I think I’m moving past the bitter, cynical phase of Nats fandom I experienced most of the summer.  Last night, I would have been frustrated, angry and upset by the 12-0 loss.  Instead, I appreciated the cool breeze that made the game tolerable.  In the sticky humid days of July through rain delays and sunburns, the whole baseball experience was pretty miserable.  Now, despite the team’s horrible record, I think I can enjoy baseball again.

Bergmann, coming off of one of his strongest outings, experienced a total meltdown in front of some 30,000 fans.  In three innings, Bergmann threw 89 pitches.  He walked six batters including pitcher John Maine.  He struck out one.   Combine the walks with 8 hits and a solo shot homer and Bergmann left the game with a 10 run deficit.  Only 6 of those runs were earned thanks to Guzman’s fielding error.  The shortstop has been oh-so-fabulous since signing his extention.  (Zuckerman has the numbers).

It might not have mattered if Bergmann gave up one run.  The offense was again non existent to give the Nats their 18th shut out of the season.  Maine issued 4 walks in 5 innings, but none of those runners could score.  He gave up only one hit.  The Nats would collect three more hits later off of Mets reliever Brian Stokes but all of those runners were stranded.  Milledge did extend his hitting streak to 14 games with a single in the 2nd inning.

The overworked, exhausted bullpen was called upon to throw 6 innings and they responded to the challenge pretty well.  Colome was charged for 2 more runs when recently called up Daniel Murphy hit a 2 run blast.  Ayala worked two scoreless and hitless innings through the most dangerous part of the lineup.  He did walk one, on a call he didn’t like.  Manning and Shell both allowed some hits, but neither ran into any serious trouble. 

Ryan Langerhans was forced from the game after pinch hitting.  He’s day-to-day, which means he’ll probably spend two weeks being day-to-day before they decide he needs 4-6 weeks. 

Both Bud Selig and James Carville were there to witness the massacre, and to experience a beautiful summer night for baseball.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 6:46 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.