight tonight,” said Evans, speaking, perhaps both literally and metaphorically.

It was, to be sure, a good performance, but the Wizards have suffered lots of brave defeats and even pulled off a couple of surprise victories this season. Invariably, the trouble has lain in the efforts that followed those defeats, which have more often than not been turgid, uninspiring, forgettable, or downright horrible.

Anyone who’s had to deal with young people knows that growing up isn’t done in a moment or a single night. It’s a gradual process, full of fits and starts and invariably frustrating. McGee articulated something like this point of view when he said, in response to the “Did this team grow up tonight?” question by saying. “I can’t say that, because last time we played them [February 25, a 121-113 loss in Miami] we gave them a better run. We seem to play to the level of our competition for whatever reason.”

It’s not known whether the Wizards will be without Wall Friday night against Cleveland (all flagrant-2 fouls like Wall’s are reviewed by the NBA before a decision is made on further punishment). But with or without their future, the Wizards are still facing a team that they should beat and beat handily. If this team really has turned a corner, we will see them complete it Friday night. Anything less, and Wednesday night’s effort will go down as another anomaly, another blip on a season-long radar screen.

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