The Nats continued to look comfortable at Shea last night pounding Tom Glavine with 6 runs and knocking him out of the game after 5 innings. But it truly wasn’t over, until the 54th out.
The offensive production came early and never stopped. The runs came from Austin’s 3 run homer in the first and Tony Batista’s solo shot. In the third inning, Wily Mo hit a single RBI and Justin Maxwell hit another homerun. In the 7th, Schneiderman drove in 2 more runs. In the 8th, Jimenez scored on Ronnie’s GIDP and in the 9th, Schneider collected another RBI. Twenty-three runs in 18 innings.
Jason Bergmann had a nice birthday outting: 5 and 2/3 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs.
Nats fans were also treated to perhaps the double play of the year. Zimmerman quickly handled a sharp Wright grounder to third by throwing a perfect, off-balance throw to Belliard at 2nd before Ronnie turned to complete the double play to Batista. That one was spectacular, but the guys completed 4 double plays last night. Thank you Zim, Belliard, Lopez and Batista.
Heading into the bottom of the ninth, Washington had a 10-3 lead and Mets fans looked defeated. Leave it to Colome to get them on their feet.
Jesus Colome had an easy 8th, so Manny put him back in for the 9th to give Rauch and Chief the day off. Ayala and Rivera were unavailable.
Colome brought that 10-3 lead to 10-6 by giving up a Reyes 3 run homer. Colome struggled with control before Mr. Sutton suggested that he “throw it right across the plate; it’s 10-3, afterall.” That 3 run blast was followed by a base hit to Castillo (it sure felt like Manny took a long time getting Colome out of this game). What’s with Colome? An ERA of 12.00 in his last 10 games.
Enter Chief. 12 pitches. No outs. 2 earned runs on 2 hits, oh and a walk. Mets fans show new life. Lastings Milledge sports a rally cap in the Mets dugout. The score becomes 10-9. Billy Wagner starts warming up for the top of the 10th.
Despite the little debate here yesterday, Rauch came through big last night to end this long 6 run 9th inning. He retired the 2 batters he faced — one with a K and the last with a fly ball to Austin.
Thank guys for an exciting game; for playing hard against your NL East rivals this September; for making those Mets fans rally and fight back, only to shut them down with a curly W. Number 71 as a matter of fact…
“By matching their win total of last year, the Nationals showed that they were better than anyone thought at the beginning of the season, despite losing players such as Alfonso Soriano and Nick Johnson. So much for those predictions that said that Washington was going to be an historically bad team.
“It was ridiculous. There was one guy who said it, and that was [baseball writer] Buster Olney. It shows you how much he knows,” said Brian Schneider. “Honestly, that was a ridiculous comment by him. In a way, it’s asinine. That’s five wins a month. These days, you see teams with small payrolls doing [positive things]. If you look at [our team], you knew we were going to win more than 30 games. We took it with a grain of salt. We laugh at it now. It was nothing to think about.”
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September 26th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
What debate? You guys made up some statistics to back up a claim which were thoroughly debunked. That’s not a debate.
September 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Nobody “made up” anything. She referred to games that made her nervous and has since apologized for the incorrect statement.
It is very frustrating that the Nationals online fan community is so attack oriented.
We have different opinions. Try to relax. It’s baseball. We all love the same great game.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
John,
I have apologized for the post yesterday. If you have not seen it, please look at the comments from yesterday’s blog post. Again, I messed up and as an adult, I have taken responsibility for my mistake rather than hide behind it. I did not simply remove the sentence from the post, or ignored the situation as a whole. I stated that I am sorry for making the mistake. These girls have posted over 225 posts in 6 months and I must say, that is impressive. There has been one mistake, and that was my fault. I have apologized for the mistake.
As a pitcher, Jon Rauch tends to make me nervous. Again, he has had a great couple of months, but as a fan who is entitled to opinions, he makes me nervous. There are other players on the Nats who do that same.
September 26th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Well said ladies. I agree with Kristen that sometimes its important to look past a players numbers, this is especially true with relievers. Rauch leads the team in wins yes, but it seems to me he has gotten lucky an awful lot. As the question of who the set up guy will be next year continues, I’d cast my vote for Ayala. However, as Kristen said everyone is entitled to their opinions and that strategy is what makes baseball such a great game!