It was - in many ways, another typical John Lannan start. He was impressive in 7 innings, striking out eight but giving up a pinch hit home run to Ian Stewart to tie the game. His teammates managed to give him only two runs to work with despite having plenty of chances to bring runners home.

Worse yet, the bullpen took a tied 2-2 game to an 8-2 loss in just one inning. The ugly eighth saw the total collapse of Luis Ayala, Charlie Manning and Saul Rivera. Together, they gave up 6 runs on 2 hits with 4 walks and 2 HBPs. It was a rough night. It could be expected of Ayala given his struggles all season; in fact, he took the loss. He’s now 1-7 this season with a 5.88 ERA (and he’s better than those numbers). But it was totally out of character for Manning and especially Rivera, both of whom have pitched very well this season.

We’re good at giving away hits, walks, wins, millions for being hurt or being just too bad to stay on the team…you know, stuff like that.  We’re a generous bunch.  Except when it comes to draft picks.

Stan says despite allowing Jim to throw away 13.5 million dollars this year on players that have been released, the organization won’t be able to find the cash to sign our draft picks. The Nats fall far behind other teams in locking up draft choices this season. Their only achievement was talking Hood out of football and into a Nats jersey. The plan says we can’t spend on free agents, and apparently, now we can’t spend on draft picks. The only thing we can spend on? Discounted players past their prime.

Congrats to Felipe Lopez for finding a new home with the St. Louis Cardinals. GM John Mozeliak said they considered picking up Lopez BEFORE the deadline but nothing came of it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 7:32 am and is filed under Game Recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.