Santana pitches and hits Mets past Nats

Everything was going so well…going into the fourth inning Redding and Santana were locked in a pitcher duel with the Mets leading 1-0. The 30 year old Redding who has seemed to finally settle down in Washington had all but muted the explosive Mets line up, only allowing a pair of double to Beltran and the opposing pitcher, Santana. In the bottom of the fourth everything seemed to click into place, the ever struggling Wily Mo Pena and the overachieving Wil Nieves partnered for a pair of singles. Then the Redding Railroad showed up as Tim Redding smacked a double off the wall scoring both runner…the Nats…had a lead.

Could it be that the good pitching and fundamental baseball that have come to define the Nationals over the year had returned? Were we finally that pesky team that just sticks around long enough to get their break, such as their pitcher smacking a double off one of the top hurlers in baseball, just to sneak into the lead and steal the win. It had worked yesterday against the Braves, so why not today against the Mets.

Maybe we’re not quite back to that point yet…In the very next inning after claiming the lead, Redding committed a cardinal sin of later inning pitching…walking one of the 7-8-9 batters. Not only did he walk Brian Schneider with one out, he couldn’t get the ball over to allow Santana to put down the sacrifice, walking him as well. All it took from there was fielders choice and then an infield hit and the Mets tied it up. Bad baseball.
The Mets of course rallied in the fallowing innings, and the bullpen clamped down stopping the Nats from putting any more runs on the board. The Nats ultimately lost 7-2 and are still having trouble putting any sort of string of victories together.

Stopping Thunder and Lightening, but still getting rained on.

The Nats kept the Mets top players, David Wright and Jose Reyes, hitless Wednesday night. The dynamic two combined to go 0-9 and left 5 runners on base. This is what teams need to do to beat the Mets…However the Nats could not stop the back end of the line up from combining for seven hits including two doubles by the Mets starting pitcher Johan Santana. Unacceptable.

Struggles against Lefties Continue.

As I pointed out in the preview the only Nats to have success against lefties so far this year were Christian Guzman and Lastings Milledge…only one of them were able to produce tonight, Guzman going 2-4. Aside from a rare good night from Pena and Nieves, the only other National to record a hit was Tim Redding.

Box Score
Photos Courtesy of AP Photo/Pablo Monsivais